For this assignment, I decided to write about music. It’s goal is to spread awareness to those that experienced systemic injustice. I listen to a lot of music, I listen to all kinds. When reading this assignment I was excited to talk about music because the lyrics are always very powerful.
Some of you may know Kendrick Lamar the famous rapper. He is a person of color, so he knows the struggles of how it is to experience injustice in the system. A lot of his music talks about issues about police brutality and racism. His song “Alright” is about police brutality. The music video is protesting Black Lives Matter. A lyric in the song that stood out to me was, “… and we hate the po-po wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho.” The main chorus of the song is, “Do you hear me? Do you feel me? We gon’be alright we gon’be alright we gon’be alright.”
He talks about the struggles of police brutality and being scared. He also talks about having to pray because he doesn’t want to get shot. He talked about how he might never make it home because of getting shot by the police. He comforts others by saying “well be alright.” If you have not watched the music video, I encourage you to so. The music video shows what he is singing in this song. The music video started off with a short film. He speaks on the issues of police brutality. It shows police just pulling out their guns and shooting without a cause. It also shows a man of color getting shoved into the pavement to be handcuffed by a white male cop.
So many people get treated unfairly by racist cops and it’s not fair. The music video starts off happy. Everyone in the video is dancing and smiling while singing “we will be alright.” At the beginning they showed cops carrying their car and doing things for them. I believe the purpose of this was to show what it would be like if it was the other way around. Sadly at the end they showed him getting shot by a cop. He didn’t do anything wrong in the film so this is police brutality.
source: https://youtu.be/Z-48u_uWMHY
https://images.app.goo.gl/qWnHeKUUaFDoSwcA7
NEW YORK, NY – DECEMBER 13: People march in the National March Against Police Violence, which was organized by National Action Network, through the streets of Manhattan on December 13, 2014 in New York City. The march coincided with a march in Washington D.C. and comes on the heels of two grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)