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"There comes a time when silence is betrayal." This is a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., who was one of the most visible and influential activists in the civil rights movement. The quote fits the context of the topic of commentary in this paper - the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and its legitimacy. The topic is relevant because BLM has grown into one of the most prominent movements in the U..S and the world following a series of tragedies during interactions between police officers and black people in the U.S., owing to the deaths of black people in contexts of alleged police brutality. Despite the movement’s prominence, it has faced questions about its legitimacy from critics. The two widely discussed sides of the issue concern support for the movement as a legitimate pro-black movement that advocates for African Americans' rights against police brutality and criticism that it is a hateful and revengeful anti-whites movement. BLM is a valid and timely movement for confronting and directly addressing American society's failure to banish its long-standing history of racism. The movement’s endeavor is achieved through its sensitization of the public about racism and facilitating activism to positively alter the attitudes of society members and improve the lived experiences of Blacks as rightful members of society.

An exploration of the positions and attitudes of critics and proponents of BLM is essential to understand the prevailing controversy over the movement’s legitimacy. Critics have argued that rather than being legitimate, BLM aims at promoting hate and exacting revenge against whites and embarrassing them. The critics have especially taken issue with the specific reference to black lives, arguing that the movement’s name ought to reference all lives instead. Nonetheless, proponents argue that BLM is a legitimate movement aimed at campaigning for blacks' rights, particularly black males, against police brutality. Specific reference to black lives is legitimate because of the long history of racism directed specifically to blacks since the American nation's olden times. I believe that BLM is valid and relevant as a crusade to represent African Americans' genuine concerns that they, as a racial minority community, are a target of brutality by American police.

The U.S. has failed to address the long-standing issue of racial inequality since the olden times. The basis of this problem was an idea that scientific studies in the 19th Century promoted - that some races were superior relative to others and that greater races produced superior cultures (Siscoe, 2016). This argument promoted the provision of meaning and qualities to physical and biological characteristics and factors. Social meanings that Americans have assigned to biological factors have had major consequences on individuals' lives since they influence relationships and interactions among society members and the beliefs and choices that they hold and make. In America, racial formation began and grew with the establishment of slavery, and the country has failed to address its effects since then. The movement is appropriate to communicate African Americans' particular worries concerning their treatment by police since America has failed to truly reach a post-racial society in which sociopolitical authorities treat all citizens equally irrespective of their racial backgrounds.

The significance and validity of BLM as a movement seeking to raise awareness about racism and the plight of African Americans are evident in findings that it has promoted positive action against racist behavior in the U.S. Chernega (2016) investigated the significance of events surrounding the death of Michael Brown (a black male youth killed in a police interaction in 2014) in shifting Americans’ knowledge of police brutality and creating an opportunity for policing reforms. The article utilizes the social movement theory and comparisons with historical, social movements, particularly the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, to analyze how BLM aligns with and challenges the standard operations and expectations of a social movement. The article observes that Brown’s death in police custody, which witnesses videotaped and distributed videos on social media, prompted the American public to stop ignoring claims of police violence and discrimination against black males. The publicity of the problem and concerns about this discrimination and brutality caused the birth and rise of BLM as a movement (Chernega, 2016). As a social movement, BLM focuses on identity issues and support for general ideals, rather than particular policy goals. BLM focuses on black pride and reclamation of black identity while also being overtly political and dealing with police oppression of African-Americans. In these ways, BLM adheres to some expectations of new social movements while defying others. BLM has been enormously successful in raising public awareness of racialized policing and police brutality, drawing attention to structural inequality and anti-Blackness (Chernega, 2016). The movement has also influenced a growing trend of charging police officers for crimes, including brutality. The article concludes that BLM is an amorphous grassroots association that has been effective in raising American public awareness about police brutality against blacks and pressurizing political leaders into proposing structural reforms in the US criminal justice system.

Despite a long history of racism and the efforts of the U. S, society, African Americans, and other minorities to address racism, these efforts have been ineffective, prompting the need for a more radical approach in the form of a movement to mobilize public support and positive action to address the problem successfully. The ineffectiveness of past efforts is evident in the persistence of cases of police brutality against Blacks in modern society. Some recent cases of police brutality against African Americans include those of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor. These cases depict the continuing need for interventions against racism in the US, particularly in terms of efforts to alter the prejudice and biases of whites against blacks. The high prevalence of police brutality against blacks is reflective of a culture in which prejudice and bias against blacks, their personalities, their work, and their lives are highly common and influence the thoughts, behaviors, and decisions of whites, mainly concerning and towards blacks. While previous efforts, such as those in the 1960s, have yielded gains in racial equality, the continuing occurrence of cases of police brutality against blacks suggests that America has failed to eradicate racism and racial bias. Effective progress in the eradication of these remnants of racism and racial bias requires a radical effort to mobilize public support and positive action. BLM represents this effort because of its focus on altering the cultural values and beliefs that underlie the problem.

The validity of BLM is also evident from the perspective of its promotion of African Americans’ active involvement in a sociopolitical effort to advocate for their own interests and wellbeing and shape their future. The silence of African Americans against police brutality amounts to a betrayal of their community. As a community, African Americans have to rise against the injustice and inequality of American society. Each African American and U.S. citizen has a responsibility to participate and contribute to the effort to improve the community’s wellbeing and standing in society. BLM offers these citizens a strong platform to achieve this objective because of its nature as a social and political movement. It provides African Americans, the American society, and other stakeholders a strong sociopolitical platform to influence both social attitudes and values and governance policies and models to confront and resolve the problems of racial bias and racism directly and sustainably (Hargons, 2017). The nature of BLM as a movement is significant in intervening against this problem because of its empowering effect on individuals and the African American community.

The topic of BLM’s validity is complex because it concerns a highly emotional issue for a particular community in the U.S. The BLM is focused on the interests and wellbeing of a particular community, making it a controversial movement. Nonetheless, it is essential for society members to assess its background, purpose, and objectives objectively and based on evidence, rather than based on emotions or racial and ethnic affiliations.

The movement is necessary to sensitize the American public on the problem and alter society members' attitudes positively to help in improving the lived experiences of Blacks as rightful members of society. The movement is a valid platform to empower Blacks and Americans as a community to confront and address the problem directly and achieve a sustainable solution. In effect, BLM offers African Americans and the U.S. society a platform to enable them not to be silent and leave the battle against racial prejudice and racism to another community or generation in the future.

References

Chernega, J. (2016). Black Lives Matter: Racialized policing in the United States. Comparative American Studies 14(3/4): 234-245. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14775700.2016.1267322

Hargons, C., Mosley, D., Falconer, J., Faloughi, R., Singh, A., Stevens-Watkins, D., & Cokley, K. (2017). Black Lives Matter: A call to action for counseling psychology leaders. The Counseling Psychologist 45(6): 873-901.

Siscoe, T. (2016). #BlackLivesMatter: This generation’s Civil Rights Movement. Portland State University thesis. Retrieved from https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1327&context=honorstheses