There are a lot of important movements happening right now in the world, and among those is the Black Lives Matter movement. Black Lives Matter is a decentralized political and social movement that advocates for non-violent civil disobedience against incidents of police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people.
The movement has been happening for a long time, but exploded in “popularity” (for lack of a better term) on May 25, 2020, when George Floyd was killed after a store clerk alleged he had passed a counterfeit $20 bill in Minneapolis. A white police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
The event blew up because of social media such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, and Facebook. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, as well as #JusticeForFloyd was quickly the top trending hashtag on nearly all platforms. This event sparked a lot of awareness, and therefore growth, in the movement. The general public felt that Chauvin should be let go because of his actions, and were only more infuriated when Chauvin received no punishment. Many people were angry about the corrupt and systemic racism of the police systems. Many cities and towns over the US, as well as around the world, protested over the injustice of Floyd’s death. This spark even spread across the world to Japan.
I even went to a few Black Lives Matter protests this summer in Raleigh, North Carolina. There, they chanted slogans such as, “No justice; no peace. Abolish the police.”
The Black Lives Matter movement relates to the sixth part of the Eight Values of Free Expression: promote tolerance. I think that this entire Floyd situation could have been prevented if police, among other people in general, were more tolerance. As a society, everyone should work on promoting tolerance, especially against systemic racism.
This can also be related to work industries. I can use the video game and game design industry as an example, as I hope to work in this industry one day. Game developers have the choice and freedom as an American citizen to create the games they want, with the art, narrative, and underlying message that they want. A developer can create a game that is anti-BLM, anti-LGBTQ, etc if they so wish. However, this does not come with consequences, which is expressed in subsequent punishment: anybody can say whatever they want in America, but there can be consequences for particular speech.
Electronic Arts Inc (EA), a large and well-known video game company, showed a very good example of promoting tolerance in its industry. Their games include homosexual content, and when recieving hate letters and backlash, released a public statement confirming that they had no plans to censor any of its games.
"EA has not been pressured by any groups to include LGBT characters in our games. However, we have met with LBGT groups and sponsored industry forums to discuss content and harassment of players in online forums. In short, we do put options for same-sex relationships in our games; we don't tolerate hate speech on our forums," Jeff Brown, VP of EA’s corporate communications stated.
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