Police Brutality In The Civil Rights Movement

We live in an age where we perceive the world through many different perspectives due to technology and progressive movements. Yet in many recurring events these moments have been viewed with skewed, biased perceptions. In these latest months, and even years there has been an increase in documented police brutality in black communities, causing a spike in interest in these not so new actions. Created to conceal the true working within systems of oppression and discriminations within countries, like the United States have used dominant supremacy, color blindness, institutionalized discrimination and especially control over news and social media. Movements like Black Lives Matter have been tactfully attacked by the United States government because …show more content…
One example from the movie Selma, Martin Luther King went to a city where there wasn’t much new attention which did not incite the nation. Any media coverage that did come out was not truly depicting the brutality of the situation. Continuing with the example when MLK went into Selma there were plenty of reporters willing to depict the true story of what was going at the time of his march to Birmingham. This just goes to show how powerful news, and reporters are on depicting the nature of a march, or twisting it and making it a riot. This devalues their movement which causes hate against a group who actually did nothing wrong but were depicted as violent individuals on the TV. Another example of control of social media was during Baltimore demonstrations where some new stations would focus on the opportunists and looters and rioters while they were the minority in a bigger cause. There were many of great numbers who protested peacefully, did legal demonstrations and tried to educate the masses, yet that wasn’t seen on national television. What was seen was those who preyed on the good and those who capitalized it, the new stations, and the government. Creating a system and networks of control and dictate their plans and hide the …show more content…
One reason why there is the movement such as Black Lives Matter is not to just find justice in police brutality but to break the illusion of racial inequality which is created by white privilege. Many white people believe that the Black Lives Matter is just using the “race card” to receive underserving attention. Yet they don’t realize that people of color do not have the equalities, “ But the kids I’m going to school with, the minorities I’m going to school with, I don’t think they should use racism as an excuse for not getting a job” ( Gallagher). They believe, truly believe in their minds that all races are equal and therefore race should not be taken into consideration, yet they are wrong. The movement is important here because they can educate people of the true struggles and the invisible barriers that don’t let many if any into successful futures. All lives matter vs. All black lives matter has been another example on how color blindness tries to dilute the cause for the black community. By saying all lives matter you are taking away the power that this movement has by generalizing their struggle and not understanding that their struggle is different from a while privilege males. Using all lives matter causes the movement to be not taken seriously and seen just as using the “race card”, while on the other hand race has