Making All Black Lives Matter - Chapter 4 & On

The second half of Making All Black Lives Matter is as hard-hitting and relevant as the first. The case of Freddie Gray and the reaction it evoked from the black community further highlighted that individual acts of white racism are not the defining culprit of black oppression; the largest problem is that of “structural racism, which include[s] profiling and harassment of a certain type of poor or working-class Black youth, an aggressive policing style in poor Black communities.” The fourth chapter notes that half of the officers responsible for Freddie Gray’s death were black, but that the “notorious blue code of silence among cops...often trumps any kind of racial solidarity that Black officers might otherwise feel toward the Black community.” This observation is reminiscent of the one made in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me; Prince Jones was killed by a black cop whose prioritization of an inherently racist policing structure led him to racially profile an innocent man and devalue black life. The following chapters shift slightly away from the individual, catalyzing events that prompted the emergence and progression of the BLM movement to focus on the components and challenges of the movement in current society, and I think the attention it pays to the impact of social media is interesting. No previous movement has had the benefit of social media as a global rallying tool, and the rapid online spread of news has been both a blessing and a curse in that it allows for incidents to be publicly shared and discussed but also mocked or dismissed by white antagonists. No previous movement has been so widely successful in its utilization of black feminist ideals, either, which makes Black Lives Matter distinct from its predecessors; the movement operates through a largely youthful and inclusive base and ideology that takes up issues of intersectionality.

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