#BLACKLIVESMATTER

Should BlackLivesMatter be changed to AllLivesMatter? 

In the first unit of the Rhetoric class, we talked about arguments and how to contract a good argument and counter argument. For the action project, we had to write a speech and make a video performing it. For my speech topic, I chose Black Lives Matter. I chose this because I see things about this topic all over the news and on social media. One of the things I'm proud of is my speech itself. I put a lot of heart into it and I'm really happy with how it came out. One of the challenges I faced was figuring out how I wanted to shoot the video. I wasn't sure what I wanted to wear and how I wanted to stand or if I wanted to sit down. All around, I am happy with the way that my project came out. Check out my video 

Speech 

Throughout the recent Labor Day weekend in Chicago, 9 people were killed and 46 people were injured. Most of these victims were African American. People constantly talk about the protest unit calling it #BlackLivesMatter  ever since it became a huge topic a few months ago. After a lot of tweets, Facebook posts and articles and people started getting angry. They thought that it was not fair that we are only focusing on Black people.

That’s not fair? How about the fact that African Americans get targeted everyday? That is not fair. People need to realize that BlackLivesMatter became a social justice movement because of how African Americans were getting treated in this country. They were being targeted the most so there had to be something done to get people aware and involved in the situation. BlackLivesMatter should stay BlackLivesMatter.

Everyday you hear about racial profiling . When you think about all of the police brutality going on in states around the U.S., how many of those police actually got convicted? Barely any. They were “only protecting themselves” and “it was the African American’s fault”. For Dylann Roof, who shot and killed 9 people in a church, he was just “a troubled young man who didn’t know what he was doing’ even though he did know what he was doing. He had countless social media posts expressing racist viewpoints and he told his friends what he had planned to do, but Michael Brown, who is one of the many black teens killed by police, was “attacking the policeman who was just using self defense”. There was no justice for him.

The Declaration of Independence states that “All men are created equal” but are they really? If an African American and a Caucasian male committed the same crime who would be more penalized? In most cases, it would be the African American. I wasn’t aware that “all men” only meant white males.

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Payne, Ed. "Charleston Church Shooting Suspect Arrested in N.C. - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, 18 June 2015. Web. 22 Sept. 2015.Payne, Ed. "Charleston Church Shooting Suspect Arrested in N.C. - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, 18 June 2015. Web. 22 Sept. 2015.