Today’s Racism: How bad has police brutality gotten?
Story by Abdur-Rahman Sharif. Published December 2021.
lack Lives Matter is one of the largest movements in modern-day politics, which was created by 3 Black women back in 2013 to counteract the violence and injustice against African Americans, specifically from police. Though it was cre-
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Courtesy of Clay Banks
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ated in 2013, it really gained traction in 2020 with the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others. George Floyd’s death caused huge uprisings all over the United States and even places outside of the United States like Paris, Liberia, Japan, and many other areas. Countless protests were organized in the Summer of 2020 in honor of George Floyd, and as a way to send a message to the police that people will not stand for this ever again. According to Ayana Flewellen, assistant professor of anthropology who focuses on Black feminist theory. “The Black Lives Matter movement really was born, I wanna say back in ... 2012 with the murder of Trayvon Martin, and then more recently the murder of George Floyd, Girl raises her hand and holds up a sign with a fist. The fist signifies the movement BLM. Courtesy of Clay Banks.
People kneel and raise their fists in memory of George Floyd. Photo Courtesy of Clay Banks.
and also the death of Breonna Taylor in her own home while she was resting,” Flewellen said. “During the summer of 2020 was what we would call hypervisibility. People really saw injustice in a new way, in ways they haven’t seen before.” Flewellen spends her days in archeological sites and looks for artifacts that symbolize Black history. For example, she had found a doll that belonged to a Black girl, which was one of the first times she had ever gone face to face with the fact that people and children in the era of slavery still had culture and experiences as people. “ One of the most astonishing things I have uncovered at an archeological site was at a plantation site in Jacksonville, Florida. At the plantation, I came across doll frag-
