Many things have changed since the killings of  Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery &, etc in the years of racism. The definition of Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 focused on police officers/white supremacists killing African Americans over unnecessary situations. But now the tables are turning, coming from within this 2-year span of African Americans killing each other. Whether it’s gang violence-related shootings, or rappers getting killed under the situation of robbery/poverty problems, sometimes this even makes me question whether we are helping one another grow as a community to create an influential era or are we just making fools out of ourselves to other ethnicities outside our race?

In this African American community, we have been dealing with police brutality and racism being spread across our name for the longest. From getting wrongly accused because of our skin color to getting called the hard r as a “joke”. We took it upon ourselves to create social media footprint images about quitting killing black people over nonsense situations and even having BLM protests in the downtown metro area. Our voices are strongly being heard from across all social media platforms to courtrooms, and even the news channels are talking about it. Since then we have let it be known that we are a very strong race, and take all the risks to let our opinions be spread around. Now we are making history in this movement, there are a bunch of negative outcomes on the other side of this situation.

The downfall of our culture is sometimes we don’t act like we are on the same team instead, we go against each other from a friendly fire perspective. Us killing each other will slowly tear down our culture and set us back from any futuristic goals. Biggrasa100(TikTok user) explains effectively in his video {https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR9ws1pQ/} about how “ We (African Americans) are the ones killing us every day. So how do Black Lives even matter? And the same people screaming Black Lives Matter, are the same ones taking lives. Ready to take a life if they have to prove a point.” This meaning is not negative and is here to bash our culture. It is here to dial down on all the mistakes we’re making behind the scenes, so that when it comes time to represent ourselves to the world we can look better than ever.

Even rappers such as Nipsey Hussle (age 33), Pop Smoke (age 20), Young Dolph (age 36), PnB Rock (age30), and Takeoff (age 28) were all killed by another brother due to robbery situations or street complications. All these known hip hop artists were killed or gunned down by a brother that is their same race. Most of these rappers were influential artists who spoke about real street poverty issues than turning the tables and making money to support themselves. But there is some music labeled in their songs where it’s just purely dedicated to killing their “oops” or just talking about something violent pertaining to someone being killed. This is conditionally the reason why artists get killed in broad daylight, in their houses, or partying at a club. Seeing all this nonsense happening makes the African-American community sick to their stomachs. After Takeoff (age 28) was killed on November 1, 2022, there has been a huge spark in social media about stopping killing our brothers. A hashtag posted to this movement on social media was #BlackMenDeserveToGrowOld.    The tragic meaning of this hashtag is how we’re manipulating ourselves to kill each other instead of creating a useful community based upon defeating any racism that comes against us! 

Having these downside moments about African Americans killing each other and using it as leverage to have more “street credit” or popularity added to their name is completely pathetic. As I reminisced a paragraph ago, about how the only solution to this problem is working together at the same time and turning off the friendly fire perspective. This is our moment now to stand up and decline all the stereotypes that are getting blasted towards our community. It is time to make a change and help our brothers & sisters out!!!