The second theory holds that the pressures of being a cop, the constant exposure the members of the metaphorical “bottom of the barrel” (that is, your homeless drug addicts, drunk drivers, petty criminals, perpetrators of domestic violence, etc.), and the underappreciated nature of their profession all exert a hardening pressure on even the most well-intentioned, psychologically healthy cops, eventually leading them to commit acts of violence because they have come to expect the worst from the people they are trying to apprehend.Ĭonservative Incoherence and the Discussion of Police, Guns and BLMĪnd, while there’s no denying that the underlying racist tendencies in American society need to be addressed, the political climate that birthed #BlackLivesMatter is, in many ways, just as important as the catalysts themselves. In any sociology or criminology class, you’ll discuss famous past instances of police brutality and learn about the two different theories of what motivates officers to engage in unlawful or cruel acts: the first being that the nature of the job attracts a certain type of person – someone who, while excellent at following orders, takes a certain amount of pleasure in the use of force or violence. (Bernie, eager to maintain his status as a crowd-pleaser, strongly affirmed, “Black lives matter.”)
It’s become such a contentious, divisive issue that Anderson Cooper, when moderating the Democratic Debate, subjected the hopeful presidential candidates to the remarkably tricky question, “Do Black lives matter, or do all lives matter?” Careful there, Hillary, Bernie – one misstep and you’re a goner. Others have taken a more moderate stance, maintaining that while a few members of the police force have undeniably engaged in rampant abuse of their power, there remains a much larger number of anonymous good cops – men and women who joined the police force for the right reasons and who go about their daily work quietly and honestly. Of course all forests deserve to be saved, but since the rainforests are diminishing most rapidly, they deserve our specific attention right now.” As one Facebook user snarkily pointed out, “Getting upset about the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag is like getting upset at the #SavetheRainforests hashtag and demanding that it be changed to #SaveAllForests. In accordance with the rules of thermodynamics, #BlackLivesMatter quickly elicited an equal and opposite reaction in the form of #AllLivesMatter – more of a semantic protest than anything else.Īs multiple social media users have pointed out, saying that Black lives matter does not, in any way, imply that all lives don’t matter – merely that Black lives, being the longtime targets of oppression and injustice at the hands of whites, are the focus group in question right now. It is a little-known fact that politics, like the natural world, are subject to the laws of physics. These protests, in turn, have manifested on social media in the form of countless homemade videos exposing police violence against African Americans – police tackling teenagers in classrooms, police sitting on youths at birthday parties, etc. In fact, #BlackLivesMatter has sparked a virtual epidemic of protests against police brutality and racial profiling. And over a year later, the movement has yet to die out despite its initial hype abating slightly. Whoops.īorn in the wake of the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s killer in 2013 and spurred on by the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, the slogan #BlackLivesMatter quickly shot to the top of Facebook and Twitter’s lists of trending hashtags.
Except that the “murderers” he’s referring to are none other than police officers.
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