Academic Writing

ESL 5301

Texas Tech University

December 6, 2016.

Black Lives Matter

Abstract

            This study analyzes the perceptions of Texas Tech Community about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which is popular nation-wide in the United States. The movement’s goal is to arrest the atrocious killings of Black Men by the police force in the United States. This movement is very popular among most of the households of Black communities, yet how far has this movement reached the households of other communities is not exactly known. In view of studying how far people are aware of BLM and to study their perceptions on different dimensions of this movement, and how BLM has affected common people, the graduate students of ESL 5301 conducted a survey. The survey results clearly indicated that respondents believed that racism still exists in the United States. Respondents, both men and women were equally aware of the BLM and expressed that BLM does not cause disturbance to their peace and daily life. The respondents also felt that police are stereo typing black people with more crime than any other race, and that the police killings of the black people were not merely accidental.

key words:Black lives, Texas Tech, Graduate (Author AS)

Introduction

Recent news on print and various social media of communication is about different ways in which people of color are being judged by the police officers in The United States. Racism and discrimination has been an issue in the US every time an election date is announced by the Federal Government (Glick 2013). A person’s skin color could decide the fate of his or her life, be it the way a person is treated by the police or vulnerability to poverty, and racism affects other minorities too (Noman 2016). This creates apprehensions in the mind of minorities and a sense of insecurity. Particularly recent incidents portrayed black people being targeted and killed by police in the US for disparate reasons.  Mr. Castile’s incident raked it to the limelight due to its live streaming on popular social media which created a lot of awareness among people.  On the contrary a famous attorney shot and killed his wife on the pretext of his fear for Black Lives Matter and walking away free without being arrested (Rice, 2016, para. 1)

This study emerged on account of various discussions students of a Graduate Writing Class incidentally had over these issues. We the graduate students of TTU are socially responsible to contribute towards a better society tomorrow. With this sense of social responsibility the Graduate Students of Writing Class decided to study about Black Lives Matter movement, Social Media and the Parental Leave, which are the major issues of today and learn the outcome and the perceptions of TTU community. The study targeted students, faculty and staff from various departments of the TTU community as this University is comprised of students and staff who come from ethnically diverse backgrounds, educated and responsible towards society (TTU Student Population, 2016). A survey was conducted to document the opinions of the said community and the results of the survey indicated

Background

The Black Lives Matter movement emerged to challenge the atrocious killing of Black people by police. With improvement in our technology, and awareness of democracy, and to protect one’s own self, one tries to capture a video on the spot when one is attacked. Ms. Reynolds posted a video on July 6^th 2016, after her boyfriend Mr. Castile was shot by police after being pulled over by a police officer on a routine traffic check for the police noted a broken tail light.  This created curiosity among many people irrespective of their color, be it white, brown or black, and was even highlighted on the web page of “Black Lives Matter”. Following this, - on July 21^st, 2016, the Washington Post reported an incident in which North Miami police shot a black caretaker who was trying to rescue his adamant autistic patient (Alvarado, Miller & Berman, 2016).  These incidents, which happened one after the other, incited the class to conduct a study for a social cause and to represent the perceptions of educated community on the present day scenario.

Literature Review

Recently the media have been giving importance to the Black People who were killed across the latitude and longitude of the US by the police on various causes. Approximately 102 Black People were killed by police in 2015 and they were identified as they did not possess any arms when they were killed by the police, and this was five times the rate at which white people were killed, when the black population is only 13% of the US population (Unarmed Victims, Mapping Police Violence, 2015, para. 1).  Alton Sterling was killed by police officers in Baton Rouge when he was lying flat on the ground as he could not move and died of multiple gun shots, and police reacted this way after receiving an anonymous call from somebody who tipped them that a man wearing a red shirt selling CDs outside a convenience store pointed a gun (Lopez, 2016). One hundred and ninety four black people were killed in 2016 and Mr. Scott was the 173rd man to be shot by police who did not possess any arms when he was killed (Craven, 2016). “Amadou Diallo. Manuel Loggins Jr. Ronald Madison. Kendra James. Sean Bell. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Alton Sterling, each was a black man or woman who died at the hands of police” (Funke & Susman, 2016, para. 1). Fraizer of Pompano Beach was fatally killed by South Florida Police when he was eating his dinner at his backyard; the police claimed that they were responding to his sister Deborah’s complaint that he and her daughter were involved in a fight (Garcia 2016).

Britain Police Officer Palmer thought that police force in America are belligerent and commented that they have to be; he also stated that this was in contrast to the thesis of their country, where the officers are taught to back away from situations of higher intensity, negotiate a talk to buy some time, and not to expect that police should win every encounter (Witte, 2015, paras. 14 and 20). A scientific study by using simulators and questioners conducted on measuring ‘police bias’, when encountered with felons from different minorities, revealed that the police are cautious in shooting an armed suspicious black when compared to suspicious people from other racial minorities, as they were aware of the consequences of dealing with people from minorities (Jackman, 2016). Austin cops beat and tortured a Ms. King, an elementary teacher for speeding 15 miles excess of the usual speed limit and passed comments that blacks are violent in behaving with other people. Black teens attacked a 17 year old white teen, Mr. Ogle, probably over an argument about a post protesting the Black Lives Matter movement on a popular social media (Huddleston & Price, 2016, paras. 1, 7). "Black Lives do not matter to most black people...Only the lives that are taken at the hands of cops or white people, matter." (Opoku, 2016, para. 1).

General Perception of TTU Community

Black Lives Matter movement gained prominence after 2014, after an incident in which police shot an 18 year old boy. Their study further revealed that four 40 percent of the Americans support Black Lives Matter movement, and that one third of Americans are familiar with Black Lives Matter movement (Horowitz & Livingston, 2016). As stated earlier TTU is a large diverse educated community. This community has social and self-responsibility. This community has a large part of young aspiring students who will represent tomorrow’s world. As a team of graduate researchers we wanted to learn the perceptions of our community which we are a part of, and measure the outcome. Our casual discussions with students, right from freshman to doctoral candidates and staff revealed their feelings that it is unethical and unfair to show racism in this twenty first century and humanity is one and the same. Even the recent commercials aired on television try to display this view. The younger generation in our view mingle freely without having preferences. According to results of recent polls conducted by the Associated Press more than 50% of white adults between the ages eighteen and thirty support BLM. Fifteen percent of the young black adults do not support BLM, while more than 60% of Asians and Hispanic strongly support BLM. More killings of black by police are serious to 91% of young black adults whereas 43% of the white adults only believe the same. On the contrary an average of 61% of young black and white adults condemn the violence against police (Edwards, 2016, para. 1-6). Also “Blacks are more likely to kill cops than be killed by cops” (Bandler, 2016, para. 5). After extensively reading and discussing the above mentioned facts, and based on the evidence cited from various web sources cited we arrived at the following hypotheses.

Hypothesis 1 TTU community might feel racism as a problem

Hypothesis 2 Young TTU community are aware of BLM and support this cause to protect human lives.

Hypothesis Men and Women of TTU community are equally likely to believe that BLM movement will encourage violence against police.

Hypothesis 4 Young people of TTU community might feel that police in the United States are stereotyping African-Americans with crime more than any other race.

Hypothesis 5 TTU community believes that several media reported loss of black lives that occurred in due confrontation with police are merely accidental.

Methods

Three hundred participants from the TTU community participated in this study. The TTU is a public research university and the sixth largest university in Texas. The school has served students from all over the world and from the fifty states of the United States and continuing further. This information is cited here to describe the population from which the survey is conducted. All these participants were assigned to fill a survey form and their consent was sought before handing over the survey questionnaire to them in hands. The participants were required to fill out a survey on social media, parental leave and Black Lives Matter issues. The participants’ selections had 3 restrictions, which were agreed upon mutually by the instructors and the graduate students. The three restrictions to our participant pool were that (1) the first twelve participants, each student attempts to take this survey has to be Americans, (2) the participant should be in the TTU community and (3) among the first twelve, there should be an equal number of male and female participants. The participants were undergraduate and graduate students, and staff and faculty across the campus, irrespective of their discipline area of study or work. The interesting part was that even the police officers on the campus were approached.

As stated above, a survey was constructed and conducted on a sample size of 300 participants, including the graduate students, who were 24 in number. Each graduate student took a survey from 12 participants, 6 female, 6 male, and filled out one by themselves. The instructor of this class and the two graduate assistants participated in the survey too.  This way the entire group of 24 graduate students collected 300 participants’ opinions, comprising 150 males and 150 females.

The survey questionnaire consisted of 5 questions inquiring the demographic information of the participant who filled out the survey, 18 questions on social media, 9 questions each on parental leave and Black Lives Matter. Each question had multiple options. Very few questions that had an option of explaining why, which was the qualitative part of the survey, was filled out by the participant himself/herself. However, each graduate student was required to study his/her own interest of topic of study, and analyze the survey opinions based on their research questions.

The survey forms were printed by the instructor of the class, and each student was given 13 survey forms on hand, during the class meeting. The graduate students, here in after referred as researchers who were interested in collecting more survey forms got their additional ones. The graduate students were asked to start their survey immediately. The researchers went to different parts of campus to conduct this study. To be specific the researchers who conducted this survey tapped mostly on the Student Union Building, Agriculture, Engineering, Social Sciences, Education and English and Philosophy departments. The researchers agreed upon randomly choosing a participant by walking into any building of their choice or convenience, or to residence halls and so on. The researchers reported that male participants were enthusiastic to participate in the survey and immediately filled up the survey with a smile. The female participants or the staff filled out the survey like a responsibility, and the observations made by the researcher revealed they were careful in filling out the survey. One group of girls in the English Philosophy Block bluntly refused to fill out the survey reasons for which were not revealed. One of the researcher experienced that some participants were rude when he tried to approach them.In general the young males were enthusiastic to participate in the survey, whereas a little older people felt that was an obligation. Thus the participants were a true representation of the TTU community.

The survey questionnaires were collected sincerely and the privacy of the participants and their opinions were taken care of by the students who conducted the survey. The researchers were very determined in not to ask any sensitive details about the participants. The data person and the student assistant together created the data coding sheets on a popular web-based application. The students documented their 13 survey forms’ data by themselves. The data sheets contained the same options as the questionnaire. The qualitative data, if any, was described along the side of such question.

Results

Based on the data the research team collected from the survey, the following results were calculated and related to the hypotheses made previously. There were 294 participants who responded to the survey from the TTU community. The international participants, who were thirty in number were not considered as they were less aware of BLM. The sample consisted of undergraduates, graduates, international students, faculty, and staff members. Thus for this study pertaining to the BLM the respondents were considered as 264 only, excluding the internationals. The sample of the population was represented as 6% by Faculty and Staff, 13% by graduate males, 9% by graduate females, 36% each of male and female undergraduates approximately.

We stated in our literature review that about one hundred and two people were killed in 2015 by the police in the United States, which was equal to five times the number of white people being killed (UNARMED VICTIMS, Mapping Police Violence, 2015, para. 1). We therefore believed that the TTU community might feel racism is a big problem in the United States (U.S.). This was evident from the results of the survey.

From the survey we identified that 70% of the respondents expressed that racism is a still a big problem in the U.S.. This 70% of the respondents was comprised of 1% of faculty and staff, 12% of graduate students and 77% of undergraduates. This results clearly stated that the TTU community felt that racism was still a big problem in the United States. There was 28% of the respondents who stated that racism was not a big problem in the US, and 2% were not sure. We stated in our literature review that there were disputes and differences of opinion on the BLM over social media, that lead to an attack of a white male teen in Alabama by black teens. Owing to this we stated our hypothesis that the female population would not be aware of the BLM movement.

This was in partially true to our belief and partially not. Female respondents proved our assumption wrong, and 33% of the respondents were reported to be familiar. Half of this group who considered themselves very familiar were females. Irrespective of their gender, respondents representing both men and women of the TTU community considered themselves were familiar with the BLM movement.

We stated a Britain Police Officer’s view that American Police Officers were belligerent and also that Austin cops were beating and torturing Ms. King, an elementary teacher.  When BLM fought for these happenings we felt this might make the TTU community perceive that BLM will disturb their peace. Owing to this we stated our third hypothesis, that the TTU community would feel that BLM will disturb their peace. In general the TTU community was not very bothered by it.  Approximately 26% of the respondents felt that BLM was disturbing their peace and were strongly bothered, which was less than fifty percent. Eleven percent of the respondents stated that they were not at all bothered by the BLM movement. Sixty three percent of the respondents preferred to answer that they were not sure.

Referring to the Britain officer stating that police force in the United States are not been taught to back away at alarming situations, and that Mr. Scott was the 173rd man to be shot by the police in 2016, we stated our fourth hypothesis, that the young generation of the TTU community might feel that police force in the US were stereotyping the African-Americans with more crime than any other race.

The results that we got from the survey proved this correct. Men and women who were in the age range of 18-22, who were undergraduates, expressed that this was true. The TTU community strongly believed that the police force in the United States were stereotyping the African American people with more crime than any other race.  One hundred and fifty eight respondents of the total two hundred and sixty four respondents expressed that they believed this. This was 60% of the total respondents. However, the graduate students, faculty and staff were more likely to answer that they were not sure.

Based on the extensive literature review stated in our study, we believed that several media reported loss of black lives that occurred in due confrontation with police were merely accidents. TTU community did not believe that these killings were merely accidental. TTU community strongly expressed their view that all of these killings were not merely accidental.

Ninety four percent of the respondents believed that these killings were not accidental. This result was contradictory to our perception. Only six percent of the respondents answered that these killings were accidental.

Respondents who participated in the survey explicitly conveyed that racism is still a big problem in the United States. Respondents, both men and women, are aware of the BLM movement, but did not believe that BLM movement will disturb their peace. The respondents also believed that the police are stereotyping black people with more crime than any other race, and the killings of the black people are not merely accidental.

Discussion and Conclusion

According to the respondents’ perceptions, fifty percent correlated with the hypotheses stated and fifty percent did not. It is quite surprising to know that people are still believing that racism is a big problem in the United States. The United States is the leading nation in the world in all aspects. Education is at its best in the United States and it is a land of immigrants. These notions made us believe that the respondents will not exhibit this idea of racism being existent even today in the United States. But this was not true, and the survey results stated clearly that racism is still a big problem in the United States.

Secondly, both men and women were equally aware of the BLM movement. Even though there were incidents about killings of black women mentioned in the literature review like Ms. King and Ms. Kendra, black men were targeted and killed mostly by the police. Most of these black men did not possess any arms when they were killed by the police. Since the injustice is mostly towards black males the research team believed that the females of TTU community might not be aware of the BLM movement. Contradicting to our perception both men and women were aware of the BLM movement. This result from the survey made us believe that the present generation are responsible towards a social cause and are against any human killings and against racism.

The results also displayed the fact that BLM movement did not disturb the peace of their daily life. This composure attitude of the respondents stated that the people are generally tolerable towards a fighting for a cause. The respondents have clearly mentioned that they are ready to tolerate BLM for a cause. This was further demonstrated when they conveyed that the police are stereotyping the African-Americans with crime, when compared to any other race. This indicates that Americans are not here to discriminate people by ethnicity, color, race and so on. Americans are clear to question authorities when there are act of injustice against people.

Finally, when the respondents ascertained that the recent killings of black men are not merely accidental, which revealed the fact that Americans are against any human killings and are well aware of killings that happen accidentally and are done on purpose.

References

Bandler, A. (2016). 5 Statistics You Need To Know About Cops Killing Blacks. Retrieved October 11, 2016, from http://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-statistics-you-need-know-about-cops-killing-aaron-bandler

Black Lives Matter | Freedom & Justice for all Black Lives. (n.d.). Retrieved September 27, 2016, from http://blacklivesmatter.com/

By the time they turned him back over, he was gone. (n.d.). Police killed more than 100 unarmed black people in 2015. Retrieved September 27, 2016, from http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed/

Edwards, B. (2016). Poll: Support for Black Lives Matter Growing Among Young White Adults. Retrieved October 11, 2016, from http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/09/poll-support-for-black-lives-matter-growing-amoung-young-white-adults/

Garcia, F. (2016, September 12). Florida police kill black man while he eats dinner in his backyard. Retrieved October 02, 2016, from http://www.independent.co.uk/ 

Glick, B. T. (2013). Racism and Presidential Elections Since 1964: A Short History. Retrieved September 27, 2016, from https://tedglick.com/

Horowitz, J. M., & Livingston, G. (2016). How Americans view the Black Lives Matter movement. Retrieved October 04, 2016, from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/08/how-americans-view-the-black-lives-matter-movement/

Huddleston, C., & Price, J. (2016, October 1). Mother identifies Sylacauga HS student beaten in possibly racially motivated attack. Retrieved October 04, 2016, from http://www.wbrc.com/story/33294138/mother-identifies-sylacauga-hs-student-beaten-in-possibly-racially-motivated-attack

Lopez, G. (2016). Alton Sterling was shot and killed by Baton Rouge police officers. Here's what we know. Retrieved September 27, 2016, from http://www.vox.com/

Noman, N. (2016). Racism in America Today Is Alive and Well - And These Stats Prove It. Retrieved September 27, 2016, from https://mic.com/

North Miami police shoot black man who said his hands were raised while he tried to help autistic group-home resident. (n.d.). Retrieved September 27, 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/

Opoku, A. O. (2016, July 14). The black cop who has a problem with “black lives matter.” Retrieved December 6, 2016, from http://gijonlinenews.com/?p=2613

Rice, J. D. (2016, September 30). Man shoots and kills wife, blames his fear of Black Lives Matter. Retrieved October 11, 2016, from http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/9/30/1576404/-Man-shoots-wife-in-back-blames-his-fear-of-Black-Lives-Matter

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White, G. (2015, June 11). Do Britain's gunless bobbies provide answers for America's police? Retrieved October 02, 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/