"Black Lives Matter":Criminal Injustice System And Racial Politics In The United States Under Obama

In wake of Michael Brown's death in 2014 at the hands of police officer George Zimmerman,protests across the U.S.against police brutality gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.The slogan "Black Lives Matter" is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates the U.S.society.This movement is rooted in the experiences of Black resistance against dehumanization,and goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by law enforcement officers.The aim of the movement is to effect a large-scale politico-social transformation,which,for Black Lives Matter activists,holds the only promise for the dismantling of institutional racism.First,under Obama,anti-Black police violence as well as high rates of Black poverty and imprisonment debunked the myth of a "post-racial America." Black top politicians as well as mainstream civil rights leaders have prioritized their own electoral wins over addressing the plight of working-class Black people.This paper shows that those belonging to the "talented tenth" remain blind to the systemic nature of racism and justify their own incompetence or malfeasance as well as the gutting of social programs,and thus cannot alleviate but aggravate the oppressed condition of Black people.Second,although the rise of mass incarceration and the deepening criminalization of urban space after World War II is generally assumed to be the product of a sharp right-wing turn,liberals also backed an expanding criminal justice system.From Johnson to Obama,both conservatives and liberals relied on the police state to curb rising radicalism and maintain social stability as a means to serve the interests of capitalism.Furthermore,municipalities have also relied on the expanding policing and prison state to generate revenue in the form of fines and fees that either originate with or are the products of arrests in this era of rising neo-conservatism.Finally,the Black Lives Matter movement is a mass-based,transnational,and cross-racial social movement.It calls for a fundamental socio-political transformation in the U.S.and sees this restructuring as the only way to dismantling distinct yet interlocking structures of oppression.Black Lives Matter activists have distanced themselves from Black professional politicians,and seen Black people as oppressed by a minimum of a tridimensional reality of racism,sexism,and classism.They have also attached great importance to the formation of transnational and cross-racial alliances.