Students share opinions on black lives matter movement

In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, another pandemic popped up in what seemed overnight. The Black Lives Matter movement is a social pandemic bringing awareness to mistreatment of many in the Black and other racial communities. After the police brutalization of several African Americans were met with little to no legal action, many took to social media platforms to fight the injustice.

One of the most active groups were high school aged students on apps like TikTok. Here they were swift to form protests and even targeted shortcomings in police stations demanding justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and many others.

The Black Lives Matter movement has also begun to have an impact on the high school. Media specialist Abby Hendrickson said, “Due to a student facebook thread discussing the Black Lives Matter movement, the schools equity committee was prompted to work harder at being more sensitive to the issues of black and other POC [people of color] students.” 

Junior, Ahmad Madlock has also been involved in bringing change.  “I found myself immediately obligated to do something, to make a change in my community because this summer was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Any work I’d done up to now is miniscule comparatively.” 

Senior Savannah Williams is among the many students who have grown in awareness of the racial injustices that the BLM movement has brought to light this year.  “I am for the Black Lives Movement because even though equality has come a long way for people of color, they expanded focus to ALL minorities to help them advance toward equality as well.” 

It is our responsibility now as the youth of this nation to decide what we do with the movement. Do we let it fizzle out as soon as it is no longer trendy or do we stand with our fellow students and make a difference for future and current members of the black and other minority communities? And if we do, how will this affect us as both students and as the future governors of this country? It all depends on how we handle this now. Remember a better future starts with today’s decisions to be better.