Black Lives Matter: A Sociological Understanding

The topic takes its shape from the position of Benokraitis who considers sociology to be a systematic study of human behaviour. In this respect the concern would be towards understanding how the ‘Black Lives Matter’ elucidates a dark and hypocritic side of the modern American society reflecting on how the archaic attitude towards the people of colours have not gone through any serious changes.  

The recent take on the Black Lives Matter movement has reflected a serious area of concern in regard to how Black Lives Matter has changes the view of America in regard to the issue of race. The case is that of a social hypocrisy where the action in terms of state sponsored violence has elucidated the mentality that has not gone through any changes since the colonial period. The movement has first taken its shape in the year 2013 and has brought about considerable changes in the ways in which race is perceived by the nation.

However, a serious area of concern in this regard is also that the movement has been urban oriented and thereby kept away its local chapters from its centre of concern. As per the opinion of Executive director of BLM

“The conversation around race didn’t exist in a vast capacity until we saw the BLM movement, this surge,” Regardless of the fact that the movement had not been localized. The aim of the movement had been to “eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities ... ”. The current formation of the Black Lives Matter movement is noted from the perspective of the movement challenging the police brutality. The protests are more likely to occur in the localities where there had been cases of police brutality. The current influx in the movement is due to the killing of civilian of colour, George Zimmerman. The groups in close connection with the Black Lives Matter Movement has posed forth advocacy for bringing about wider changes in the policy which includes the areas of body camera, special and independent and also a greater transparency in terms of policing. The implication of  the Black Lives Matter movement has been more prominent in areas where there had been more common localities and more black people had been killed (Sawyer & Gampa, 2018).

Shifting the concern, the bit towards the time of COVID 19 is crucial as it created a greater sociological crisis beside creating medical and economic crisis as well. As per the paper of NBER (2020) it has been noted that though the death of Civilian Geroge Floyd brought forth the injustice that is embedded within the system of Criminal Justice system, it has also been elucidated by public health officials that mass protest is capable of reducing social distancing behaviour and thereby resurging the COVID 19.

Conclusion

Regardless of all these factors it can be posited that the BLM brought about considerable changes in the attitudes of the people both in an Implicit as well as Explicit manner. Sawyer (2018) in his article cites the example of Barack Obama as an exemplary figure whose intervention on the societal level has brought about changes in the attitude in regard to the idea of race. The concerned paper has examined the racial attitudes both before and after the BLM movement and realised that the high point of struggle between 2009-2016 had been about 1,369,204. The attitudes had been found to be less pro white after the movement as compared the situation before the BLM took its shape (Mundt et al., 2018).

The connection between the BLM and other racial attitudes have been found to reflect in the generalized form in connections between other biases as well like that of Anti LGBTQ bias and also found its impact in certain specific social movements who have been fighting for those biases. Pro white bias had been reflected in terms of political orientation which indicates the counter movements against the that of BLM as reflected in the span of the studies and have been found not effective enough.

Conclusion

As far the research in terms of sociological understanding of the influence of BLM movement, it has been reflected however that the movement has played a considerable role in changing the perceptions of the individuals across culture and also changed the bias of the people in regard to racial communities. A organization of social movement has thereby provided a societal scale which is potential enough in bringing about changes in the perceptions.

References

Dave, D. M., Friedson, A. I., Matsuzawa, K., Sabia, J. J., & Safford, S. (2020). Black lives matter protests, social distancing, and COVID-19 (Vol. 27408). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Mundt, M., Ross, K., & Burnett, C. M. (2018). Scaling social movements through social media: The case of Black Lives Matter. Social Media+ Society, 4(4), 2056305118807911.

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

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.