2012: Black Lives Matter
“Root Shock”
Mindy Thompson Fullilove (2016), a psychiatrist who works in urban policy and health, noted that the long history of slavery and systemic racism in the United States has caused a condition she called “root shock” in African Americans. Root shock, she argued, is akin to someone experiencing a life-threatening physical trauma, which leaves communities devoid of basic resources required to survive (Thompson Fullilove, 2016, p. 11-12).
When one studies the injustices against African Americans over the past four hundred years, this theory begins to make sense: slavery, Jim Crow, Plessy vs Ferguson, legal segregation, eugenics-based social policies, redlining, the GI Bill, urban renewal, blockbusting, contract housing, denial of civil rights, white flight, assassinations, racist drug laws and police brutality, racist zoning and development laws, displacement, mass incarceration, flipping, and the subprime mortgage crisis. This brutal history of slavery and systemic racism formed the framework for the events that came to dominate the media throughout the second decade of the twentieth century – the mass incarceration of Black men, police profiling, and the murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and the massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Trayvon Martin
Source: Squarespace
In the summer of 2012, George Zimmerman shot and killed African American teen, Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman strenuously defended his actions as self-defense and despite being charged with murder, was acquitted. In solidarity against what was perceived as a racially motivated acquittal, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter began to circulate on social media. The movement gained steam with the death of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014. Protesting discriminatory policing tactics and racist prejudice among law enforcement, the movement spread across the internet and across cities demanding fair treatment and re-evaluation of the criminal justice’s approach to race (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 36; Cobb, 2016).