Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter

 

“Deeply Divided” tells us of the history of social movements and the effects it had on the political parties. McAdam and Kloos tell us how the rise of the Civil Rights Movement and counter movements caused the Republican party to take a hard shift from the left to the right and how this also caused the Democratic party to shift to the left. From this point on the parties have stayed on the ends of their spectrum due to presidents in the 1960’s playing into these “liberal” or “conservative” titles. Ehrenfreund speaks about how some Republicans with negative views on African-Americans have learned a lot of their attitudes from their parents and these beliefs “are transmitted from one generation to another as part of the overall culture of a particular place”.

As I read both articles I found striking similarities in the how the Civil Rights Movement was met with the counter movement “White Resistance Movement” in recent times. As we’ve all heard of it, this would be the Black Lives Matter movement and how this movement based on justice and validity for black lives was met with the counter movements, All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter.

Black Lives Matter is a movement aimed at bringing the focus on how black lives are treated violently and how their voices are left powerless in the eyes of the justice system. This movement is about standing up for the lives unjustly lost and the people (mostly police) who get away with it. The exact same movement was happening in the 1960’s with the Civil Rights Movement but they were fighting for their right to freedom and their right to vote. Both of these are extremely powerful movements, both aimed at forcing America to see how black lives are and were treated unfairly. Black Lives Matter is more focused on the current police brutality in America and the way people disregard black lives. They are fighting for black humanity and it’s something that can’t be ignored or brought down by counter movements like they tried to do with Civil Rights Movement.

Maybe America will learn from their history and see that this movement isn’t aimed at taking any rights away from others, but giving those same rights and freedoms to those who needed them in 1960’s to those who need them now.