Social Movement Studies: Analysing The Black Rights Matter Movement

Background and Importance of the Black Rights Matter Movement

The aim of this paper is to discuss social movement studies, focusing upon the black rights matter movement. This is one of the most important and popular in the Western world to establish the rights of a particular community in the society. The black rights movement has been rejuvenated with the recent issue of murdering of a black American citizen named George Floyd by a policeman and this November has been merged with black lives matter movement. It was co-founded as online movement through hashtag by the three community organisations Opal Temoti, Alicia Garza and Patrisse Khan Cullors. Shooting of Trayvon Martin by the white police man George Zimmerman ignited this movement in 2013 (Sawyer & Gampa, 2018).

In this paper social conflict theory under the context of race conflict theory will be analysed so that the importance of social movement can be describe in a proper way. The social movement is related to racism and cultural or ethnic differences therefore the resulted conflict will be captured. By discussing different Empirical Data And Media coverage about the incidents from 2013 to 2020 against victimization of black people in the US can be understood. In this essay the argument in support of black lives matter social movement it will be discussed.

Black lives matter is not a random social action but a social movement which has a particular background to discuss. Previously the social rights movement in support of the African American people can be mentioned in this context so that the awareness about the social discrimination and cultural victimization can be understood in the US society. Civil rights movement can be mentioned as the pioneer for this movement as this was the primary political movement between 1954 and 1968 in the United States to obliterate the institutional racial segregation and discrimination throughout the country. The Civil rights movement had broken the pattern of public facilities and receive most important breakthrough in the equal rights legislation for the African Americans within the country. Despite there are certain legislation and acts for the security of African American citizens within the country, discrimination and victimization could be found from time to time (Williamson, Trump & Einstein, 2018). The recent black lives matter protests had picked a half million people had turned out in more than 500 places across the country on the historical 6th June 2020. Black lives matter protest seems to be the largest Movement in the US history because half of the population had participated in the protest with a specific issue over such short period. The Civil rights marches in the 1960 had much smaller campaigning and considerably smaller in number, but this social movement had added millions of people to be present physically in the streets of the US and supporting over internet even. Black lives matter movement had gain International importance due to its applicability within the US society as well as the question of equality all over the world.

Black lives matter movement is not a random social action but a planned and well-structured social movement. It is not because of high level of participation but also the in-depth reason for unequal treatment of black people in the US as well as police torture and victimization unnecessarily. The social movement had shaken the US history in 2020 because the impact of police torture against the black people was greater as half of the society had followed search idea of inequality already (Moshiri, 2019). The doubt and bias against the black citizens to be criminals had been incorporated in the social value of the country that had close contact with political interest also. The police was empowered to torture poor black people and accusing them without any evidence. The need for such social movement it was failed in 2013 when an unnamed young person was killed by the police having no evidence of criminal activity. This eyes turn out of this protest was difficult to count at that point of time which also laid some famous disputes. Data published by New York Times reveals on 6th June there was at least 20,000 people in Union Park, Chicago, 50,000 people in Philadelphia and more than 10000 people on the Golden Gate Bridge, all protesting against the murder of George Floyd (Clayton, 2018). In 2020 the report says that the 50000 protesters in Philadelphia became 80000 in no time which makes black lives matter movement to be the biggest social campaign of all time. There were more than 4700 demonstration since May 26th 2020 which included almost 2500 large cities and small towns of the US. Geographic spread of this particular protest had included some important characteristics and signaled breed and depth of the movements’ support. They are aware organisation's developed in support of this movement with the initial three organisations which brought a big shift in the public opinion regarding the Government support for the modelling of US citizens for their ethnic background.

The Civil Rights Movement and the Pioneering of Social Rights Movements

It was an international upheaval because more than 40 percent of the country had protested against this conduct of police against black people. In this regard social conflict theory can be applicable which is a Marxist based social theory arguing that individuals are the groups within the society must be interacting on the basis of conflict rather than their consensus. According to this theory the powerful groups use their power to retain by exploiting groups with less power. Conflict theory views conflict as the engine for change as such conflicts can produce contradictions for resolving some issues (Moshiri, 2019). This creates tension within the society and evolves over time to bring changes in a positive way. From the social movement perspectives, conflict approach can focus upon the racial inequality as the method of understanding the disparity among the different ethnic and racial groups. Conflict theory allows people to understand psychological perspectives in regard of disparity and tension among people of different racial or ethnic group. This is a method of studying and giving people from different racial background who constantly face inequality and injustice in a civilized society (Bbc.com. 2021). Just one of the many incidents in such cases get highlighted where the perceived inequalities are prominent at most. The social movement of black lives matter had originated under such circumstances where an adult police officer could kill a teenager just because he was from a minority group of black Americans and the police officer had power to fight crime. This conflict of idea of the actual criminal is never defined clearly.

The impact of black lives matter social movement had international impact for which the political and administrative structure of America phased question of authority on the ground of humanity (Williamson, Trump & Einstein, 2018). The impact of the factors like privilege, wealth and poverty can be properly analysed from conflict approach which are interconnected with the impacts of these factors of ethnicity and race. The teenager in Missouri was the shot by a police officer in 2014 which brought a widespread attentions pointing out the conflict between the powerless and powerful segregation of the society. This created upheaval as thousands of people had marched in the streets demanding the prosecution of that officer who had no evidence of criminal offence against that teenager. The Grand Jury at that point of time had declined to indicate any punishment to the officer, social injustice came into front. Protests and riots erupted across the US making the existence of black people volatile. The teenager was black and the police officer was White American and the conflict between these two races contributed in such heinous crime. In 2020, a similar incident of police murder took place with George Floyde. The contemporary president failed to answer questions as he himself had followed the same philosophy of killing black people and creating disturbances in the society on the basis of racism. Many of the international celebrities had accused contemporary American President to follow by a side view against the black Americans which instigated the police officers to continue torture against a particular community. 

Therefore, it can be concluded that social movement it does not take place on the basis of only one individual incident; but it is consequence of continuous torture upon the people in the receiving end. It is the result of people losing their patience to suffer and react with structured method. This was dedicated to fighting racism especially in the form of police brutality and anti-black violence within the society. This movement signals a condemnation of the unjust killings of African-American people by the police especially the white people. The demand of humanity and value of life towards black people are the main aims of this social movement. Black lives matter social movement therefore is successful both in terms of humanity ground as well as political. The success reflects whenever there is any injustice against the black people in America, the world will awake to protest against it. 

References:

Bbc.com. (2021). What is Black Lives Matter and what are the aims?. BBC News. Retrieved 28 January 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-53337780.

Clayton, D. M. (2018). Black lives matter and the civil rights movement: A comparative analysis of two social movements in the United States. Journal of Black Studies, 49(5), 448-480. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021934718764099.

Moshiri, F. (2019). Revolutionary conflict theory in an evolutionary perspective. In Revolutions of the Late Twentieth Century (pp. 4-36). Routledge. Retrieved from https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429304767-2/revolutionary-conflict-theory-evolutionary-perspective-farrokh-moshiri.

Sawyer, J., & Gampa, A. (2018). Implicit and explicit racial attitudes changed during Black Lives Matter. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(7), 1039-1059. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218757454

Williamson, V., Trump, K. S., & Einstein, K. L. (2018). Black lives matter: Evidence that police-caused deaths predict protest activity. Perspectives on Politics, 16(2), 400-415. Retreibed from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/black-lives-matter-evidence-that-policecaused-deaths-predict-protest-activity/BFA2E74F4BCB25C3C222807E8B1111D4