While speaking at a forum that spoke on criminal justice, Preseident Barak Obama spoke on how he feels about the “#BlackLivesMatter” movement. For once it feels good to hear someone touch basis on a movement that has potential to touch the hearts and minds of many.
Obama states,
“I think the reason that the organizers used the phrase black lives matter, was not because they were suggesting nobody elses lives matter, rather what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that is happening in the African American community that is not happening in other communities, and that is a legitimate issue we have got to address.”
The Black Lives Matter movement was a movement that really rose up against the unfair treatment of the African-American community after Ferguson and the deaths of Eric Garner and Mike Brown.
President Obama says that the movement is highly misrepresented because of the name of the slogan. This statement is very true. People tend to confuse “Black Lives Matter” with the fact that only black lives matter. This is false.
As Obama explained in his speech, unfair treatment in the African-American community is something that has been going on for years. He says that this is a “legitimate issue” and that African-Americans are not just “making this up.”
“It’s real, and there’s a history behind it and we have to take it seriously.”
He went on to say,
“We shouldn’t be too sanctimonious about situations that sometimes can be ambiguous, but having said all that we as a society particularly given our history have to take this seriously.”
