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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 11:50 am
Time: 11:50 am
Results for black lives matter
2 results foundAuthor: Eguienta, Ophelie Title: Twenty-First Century Police Brutality against African Americans: The Case of Ferguson, Missouri, and the "Black Lives Matter" Movement Summary: African American history is riddled with violence, as early as Africans' very arrival on the continent as slaves. Their fight for freedom became a fight for equality after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, as the southern states passed segregation laws and racial discrimination, although not institutionalized, remained pervasive in the North. Resulted a century of social, economic, and political inequalities for black people in the entire country, punctuated by lynching, and white supremacist attacks carried in impunity. As the Civil Rights Movement rose in the 1950s, marches and demonstrations for racial equality were met by a virulent opposition, leading to the murders of many civil rights activists and the assassinations of leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Yet, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were passed and effectively made segregation and any other form of racial discrimination illegal. Since then, a variety of policies has been implemented to decrease the opportunity gap between black and white Americans, and, with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, a substantial part of the population has come to believe that racism mostly is an issue of the past, and that equality for African Americans has finally been reached. However for some scholars, this colorblindness has led to another form of blindness about racism, which only has deepened racial inequalities as policies instituted to decrease them have been reduced or abandoned. Yet as the death of an unarmed black young man by a police officer spurred massive protests in the small Missouri city of Ferguson in 2014, the debate on racism in America started again through the notion of a systemic racist police brutality. Police brutality is a societal issue that has been the subject of many studies, by academics but also former officers, who have tried to understand its origins, its extent, its perpetuation, its repercussions on society, and how society reacts to it. Research on racially biased police brutality has also been prolific, especially during the second-half of the twentieth century, as some instances sparked demonstrations and even riots. However, secondary sources are still scarce on the events that followed Michael Brown's death - and thus on the Black Lives Matter movement - since they only happened a few years ago, and at the time, nothing indicated that the protest movement would be lasting and would reach such a scale. I chose to research this issue because even though I have never considered myself to be ignorant of racism and police brutality anywhere in the world, I was deeply shocked by the events that occurred in Ferguson, Mo, in 2014. I remember reading different online newspapers regularly, Le Monde and Le Nouvel Obs for the French ones, the BBC and The Guardian for the British ones, and The New York Times and The Washington Post for the American ones. Indeed, I heard about what had happened through social media at first, and was hoping to have had a distorted version of the facts, as it often happens; and then I was anxious to get different perspectives (namely from other countries), in order not to have too biased sources and try and balance the flow of information available. I closely followed the events for months, and watched the Black Lives Matter movement rise, with astonishment, wonder and fascination. I witnessed demonstrations and protests being organized, support coming from the entire country and the entire world, but also saw the opposition to this tsunami of indignation increase, with various movements such as All Lives Matter, White Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter. Thus, in order to fully understand the importance and the scale of racist police brutality and the protests that ensued, I decided to make them my research project this year. This thesis explores the factors that led Michael Brown's death to spark a string of nation-wide protests: the context of tensions between police officers and black people, the disproportionate rate at which black people are killed by officers, and the lack of repercussions when these deaths are questionable. It also focuses on the stakes and the impact of the Ferguson protests on society, studying the Black Lives Matter movement - its origins, the novelty in its goal and actions, etc. - as well as the other movements that emerged first on social media to oppose it. This research will help analyze how divided the American population is and how such divisions can be accounted for. In order to assess the relationship between African Americans and the police, it was essential to rely on the multiplicity of secondary sources on African American history, and on police brutality in the United States; the vast number of studies available allowed for a balanced overview. However secondary sources are lacking on the events at the core of the research, namely the anti-police brutality protests that started in 2014. Indeed, because these events are recent, it is complex for scholars to analyze the scope of the BLM movement and the shift in media representation of such events, while they are still occurring. On the other hand, primary sources are abundant: every black and mainstream news outlet covered the protests at length, as did individual people via social media - sharing accounts, pictures and videos of the events as well as their reactions to them, and various organizations issued reports on the situation (and a number of organizations were even created as a result). These sources were confronted and taken with a necessary step back to determine any possible bias. Following the increased news coverage of police killings of black people, many opinion polls have been conducted, which helps establish how divided the American population is on the question of police behavior, but also on the role of the government in this matter. To conduct this research, I relied on secondary sources when establishing the historical context of today's African Americans' place in society, and a mix of primary and secondary sources when studying the racial inequalities that persist, the debate over a postracial society, and the relationship between police officers and black people - i.e. the lack of black people in the police force and its consequences, racial bias, distrust, etc. On the other hand, primary sources were almost exclusively used when dealing with what happened at Ferguson in 2014, and with the BLM movement. Indeed, news articles from various outlets and a few social networks allowed to analyze the social and political repercussions of the protests. The relation between mainstream news and the opinion of most of the population - as they influence each other - was analyzed, especially since the influence that the protests had on the news is relatively unusual. Moreover, a detailed research of the significance of social media in the BLM movement was conducted: given the importance social media have in everyday life nowadays, it seemed relevant to analyze the presence of BLM on Twitter - which is at the origin of the movement - and Facebook - the most used social medium among Americans. Some of the few available secondary sources on the topic have been of great help for this part. The research on Twitter --a social media platform that played an important role in the protests - provided significant pieces of information on this social medium which requires payment to give access to some of its user data. As there were no statistics or data available on the matter, and since Facebook's search engine did not allow for a filtered search, I created a database categorizing the thousands of Facebook groups and pages which concerned Black/All/White/Blue Lives Matter, according to a few criteria (number of people, frequency of posts, etc.). This database enabled a comparative study of these movements on Facebook, and allowed me to articulate theories about their importance. However, this research has limitations, as some more detailed indications could have helped paint a more precise picture: very little information is obtainable about closed groups and there are hidden groups only visible to members; some pieces of information are extremely difficult to retrieve (especially for a single person with a limited amount of time), such as the date of creation of the group/page, the number of active members out of the total amount, and the periods when people joined a group or liked a page. Thus, in order to address the issue of police brutality against African Americans in the twenty-first century, this work will start with a brief presentation of the place occupied by the black community in society through a selection of key events in history and their impact on today's society; the second part will be an overview of police brutality, zooming in on brutality against black people; third, the circumstances of Michael Brown' death and the aftermath will be under scrutiny, from the protests, their representation in the news, and their consequences, to the change of this representation in the media; finally, the BLM ALM WLM and BlueLM movements will be analyzed, alongside the role that social media played in these movements. Details: Toulouse: University of Toulouse II Jean Jaures, 2017. 165p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed March 27, 2018 at: http://dante.univ-tlse2.fr/4122/1/Eguienta_Oph%C3%A9lieM22017.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: http://dante.univ-tlse2.fr/4122/1/Eguienta_Oph%C3%A9lieM22017.pdf Shelf Number: 149587 Keywords: African AmericansBlack Lives MatterDeadly ForcePolice BrutalityPolice MisconductPolice Use of ForcePolice-Minority RelationsRacial DiscriminationSocial Media |
Author: Hing, Bill Ong Title: From Ferguson to Palestine: Disrupting Race-Based Policing Summary: Since Michael Brown's killing, "Ferguson" has become the battle cry of embattled black communities targeted by over-policing and activists protesting racist policing. The battle cry has been all too important, unfortunately, as more than a dozen other police on black shootings occurred over the next several months. The story has become all too familiar. A traffic stop or a call about someone acting out. The target might answer respectfully, blandly, or with some attitude. He or she might sprint to escape, sit still, or glance away with attitude. Whatever the trigger, the cop's violent reaction can end with another unarmed black man or woman shot in the head. This article is based on an understanding that police in many parts of the country often are guilty of abusing their authority in a racist manner. The over-policing of African American communities in many respects can be traced to the "broken windows" model of policing. The model focuses on the importance of disorder (e.g. broken windows) in generating and sustaining more serious crime. The problem is that this approach has evolved into a zero-tolerance mentality in the cop-on-the-street, manifested in constant harassment of young black males. Another problem is Urban Shield, a controversial law enforcement training and weapons expo held in Alameda County every year, where companies that make military-style weaponry market their products to local police and fire departments. Urban Shield is coordinated by the Urban Areas Security Initiative, a key program in the extreme militarization of police departments seen in Ferguson, Baltimore, and many other black communities nationwide. In short, Urban Shield also inculcates law enforcement officials with a hard core enforcement mentality. Broken windows policing and Urban Shield represent disruptions in how police work is done. Disruption (a term we may be more familiar with in the technology world) literally uproots and changes how we think, behave, do business, learn and go about our day-to-day. The question for us today is whether we can offer disruptive alternatives to policing that offer real public safety in a manner that is not racist. Black Lives Matter and others are working on disruptive alternatives to create true community policing that is about public safety for all. Their rebellious method of organizing recognizes that meaningful, lasting change can only come about through collaboration with allies with common goals and experiences. Working with the labor movement, immigrant rights groups, Latino and Asian American organizations, and pro-Palestinian leaders represents a strong foundation for collective change. What are the disruptive approaches that will result? More civilian monitoring of the police? Training civilians to be first responders? Better training of police officers in de-escalation techniques? Better integration of police forces? Or something much more innovative and unconventional that is yet to be described? Details: California, 2016. 47p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 14, 2018 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2763939 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: file:///C:/Users/AuthUser/Downloads/SSRN-id2763939.pdf Shelf Number: 151532 Keywords: Black Lives MatterDe-escalation Techniques, FergusonIntegration of Police ForceMilitarization of PoliceOver-Policing Racist PolicingTraining of PoliceUrban Areas Security Initiative Urban Shield |