August 26, 2015

why black lives matter

disclaimer
i am in no way saying that white people don't matter, i just don't believe in that #AllLivesMatter hashtag, its so disrespectful to me. ill explain it more below. this post is simply just my own ideas and thoughts.

lets start with a definition
what exactly is a poc - POC stands for "people of color" everyone except caucasian people, i know the title says "black people" but i want to revert to all POC.

my opinions
as i stated above, the #AllLivesMatters hashtag is useless and so disrespectful. basically that hashtag is taking away the value of #BlackLivesMatter. there is no doubt in my mind that everyone knows, all lives matter. of course they do, but stop trying to devalue the meaning of black lives. if 50 houses were on fire (POC) and 50 houses were perfectly fine(white people). would you need a hashtag to represent that all of the houses matter when only half of them need actual help?? another example is the #SkinnyGirlAppreciation hashtag, now yes, skinny girls do need to be appreciated BUT this hashtag was created to take away from the #FatGirlAppreciation hashtag. SKINNY GIRLS ARE ALREADY APPRECIATED! everywhere in our media, we see skinny is what everyone wants to be, skinny is the ideal image that the media portrays. so again why does it need to be appreciated? im getting off topic, but anyways, with all of the injustice that has been going on with white cops and poc, you can clearly see that these people poc are doing nothing wrong, they are being arrested and killed because of the melanin in their skin. young children my age are being killed because they don't know how dangerous it is in our society to be colored. this is why black lives matter. we need to teach our youth that they matter even when everyone around them is saying otherwise.

statistics & facts
+ While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States’ population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned. The prison population grew by 700 percent from 1970 to 2005, a rate that is outpacing crime and population rates. The incarceration rates disproportionately impact men of color: 1 in every 15 African American men and 1 in every 36 Hispanic men are incarcerated in comparison to 1 in every 106 white men.

+ According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Individuals of color have a disproportionate number of encounters with law enforcement, indicating that racial profiling continues to be a problem. A report by the Department of Justice found that blacks and Hispanics were approximately three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop than white motorists. African Americans were twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.

+ Students of color face harsher punishments in school than their white peers, leading to a higher number of youth of color incarcerated. Black and Hispanic students represent more than 70 percent of those involved in school-related arrests or referrals to law enforcement. Currently, African Americans make up two-fifths and Hispanics one-fifth of confined youth today.

+ As the number of women incarcerated has increased by 800 percent over the last three decades, women of color have been disproportionately represented. While the number of women incarcerated is relatively low, the racial and ethnic disparities are startling. African American women are three times more likely than white women to be incarcerated, while Hispanic women are 69 percent more likely than white women to be incarcerated.

+ Once convicted, black offenders receive longer sentences compared to white offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes. The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more like to be sentenced to prison.
(source: x)

xo, azia

1 comment:

  1. Love this post! Keep speaking your mind on these very important issues. ♡

    ReplyDelete

thank you for taking the time out of your day to read my post(s)! leave a cute comment and i will surely get back to you ♡



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