Medium Post 10/21
Before watching this week’s documentary about the Black Lives Matter movement, our class had discussed the origins of the movement during class. One aspect of the movement that our class really focused on was the social media aspect of the movement and how integral that was to garnering support. The documentary echoed this sentiment and illustrated how social media caused many to come to support the movement. A central aspect of the movement is the involvement of regular people, and social media helped unite people together.
The documentary also covered the movement’s departure from the ideas and practices of former civil rights movements. In the documentary, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are criticized for trying to impose their own message on the Black Lives Matter movement. We talked about this sort of schism in class and how the Black Lives Matters movement has separated itself from the civil rights movement. I found the focus on the lack of central leadership in the movement interesting. The movement, while not controlled by a central governing group, has caused the emergence of many new activists and people who are taking control over the fight to change racist policies. I think the differences between the Civil Rights movements and the current Black Lives Matters movement in their methods for unifying people was interesting. Over the last few weeks of class, our class has discussed the religious foundation that leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and James Cohn had in their fight for equal rights. They used religion as a basis for uniting people and enacting change. In the current Black Lives Matter movement, the shared black experience is the unifying call amongst many activists and mediums such as social media allow for the sharing of stories and subsequent unification of people. Also, I think it is interesting how both movements garner support from non black people. In the Dr. King letter, Dr. King criticizes white moderates and the white churches for turning a blind eye to civil rights. Currently, videos of injustices are widely available to the public through social media. Both movements call for non black people to stay true to their sense of morality which would or will hopefully cause them to support the movements.
Also, the media response to the Black Lives Matter movement reminded me of the Alexander excerpt that we read earlier this year. In the documentary, the media is shown covering the Black Lives Matter movement as unlawful. This is similar to how Black people were portrayed after the abolition of slavery. Also, due to the resurgence of support for the Black Lives Matter movement today, we are also seeing more negative portrayals of the movement.
