BLACK LIVES MATTER

BLACK LIVES MATTER

1. Cultural conflict theory

   • Conflict theory in sociology describes society’s tendency to change and develop due to perpetual conflict between classes. Political economist Max Weber extended this definition to include multidimensional class levels, such as race, gender, and religion. He believed that social conflict and change could result from discourse and the exchange of ideas in addition to political revolution. Sociologist W.E.B. Dubois explored double-consciousness, which is the sensation of having two identities (in his case, an American and a black American) treated differently.
     • Through his formation of Racial Formation Theory, Dubois maintained that racism in America was systemic – and that an individual racist was not needed to keep the discriminatory system. Black Lives Matter is a social movement that protests violence against black people. It began in 2013 after George Zimmerman was acquitted of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The movement’s supporters continue to demonstrate when black people aare killed in situations that are perceived to be non-threatening.

2. Social disorganization theory

   • This theory emphasizes social conflict, social change, and lack of social consensus being the leading cause of deviance and crime. The theory suggests that a person's residential location is more significant than the person's characteristics when predicting criminal activity.
     • An example of this was in the BLM movement on the unjust killing of Martin, a 17-year-old African American, was returning from a convenience store. Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch volunteer of German and Peruvian ancestry, had seen martin walking in his neighborhood and called the police because he thought Martin looked "suspicious." although police told him not to do anything, he followed Martin, got into an argument with him, and shot and killed him. This exposed deep divisions among Americans on race issues. This incidence can be described by the concept of racial heterogeneity described by Shaw and McKay in the social disorganization perspective. This murder was thought to be racially motivated since 911 calls, and evidence seemed to show that Martin posed no threat.

3. Strain theory

   • The sociologist Robert Merton argued that deviance, where people break social norms or rules, is produced by how society distributed the means to achieve cultural goals. According to his anomie strain theory, deviance results from a mismatch between artistic pursuits and the institutionalized means of reaching those goals. Merton's structural strain theory suggests that politically motivated riots are more likely to happen in communities with limited access to standardized means of achieving artistic goals. In short, the cultural purposes are held out as achievable, but the standardized means are either inaccessible or of inferior quality.
     • In the BLM movement, residents stood up against police brutality by having peaceful protests and riots, both of which are forms of rebellion using Merton’s terms. Police brutality, however, is only one symptom of a much bigger problem which is the continued oppression of African Americans in the United States.