Here lies the reasoning behind why I chose the black lives matter movement as the topic for my blog.
This video on YouTube of a young boy addressing the black lives matter movement sparks something in me. I question myself. How can I not know the meaning behind a movement that is so influential in today’s society? Why am I not involved in the movement? A movement that has great focus around my race and issues surrounding my race? How can a YouTube video of a boy talking, relaying information, about past events surrounding black lives matter nearly brings me to tears, but I know nothing, not a thing about this movement?
A YouTube video has gone viral. Gathering over seventy thousand views and it takes this to spark my attention. It takes a video to be shared on Facebook. On Twitter. On Instagram. It takes social media to grab my attention, but I am sure I’ve seen clips of shootings in the news and I’ve seen articles in the newspapers surrounding these issues. However, it isn’t until I see a video shared on to my Facebook or twitter timeline for me to draw a genuine reaction.
How can I not be aware of the names in the video and yet I’m welling up with tears at the things I’m hearing despite hearing the same names in the news. The killings were also in the news as were the riots. Yet I don’t know any of the names without researching. I still feel like I have the right to be angry. To be mad because when I research, or I look online and I see someone saying disgusting things, racist things, about a movement that is only trying to help its people. Nevertheless me myself, I am not doing anything for that movement. I am not finding a way or find an understanding. Instead I’m online sharing videos with a young boy who knows more than me and saying this is so powerful but is it powerful enough for me to make a change? Do I have to wait for my favourite celebrity to do a post on her Instagram channel encouraging us to get involved in the Black Lives Matter movement encouraging us to find out about the movement? Is that what I have been reduced to? Social media is what has become my influence? I’m sharing posts about the Kardashians when out there somewhere small little girls are being attacked at a swimming pool party by the same people who should be protecting them. However I don’t know this until it’s gone viral. Until its online and I’m watching someone’s loved one getting shot next to them in a car, during a traffic stop, on Facebook live, because we are so entrapped in this world of social media, in the web that we don’t know, we don’t see that this someone’s life. Instead we are watching it because that’s the topic of the moment. That’s the hashtag of the moment. Instead of doing something, anything, I’m sat calling my family to come round and watch the last moments, replaying the last moment of someone’s life on Facebook live.
We are torn between hashtags because we all think everything is a competition. Instead of seeing something equally or having the ability to lift another person up. We see it as something negative. If black lives matter then everybody else’s life does not matter? Do we really know what the movement means?
The movement does not mean “only black lives matter”. We cannot see that however because we are so in-trapped in this world of social media that we don’t know the true meaning, we don’t go out and we don’t search. We don’t find the meaning so we assume the meaning is something else which gets us annoyed, frustrated or angry and so we are seen debating and arguing when no one really has the answers because no one has really searched. Nobody has really looked, nobody can feel the pain of another person because we do not know where their pain is coming from.
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