Beyond the Instagram Story
In recent months, the ‘Black Lives Matter’ (BLM) movement has been gaining traction. After videos depicting the death of George Floyd, a black US citizen, circulated online in late May, outrage grew against police brutality and systemic racism, and conversations started about defunding the police. Yet, every significant movement in history tends to have its counter-movement, and to counter the BLM movement, we now have the ‘Blue Lives Matter’ movement.
While both of these movements originated in the early 2010s, their meanings have since evolved. The Blue Lives Matter movement was originally meant to advocate that those who are prosecuted for killing law enforcement officers should be sentenced under hate crime statutes. It has now been warped and used as a comeback against defunding the police with the excuse that ‘there are only a few bad apples.’
Movements like these undermine the real purpose of BLM which is to end police brutality per se but also specifically against the black community. However, a recent video on TikTok made by a Starbucks barista at Target (a BLM supporter), which depicted him making a drink with ice (a nod to cops ‘loving’ the US ICE, which handles deportations), blue dye and bleach, as a satirical tutorial on ‘how to make a Blue Lives Matter drink’, with the song ‘All I Want For Christmas Is More Dead Cops’ by Paul Creep-O playing in the background, brought more of a bad name to the movement. The action of adding bleach to the drink to make a statement itself wasn’t problematic but for an employee to be doing so in an establishment serving drinks raises obvious safety concerns. The employee was fired, and Target released a statement saying the video was ‘appalling and unacceptable’, yet the damage was done. The BLM movement was supposed to spread positivity and inclusivity so this video was not well received. Both sides agreed that the video was offensive and unnecessary. We all need to think before we take any action or make a statement on behalf of any community we are representing.
The BLM movement already gets a bad rep due to the one-sided news reports of its protests, accusing supporters of looting and burning down buildings. In fact, 93% of protests have been peaceful, and riots are almost always police instigated. Most buildings that are burnt down are wrongly reported as being inhabited - they’re usually abandoned property, and looters’ names rarely overlap with those of the peaceful protesters in the day. In such movements, it doesn’t take much for the media to twist them into something evil, effectively hampering its message or purpose from reaching a vast audience that only has the news as their primary information source.
While this issue may seem remote, in a different country, solidarity with fellow human beings transcends political borders. It prompts us, here in India, to examine racial and caste discrimination within our society, and even our obsession with ‘fair and lovely’ complexions. Black Lives Matter is just the beginning of a global movement against discrimination and repression, something we will all be affected by. So it’s to shed the complacency, decide which side of the movement you’re with and take a stand.