September 12, 2016

Black Lives Matter is an organization that has gained national attention recently for illegally shutting down highways with their marches and making extremely aggressive anti-police statements. While it is conceivable that a radical group would form in a country as large and diverse as America, it is unprecedented that the U.S. president would help push its dangerous agenda.

The Black Lives Matter movement was started after the death of Trayvon Martin and made famous after the death of Michael Brown. Both of these killings were deemed justified by the justice system.

President Barack Obama has helped legitimize the movement. Just weeks after Brown’s death, and before he had any facts on the case, the president was already making comments that insinuated the police had done something wrong.

“Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement — guilty of walking while black or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness,” he said in September 2014 at the annual Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner in Washington.

It turned out President Obama couldn’t be further from the truth in regards to Brown.

Brown was not killed for “walking while black.” He was shot because [he robbed a store, assaulted a police officer, tried to steal an officer’s gun and then started to advance toward the officer when he was told to stop](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/11/25/us/darren-wilson-testimony-ferguson-shooting.html?_r=0).

The actual facts of the case sound nothing like the version that the president offered to the country.

President Obama has used the great power of the bully pulpit to spread fear and anger to the general population. He tells African-American people they are being targeted and shot unjustly. The president is simply spreading false truths to fit his agenda.

Harvard professor Roland G. Fryer Jr. has extensively researched police shootings. He found that [black Americans are no more likely to be shot by police than white Americans](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html).

One aspect of the study took a look at policing in 10 different cities. In these cities, officers were more likely to fire their weapons at white suspects who had not attacked officers than black suspects. The study also found that white and black citizens were equally likely to be ]carrying a weapon at the time of the attack. These findings severely undercut the notion of racial bias in the use of lethal force by police.

Both Black Lives Matter and President Obama have been spreading fear for too long. If they want to create positive change in the black community, they should focus on issues that are actually affecting black Americans.

The most important of these issues is that far too many black kids are growing up with only one parent in their household. According to the Kids Count Data Center, [over 65 percent of African-American children grow up with only one parent at home, compared to 25 percent of white children](http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by#detailed/1/any/false/869,36,868,867,133/10,11,9,12,1,185,13/432,431).

This is a huge problem for the black community: [Children who grow up in single-parent households are more likely to be teenage parents, in trouble with the law, underperforming in school and poor](https://singlemotherguide.com/single-mother-statistics/).

The breakdown of the black family is one of the most pressing issues facing the nation, and both Black Lives Matter and President Obama are widely silent on the issue.

Until Black Lives Matter makes a serious effort to positively change the lives of minorities in this country, they are going to continue to be a fringe group that accomplishes nothing and annoys everyone.

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