Black Lives Matter and the Family, Part 2: Over-Policing and Mass Incarceration

Debunking the myth that Black Lives Matter is trying to destroy families is such an important topic, we’re spending our second week in a row talking about it.

If you haven’t had a chance to listen to last week’s episode — “Black Lives Matter And the Family Part 1: Enslavement” — I would encourage you to check out that one first. 

In Part 1, we talk about what Black Lives Matter has actually said about the family, how it’s been misinterpreted and how enslavement has affected the history of Black families in our country. In essence, it’s an explanation of the historical context of what we’re seeing in the Black family, whereas Part 2 focuses on a system that is happening in the present day — a system that is negatively affecting the Black family as we speak.

That system is the over-policing of Black and brown communities and mass incarceration.

In this episode — “Black Lives Matter and the Family Part 2: Over-Policing and Mass Incarceration” — we look at:

• Why we see an overrepresentation of Black and brown people in jail and in prison.

• How sentencing disparities further harm Black families

• How the law has criminalized the actions of Black people in a way that it has not done for people who hold white privilege.

• How myths about Black fathers are just that — myths.

My hope is that by the end of these two episodes you can see what I see: that Black Lives Matter loves families so much, that they want lots of different people from lots of different types of families to have the same access to opportunity.