The Issue Of “Black-On-Black Crime” In Black Lives Matter Movement: Solution Essays

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Race is one of the correlates of crime receiving attention in academic studies, government surveys, media coverage, and public concern.

Roughly eight-in-ten blacks with at least some college experience (81%) say they’ve experienced racial discrimination, at least from time to time, including 17% who say this happens regularly. Discrimination is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex. The term racial disparity as it relates to crime can be defined as the proportion of a racial or ethnic group within the criminal justice system exceeding the proportion of such a group within the general population. People of color are more likely to be racially profiled, stopped, and harassed by the police. Racial disparities in the US criminal justice system worsened after 1980 following various political developments.

So today in the U.S. today, there is still there is racial profiling. Theirs racial profiling almost every wear you go towards a young black African or African American human. There is racial profiling at stores. There is racial profiling at jobs. There is even racial profiling at a church. It’s crazy how things like that still go on till today. Imagine back in the day like the 1980’s. Imagine back in the 1990’s, or even back when 2000’s. I know this really have to do with blacks but when the September 11, 2001, bombing had happened. If you were a Muslim, for some odd reason you would be looked at as a terrorist. All terrorist attacks against the U.S. on September 11,2001, had fueled a whole bunch of widespread and fear about mounting Islamophobic was the Americans response to the events. The opinions about the Muslims and Arabs living in the United States and judgment towards the Islamic faith was so bad. Study suggest that Americans possess lingering resentment and reservations about Arab and Muslim Americans. You see now how people are quick to judge after a group of your kind makes a terrible mistake.

Black people get treated like they don’t belong because of your appearance. Or because of the way you talk. The way you talk or sound when you speak should be the reason you get a job. It matters about the way the person uses their brain. Or because of the actions other Black people make. None of that shows who you are all the time. There was a story of four black men being criticized for being black.

“Every time the term black-on-black crime is used, the term that comes to human consciousness is race,” David Wilson, professor at the University of Illinois and author of ‘Inventing Black-on-Black Violence,’ told The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview.

“The term really privileges that notion that race is at the core of the process.” The violence in our black communities is borne out by statistics. The numbers from the Bureau of Justice Statistics show that from 1980 to 2008, blacks were six times more likely than whites to be homicide victims and seven times more likely than whites to commit homicide.

The problem with using the phrase “black-on-black crime,” is that many activists and scholars argue, is that it traces the cause of violence to race, instead of looking other factors such as poverty and lack of job opportunities in our black communities.

The former New York Mayor said Black on Black Crime “is most misused when implying that bad violence is unique to the black community.” As the former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani did, pointing out that “93 percent of blacks are killed by other blacks.”

Federal data has shown that it’s the same for white-on-white crime: Between 1980 and 2008, 84% of white victims were killed by whites, and the differences remained slim throughout 2009 to 2013.

The people who don’t care about black lives don’t see things, such as poverty rates, disparities in opportunity, and segregation of neighborhoods, rather than any indication that black communities inherently struggle with internal strife more white communities, advocates say.

The term black-on-black crime ‘invokes that there is something different about the racial category of blacks,” Dr. Wilson says, “Naming a process says so much about how you choose to understand the process. It’s really just saying that Black Lives Matter is not that important because these are just black people making bad choices in the world.

Wilson culled through more than 20 years of news articles to find out where the term “black-on-black crime” first appeared in everyday lexicon, He found that in the 1970s and ’80s, it was used to describe crime in Chicago and other cities where the perpetrator and victim of homicides were black.

The Black Lives Matter movement addressed the criticism on black lives by stating that they do care about “black-on-black crime” and the actions taken to reduce violence. But they also point out that it is a diversion.

The continued focus on black-on-black crime is a “diversionary tactic”, which is to suggest that black people don’t have the right to be outraged about police violence in vulnerable black communities, because those communities have a crime problem, it states.

In a May 2015 study coauthored by Rod Brunson, dean of the Rutgers’s School of Criminal Justice, and Anthony Braga, director of Northeastern University School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, argues that use of the term “black-on-black crime” brings negative consequences and can be problematic when used by political commentators, politicians, and police.

“We don’t argue that it is not statistically accurate that most crimes are intraracial,” Professor Brunson said in a phone interview with The Christian Science Monitor. “But it is used in such a way to suggest that black people are the more morally deficient member of the society.”

The term itself, he says, is not the problem, It’s the context in which it is used.

“It really depends on the context in which you use it,” Brunson says. “If police leaders are standing before a community on the heels of a tragic event like a homicide or shooting and they use the term, it could suggest that the community endorses or accepts the violence.”

Brunson emphasizes that our black community has been taking steps to resolve it, citing the “Boston Ten Point Coalition” as an example. The Boston Ten Point Coalition stops the black on black crime and violence going on in Boston, Massachusetts.

Poverty, poor schools, poor social service, all these create conditions where crime is disproportionately observed in a minority community and you can blame black lives for trying to make a change in the world.

Our criminal justice system in America has offered the suggestion that being black is a crime. Each case that involved a police officer killing an unarmed black person has left society with an empty void every time the defender was determined not guilty. This social movement used theories framing and collective identity. To organize and be mobile the BLM relied heavy on social media presence. The birth of #BlackLivesMatter hashtag was extremely popular and it was able to gain momentum after the Trayvon Martin case when Zimmerman was found not guilty, even had me mad. This group needed to express their frustration and they wanted to give others a way to express themselves and this was the perfect platform. Through social media, this group was able to organize protests, rallies and sit-outs in a very non-traditional way. The Black Live Matter movement was born in the new wave of social movement theories.

With new methods always brings about negativity. Even though Black Lives Matter was able to bring light on unfortunate events that were taking place their message quickly surged several other social movements such as #BlueLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter. The members/supporters of BLM were quickly viewed as racists because of their support for one race of people. In this social movement, there was some gains and some losses, the BLM gained a large recognition and was able to get people having the race conversation and they were able to shed light on the issues that were taking place in the background. They lost because people in America were using the All Lives Matter statement to twist the Black Lives Matter Movement into being anti-white instead of a celebration of being black. By doing this and focusing on the Black part of the Black Lives Matter Movement, they are not truly hearing the concerns that are being voiced.

Since the summer of 2014, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has grown into an international network of grassroots organizations in more than 30 US cities and four countries outside of the United States. I’d say with all the controversy between all of the hashtags, this organizations have done a great job of recruiting individuals and keeping the peace within their organization. Because this organization is so popular and has a major support of entertainers/political backing, they finance has not been an obstacle as of today.

In conclusion, The Black Lives Matter Movement is a new civil rights movement to fight against this new form of racism called colorbind. It’s stating that race matters in a society where race is considered insignificant to those who are not affected. The Black Lives Matter Movement is trying to shift away from colorblindness to color consciousness. It’s not ignoring that racism is still a problem in the United States. The Black Lives Matter movement needs to continue to grow as a social movement and go further than the NAACP and Civil Rights movement did in the 1960’s. They need to focus on gaining more support from other organizations, educating their communities and educating outside communities about being consciences of others culture.

The BLM still has a long road ahead to achieve the change they want to make in society as a whole but I believe it can accomplished as long as they provide empowerment to those that are affected and provide teachings to those who need to understand why Black Lives Matter.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) Global Network is a chapter-based, member-led organization whose mission is to build local power and to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. They are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. They also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with them along the way, they must move beyond the narrow nationalism that is all too prevalent in Black communities. The BLM affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. They are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.

The Black Lives Matter Movement came about after the death of Trayvon Martin and continued to grow with the death of Michael Brown. Both young men were black, unarmed, and were shot and killed. The topic of police brutality increased throughout the United States as everyone watched LIVE on TV what was unfolding in both cases. Both cases brought up the existing issue of racism in America. The issue of Colorblind is a new form of racism that has developed in the post-Civil Rights era and is connected to the negative response that the Black Lives Matter Movement has received. As with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s there has been backlash.

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