Event Background
Today’s society and media context, in general, are replete with events that tend to interfere with the fundamentals of ethics and sociological issues. In fact, every single endeavor that takes place in the world has the ability to be assessed from a sociological perspective. However, one of the major problems that tackle humanity today is the notion of racism within all the social concepts, including workplace environments, relationships with neighbors, or patterns of communication with the law enforcement facilities. Researchers claim the existence of various types of racism, which are generally divided into implicit and explicit behavioral patterns (Conley). In their turn, the latter racism clues, although happening rarely, frequently expose an unprecedented rate of ethical violence and breach of the sociological dogmas associated with the issue. Hence, one of the most vivid examples of such an event has now become the series of police brutality acts concerning intended killings of Black people by police officers. Thus, the primary goal of the following paper is to analyze the following precedent through the prism of the sociological issue of race discrimination.
To begin with, it is necessary to dwell upon the basic information concerning the event. Thus, having started in the United States in 2013 and going worldwide ever since, the activist movement “Black Lives Matter” was caused by the fact that a local police officer who shot an unarmed 17-year teenager Trayvon Martin was found not guilty in the committed crime (Alvarez and Buckley). Although the fact itself had caused a series of protests across the state, it was the subsequent precedents that initiated a more aggressive response to policy brutality towards Black people, as two more deaths of African Americans were caused by policemen in 2014.
However, the actual attention of the media space was drawn to the Black Lives Matter action in 2020, after the spread of footage with a policeman standing on the Black man’s neck for almost ten minutes claiming George Floyd’s alleged use of counterfeit bill (Hill et al.). After the event, demonstrations against police brutality were held across the state in order to address the absurdity of law enforcement’s prejudice towards one’s racial affiliation. As a result, the Black Lives Matter movement has now become a major sociological dilemma of the 21st century.
Black Lives Matter as a Sociological Construct
The sociological issue of racism has always been one of the most complicated and challenging paradigms of sociology due to the complexity of the construct’s history throughout time. Speaking of the very issue emergence, the notion of racial discrimination has always been a feature of society considering even the fact that the discrimination was not even regarded as an actual issue, as racism had been an integral part of social communication for a very long time (Conley). However, in the course of sociological development, the idea of discrimination based on the notion of skin color had become an issue for Black people who realized the true scope of their rights’ limitation.
Some scholars claim the emergence of racism to be closely correlated with the pursuit of social equality on the global level, as the absence of a rigid hierarchical pattern explicitly emphasizes the disadvantage for Black people (Tucker). Hence, precedents like police brutality that lead to the promotion of social equality for Black people, in fact, reflect a bigger picture of racial relations within social environments by making people reconsider their actions in terms of both implicit and explicit racism.
The sociological scope of the event itself may be introduced with the help of examples displaying people’s further evaluation of social relationships in terms of race, considering the issues going beyond the law enforcement periphery. For instance, the precedents have led to the investigation of racism and potential racial prejudice in terms of admissions to medical educational establishments in Britain, claiming the acceptance rate to be less than 20% among Black applicants (Kadiyo and Mellish). Hence, it becomes evident that once an event serves as a full-scale reflection of the overall patterns of social interactions, it should be, by all means, considered as a sociological endeavor that obtains a certain level of influence in the context. Moreover, the issue itself reflects the notion of institutional racism, where the law enforcement bodies demonstrate a severe violation of natural social dynamics and deal with power abuse instead (Conley).
Summary
Taking the notion of racism in the context of sociology into consideration, it may be concluded that the process of racial discrimination on the level of public institutions has now become one of the most challenging aspects in terms of establishing proper relationship patterns within society. To examine the point closely, the recent movement called Black Lives Matter was examined on the matter of sociological aspects that are employed in the event scenario. As a result, it was established that the following issue is both concerned with the relationship paradigm of institutional racism and power abuse and with addressing the global ways of racism perception in various social spheres.
Works Cited
Alvarez, Lizette, and Cara Buckley. “Zimmerman Is Acquitted in Killing of Trayvon Martin.” The New York Times, 2013, Web.
Conley, Dalton. You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking Like a Sociologist. W. W. Norton, 2017.
Hill, Evan et al. “How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody.” The New York Times, 2020, Web.
Kadiyo, T., and V. Mellish. “Is Black Lives Matter Over Now?.” British Dental Journal, vol. 229, no. 6, 2020, pp. 326-326.
Tucker, William H. “The Ideology of Racism: Misusing Science to Justify Racial Discrimination.” UN Chronicle, Web.