The Relationship Between Black Lives Matter and Collective Memory

Black Lives Matter and Collective Memory
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Black Lives Matter and Collective Memory
Introduction
Attention Getter: What should the world do to attain racial and social justice and promote equality among different groups of people?
Should people believe what Karl Marx said that history has a way of repeating itself either as a farce or tragedy?
In some cases, individuals ignore things that affect them physically, emotionally, and psychologically.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) refers to the social group or movement that was formed in July 2013, following its renowned hashtag that circulated on the social media.  
Credibility Statement: All people are equal regardless of their differences in religion, cultural background, beliefs, skin color, ethnicity, race, sexuality, and gender.
In unit three, one has learned that collective memory entails the information and knowledge of a specific social group that affects the identity of individuals involved.
For instance, one of the collective objectives of the BLM is to stop police brutality against African Americans.
History had made it clear that black people suffered a lot even before the United States of America (USA) got independence.
Many of these individuals were brought to the country to work as slaves.
Although there have been significant transformations enabling minorities to obtain their freedom and equality, there is more to be done to promote equality in contemporary society.
Thesis Statement: Collective memory enabled minorities to unite, and they established the BLM, a movement of black people’s activism, whose primary objective is to fight for the rights of African Americans through street protests to ensure that they are treated in the same way as their white counterparts.
Body
1. The relationship between collective memory and the BLM street protests in promoting social justice.
Although the USA has been significantly transformed by different leaders to accommodate diverse populations, some people feel discriminated and stereotyped by the dominant white race.
Black people in the USA encounter various problems, which make them to unite and protest against practices that they refer as discriminatory.
Peter Myers says, “The first plank of a widely publicized platform issued in 2016 demands an immediate end to the criminalization and dehumanization of Black youth” (Myers, 2019).
At this point, the author makes it clear that young African Americans are arrested and charged with crimes they did not commit due to their skin color.
The aggression toward black people is an issue that the government has tried to eliminate for an extended period, and it appears deep-rooted.
White police officers are alleged to mishandle African Americans, particularly by frisking black suspects without evidence that they are carrying weapons, pulling them off the highway for searches, and shooting those who try to run away when stopped (Lopez-Littleton, Blessett, & Burr, 2018).
The BLM enables black people to have the same voice, whereby they protest when they feel as if nothing is being done to address the problem of discrimination in society.
Overall, protests make leaders take relevant measures to combat the issues facing minorities.
2. The importance of protesting in the streets by the BLM supporters.
Indeed, protests have made the BLM be a renowned group worldwide, which represents the rights of black people.
In some cases, the government can do nothing to eliminate racial injustices without being pressurized by the affected group of individuals.
The BLM has gained support from other communities that do not encounter similar challenges.
Mary Hess (2018) posits that “sheer numbers of people who have begun to show up for multi-racial street protests and other forms of public gathering, which shifts are occurring in the consciousness of people who are not themselves black” (Hess, 2018).
For this reason, protests have fostered solidarity between other groups of people and minorities.
For example, ...