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Chanel Sherrod
Professor Debra Dagher
UWRT 1102
20 April 2015
Black Lives Matter vs. All Lives Matter and The Miscommunication Between The Two:
Has Police Brutality Become A Racial Matter?

Police brutality has been an issue in the United States since the early 20 th
century, but as of late it seems that things have taken a turn for the worse.
According to Mint Press News police officers have killed over 5,000 civilians from
2001-2013 this number can easily be seen as excessive but also opens the door to
ask why this is happening. Although the demographics for the whole 5,000 is
unknown that does not prohibit speculation especially with a black male being 14
times more likely to be shot down by police than a white male.Along with the
Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Sean Bell, and
Oscar Grant, and so many more; all of these people were murdered by the police all
of their perpetrators were either acquitted or never charged at all, all of these men
were black, all of them were unarmed and none received justice. This issue has
divided a country; All Lives Matter vs. Black Lives Matter. The miscommunications
between the two has caused much uproar and violence, leaving me to question; has
police brutality become a racial matter?
In order to look into the mechanics of police brutality one must know what it
entails specifically. According to the US Legal law dictionary, police brutality is a

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civil rights violation that occurs when a police officer acts with excessive force by
using an amount of force with regards to a civilian that is more than necessary. As
I stated before, there are two definitive stances on this matter, this can be seen in
Factors Related to the Killings of Felons by Police Officers: A Test of the Community
Violence Hypothesis and the Conflict Hypothesis. Although this is a case study of the
killings of felons, it still completely embodies the same ideologies of Black lives
Matter and All Lives Matter. The two hypotheses explored are the community
violence hypothesis and the conflict hypothesis. The community violence hypothesis
states that if deadly force is used then it had to be necessary and called for in some
way which aligns with the ideology of All Lives Matter because this states that all
ethnicities get murdered by police not just people of color and then the hypothesis
goes on to state that when it does happen it is always called for in some way. On
the other hand, the conflict hypothesis says that due to preconceived notions of a
certain people and/or when dealing with minorities, police officers are more likely to
use deadly force. The latter is very closely comparable to the ideology of Black Lives
Matter because it acknowledges that race does play a factor in police brutality and
killings.
The Black Lives Matter movement was established during the wake of
Trayvon Martins death and his posthumous trial. The ideals of this movement have
often been misconstrued and taken out of context and the original meaning all but
lost. The basis of this movement is not to negate the importance or the validity of
other races lives or to say that black lives matter more. This movement aims to
remind the general populace, police officers, the government, especially the judicial
system and basically anyone who will listen that black lives matter too. It is sad that

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this needs to be said, but the intentions come from the repetitive killings of
unarmed black men by the police and no justice ensued. On the official Black Lives
Matter website it states that When Black people get free, everybody gets free
#BlackLivesMatter doesnt mean your life isnt importantit means that Black lives,
which are seen as without value are important to your liberation. Given the
disproportionate impact state violence has on Black lives, we understand that when
Black people in this country get free, the benefits will be wide reaching and
transformative for society as a whole. The purpose of Black Lives Matter is to raise
awareness and thus subsequently bringing equality to all minorities and not have it
rest with the majority.
On the other hand the All Lives Matter movement does not seek to negate or
butheads with the Black Lives Matter Movement either. Although there is no official
website for the All Lives Matter movement to verify my research, I have found many
indications of the purpose of this movement. The All Lives Matter movement is a
countermovement to Black Lives Matter, their initiative is to spread equality and
state the obvious that all lives matter, well at least they should. They maintain that
no matter your ethnicity, you have the same chance of being murdered or hurt by
the police and that police brutality is not a racial matter but more of a people
matter. Although I agree that it is a people matter and everyone should get involved
with the problem, they repeatedly deny that there is a problem, well at least a racial
one for that matter. Although this movement is just trying to uphold the utmost
equality in a sense, it inadvertently turns a blind eye to indications of what is
happening and is an unfortunate part of many minorities everyday lives. They are
so adamant about this that I have to question is police brutality and killings actually

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a racial matter or has what happened just been a matter of wrong time wrong
place?
To address my question I had to find and unbiased answer which could only
be answered through stats and data. As the saying goes, numbers dont lie. A
publication from the Sentencing Project states that Black people are 3.5 times more
likely to get stopped by the police and blacks are 2.5 times more likely to get
stopped for investigative reasons. Also black people are twice as likely to be
arrested in traffic stops as whites. This source states that Officer Darren Wilson
stopped Michael Brown for jaywalking. Officer Daniel Pantaleo and his colleagues
approached Eric Garner for selling untaxed cigarettes. Disproportionate police
contact with people of color in these two very different jurisdictions set the context
for these tragic deaths thus displaying that although race may not be a part of all
police brutality incidents it is very likely that it had something to do with at the very
least these two cases.
As I stated earlier, police brutality is not new. There has been countless
amounts of articles and book written on why police brutality is a problem, whether it
is prevalent or not, and whether it is a racial issue . In the article Gender, Race, and
Urban Policing: The Experience of African American Youths it explores more so the
ideology of All Lives Matter thus stating that police brutality is not solely a racial
matter but more of an environmental matter. What is meant by this is if a group of
people mostly minorities live in a certain area that is known to be dangerous, those
people are predisposed to get worse treatment by the police, they are subject to
more frequent stops for trivial things, harsher force, they are more susceptible to
the bad cops who also use excessive punishment without just warrant. These

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people that live in these developments dont have access to adequate police
protection based solely on where they live. Although this is not by any means fair,
it does go to say that maybe police brutality doesn't just rest on one factor, but
many. Meanwhile, in the book Race and Police Brutality: Roots of an Urban
Dilemma police brutality and prejudice go hand in hand, even in the book Malcolm
D. Holmes defined police brutality as a grim symptom of intractable intergroup
dynamics involving racial and ethnic minority citizens and the police officers who
patrol their neighborhoods. this book takes what Gender, Race, and Urban
Policing was trying to say and flips it totally upside down to look at it from a
completely different angle. Stating that police officers forego what their purpose is
as police officers and focus more so on personal problems faced when they go into
poorer minority neighborhoods, thus it even goes as far as saying In the eyes of
minority citizens, the police symbolize an oppressive society. This book really goes
into detail about racial profiling and police brutality and thoroughly explains what is
happening with police brutality and what are the causes. It shows that police
brutality isn't just the use of excessive force physically, but can constitute
profanity, racial slurs, and excessive and unlawful searches.
All of this research then leads me to question if police brutality could actually
be an effect of something rather than a cause. In Battered Police; Risk Factors for
Violence Against Law Enforcement Officers Covington and Corzine provides a
statistical analysis of when and why harm is brought upon police officers, they found
that most of the harm was done in poor urban communities which ties back to the
environmental explanation I explored earlier. If police brutality is more apparent in
minorities, more specifically the minorities that live in dangerous urban areas, the

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same areas where police come by the most harm, could this mean that police
brutality is nothing more than reciprocation rather than oppression by an authority?
If police brutality is in fact just a reciprocation then there has to be some
limits, people are being murdered almost everyday by police officers. In January
2015 alone 91 unarmed people of color were murdered by police officers, while
zero police officers were murdered by any suspects. This discrepancy has to be
dealt with in some way, are there no rules about how much force an officer can use
or is the brutality due to the culture of the institution of law enforcement alone?