Survey of the people affiliated with Texas Tech University

on the perception of issues relating to the Black Lives Matter movement

For the course, ESL-5315-001 

Abstract

Herein, we discuss the perception of the people affiliated with Texas Tech University on the issues relating to Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.  The survey was based on a questionnaire and included approximately three hundred participants and was conducted within the campus.  The results of the survey suggested that the support for BLM movement is not very prominent among the respondents.  Though majority of the participants approved the motives of the BLM movement, half of them perceive that the movement is not headed in the right direction and that the protests for the cause of BLM movement are becoming violent in recent times.  Also, a fraction of the respondents hold a negative perception of the BLM movement and believe that the movement is overly exaggerated.  Majority of this group of respondents also believed that racism is not an issue in the country and that the BLM movement is not necessary.  (Ashwin)

  

Over the past few years there have been several allegations of systematic racial discrimination against the African-American communities by the police in the United States.  Many of these incidents (Taylor, 2016 & Balko, 2016) resulted in the fatality of the African-American involved, raising a nationwide question of whether the police are intrinsically biased against the black communities (Jackman, 2016). The aftermath of such incidents involved various protests, both by individuals like Colin Kaepernick (Waldron, 2016) and black activist groups like Black Lives Matter movement, demanding justice for those oppressed.  Amidst these racial tensions, there are several schools of thought, some of which refuse to acknowledge these persistent issues while others strongly support the black activist groups, comparing the Black Lives Matter to the civil rights movement (Sebastian, 2015). 

With these wide trends of thoughts, we, a group of six at Texas Tech University, decided to study the perception of people on the campus on the issues of racial bias and discrimination of the police against the black communities and their view of the Black Lives Matter movement, as a part of the requirement for ESL-5315-001, writing course.

Literature Review

There have been several scientific studies as well as statistical data that point towards the racial bias among the police.  One such statistic (Lowery, 2016) showed that the probability of an African-American being shot by the police is two times more than that of a white American being shot.  The same article also revealed that unarmed African-Americans are five times more likely to be shot than their white counterparts.  Another similar study (Bui & Cox, 2016) points out that the police are more likely to use force while dealing with black men.  But with regard to the use of lethal weapons, the article found no racial bias in the police community.  Another interesting article pointed to the reverse effect of racism (Taylor, 2016), stating that the police tend to be more careful while dealing with the African-American community, as they are aware of the consequences of mishandling them.  The article points to a simulation which assesses how police respond to armed suspects from different ethnic backgrounds and as stated before, the officers are less likely to fire at an armed black suspect, comparatively. 

With respect of the perception of the public on this issue, the GenForward survey (Swanson, 2016) says that youth tend to believe police are racially biased, with a majority of the participants saying that African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely to be mistreated.  The survey also talks about the personal experience of the participants with the police.  24% of African-Americans and 16% of Hispanics admitted to having had a bitter confrontation with the police, while only 8% of whites and 4% of Asians have had any such experience.  Another article pointing to the CNN/ORC poll (Byrnes, 2014) concluded that most of white Americans (57%) tend to believe that the police do not treat people of color with any difference, while 69% of African-Americans believe that the police are hostile towards their community.  On the other hand, when asked about the use of racial profiling by the police (Ekins, 2014), 70% of the survey participants, irrespective of their ethnic background, opposed such a practice.  The survey also pointed out that Democrats and Independents more strongly oppose racial profiling than Republicans.

Turning the focus towards the perception of people about the Black Lives Matter movement, a survey conducted by Pew Research Center (Horowitz & Livingston, 2016) showed that 43% of Americans supported the movement, while 22% opposed it and about 30% had no idea about what the movement was.  The survey also arrived at an obvious result that the most of the support for Black Lives Matter comes from the African-American communities (65%) and opposition comes from the whites (28%).  A more interesting result pointed out by the survey is that about 33% of the people who had an opinion about Black Lives Matter, claimed that they were not clear about the motives or goals of the movement.  On the other hand, a very recent poll by the Associated Press (Edwards, 2016) says that the support for Black Lives Matter is increasing among the young white Americans.  51% of the white participants surveyed between the ages of 18-30 said that they were in support of the movement.  This was considered as a 10% increase from a previous survey by GenForward. 

Hypotheses

With the above data on the perception of people about the Black Lives Matter movement and the bias of the police against certain ethnic backgrounds, we propose the following hypotheses for the current study:

1. Trying to deduce the perception of people about Black Lives Matter movement from a trend in social media, we believe that people who use a lot of social media in classes might not be aware of the movement.  People who use a lot of social media in classes might be either unaware or not interested in their academic surrounding.  This lackadaisical attitude might well translate into their awareness about the social environment, making them unfamiliar with the Black Lives Matter movement. 
2. Since people who express their disregard to national anthem protests possess a heightened sense of nationalism, we expect that such respondents would not prefer to acknowledge any kind of racial segregation in the country just as a result of their nationalistic pride.
3. We expect that respondents who support parental leave should also be in favor of Black Lives Matter movement.  As both these issues involve equality among different communities (men and women in the former case while blacks and whites in the latter), their response should be similar in both the issues. 
4. As recently, the Black Lives Matter movement is more associated with fighting against racial discrimination by the police, we also suggest that respondents who support Black Lives Matter might have a common perception that the police, in general, are biased and stereotype crime with African-Americans. 
5. A recent survey (Schwarz, 2016) points out that young Americans are more liberal in their political standpoints.  As most of the respondents in our study are young Americans, we believe that their liberal views might reflect in their answers to how the issue of racial bias can be handled by the police.  We hypothesize that most of the participants will suggest training the police and improving the relationship of the police with the black community (the view shared by the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate).

Methods 

Following the hypotheses, it was decided to conduct a survey among the students and faculty members of Texas Tech University to understand the perception of people about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.  Most of the survey questions were designed in such a way to either prove or refute the hypotheses proposed in the previous section.  A copy of the survey questions in provided in the Appendix.  Unfortunately, due to space constraints in the survey, a question regarding improving the relationship between the police and the African-American communities was removed, which makes it difficult to make a direct conclusion on the final proposed hypothesis about people’s view on community policing and their political standpoint. 

In addition to the questions about the Black Lives Matter movement, the survey also included topics on social media and parental leave, which are also of interest.  In order to get an adequate sample to study this issue, approximately 300 people affiliated with Texas Tech were surveyed.  In this regard, each individual enrolled in the course agreed to survey a minimum of 12 other individuals, comprising 6 American males and 6 American females.  In addition to this, a small number of internationals were also surveyed, which included the students enrolled in the ESL course.  It must be noted that the results presented herein are not representative of the Tech campus in that the number of people studied constitutes less than 1% of the total campus population.  Also, no specific methodology was adopted in collecting the data, and the survey was conducted mostly approaching random participants. 

As specified earlier in the hypotheses section, one of the main purposes of this study was to understand the correlation between people’s perception about the Black Lives Matter movement and their response to different issues regarding social media and parental leave.  In this regard, the participants were asked about their degree and purpose of usage of social media so as to correlate and predict their awareness about Black Lives Matter movement.  Also, the participants were asked about their stand on paternal and maternal leave equality and an attempt was made to correlate this response to their stand on the BLM movement.  All data were gathered using an interactive online Google Spreadsheet. 

Results 

Following the survey of approximately 300 people, we now focus on the results of the survey in relation to the hypotheses proposed in the previous section.  With respect to the hypothesis that correlates social media usage in class with one’s awareness about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, it can be concluded that there is no strong correlations between the two factors.  This can be observed by the following facts: about 70% of the people who avoid using social media during class hours are aware of the Black Lives Matter movement; however a closer look at the data also shows that around 70% of the people who are active users of social media during classes are also aware of the BLM movement to a certain extent.  Hence, we reemphasize that the usage of social media in class has no correlation to one’s awareness about the BLM movement.  However one must note that, out of approximately the 300 participants surveyed, more that 50% of the respondents completely avoided the usage of social media in class, while only slightly over 20% of the respondents are active users.  Thus the gathered data is more skewed towards non-active social media users.  In order to establish a stronger correlation in the current hypothesis, this bias has to be removed by surveying more respondents who actively use social media during class hours.  Also, it is worth noting that about 25% of the respondents who took the survey were in no degree aware of the motive of the BLM movement.  We were interested in knowing this sub-group of respondents’ social media patterns.  It could be concluded that Twitter, (a major current events based social media app) is not the preference of this sub-group.  Less than 15% of this sub-group preferred Twitter over the other social media apps.  Also, surprisingly only 18% of the respondents who were aware of the BLM movement prefer Twitter over other apps.  We discuss the consequence of this observation in more detail in the discussions to follow.

Secondly, it can be widely seen that the vast majority of the survey participants acknowledged that racism is a problem in the country.  About 70% of the participants acknowledged this, while about 18% felt that racism was not an issue, and 9% of the population surveyed had no opinion.  Also, in general, the support for the Black Lives Matter movement is not very prominent among the respondents.  42% of the respondents expressed their support for the BLM movement, while 34% felt the movement was not necessary, and 10% of the respondents were not sure of their standpoint.  These two counterintuitive data suggest that acknowledging the existence of racism does not necessarily imply support for the BLM movement.  Focusing on the specific hypothesis relating one’s view on the existence of racism in the country and one’s standpoint on Collin Kaepernick’s anthem protest, the data suggest that a significant percent of the population who were against the anthem protest did not think of racism as an issue.  25% of the respondents who were against the anthem protest did not believe that racism is an issue.  Note that this number is higher than the total percentage of people who did not acknowledge racism (18%) in the whole population studied, indicating that this sub-group of people who are against the anthem protest are ones who mostly did not agree with any form of racism existing in the country.  Also, it should be noted that this sub-group of the respondents who did not acknowledge any form of racism, had a negative view on the BLM movement.  72% of this sub-group thought the BLM movement will encourage violence against the police; 50% of this sub-group felt that the BLM movement disturbs the peace in the society and 65% of the respondents who thought racism is not an issue also thought that the BLM movement is exaggerated.   

The third hypothesis that was proposed connects an individual’s opinion on equality in parental leave to his standpoint on equality with respect to the BLM movement.  We hypothesized that respondents who support parental leave will also support the BLM movement, as both these issues involve equality among different sections of the population.  Analysis of the data shows that this hypothesis too lacks clear correlation.  While 40% of the respondents who believed that the parental leave policies should be mandated by the government also supported the cause of the BLM movement, 35% of them felt BLM is exaggerated and must stop.  Noting that about 55% of the survey takers are in favor of parental leave in total, there is almost an equal split among this group in their view about the Black Lives Matter movement.  So evidently, given the sample size of 300 survey takers, there is no correlation between the respondents’ view of parental leave and their perception about BLM movement. 

We now focus on the hypothesis which studies people’s perception of bias in the police community.  In general, most of the respondents felt that the police stereotype African-Americans with crime.  60% of the people felt that the police are biased against the African-Americans, while only 20% felt that the police are not biased and 18% were either not aware of the issues or had no strong opinion.  Also, 36% of the people recorded that the recent police shootings are not accidental, while 20% felt that the shootings were accidental and 40% recorded a neutral response.  With this we now focus on the fourth hypothesis, which states that a strong support for BLM movement will imply that most people think the police are biased against the African-American community.  However, we did not observe this from the data and in fact the reverse was observed.  Though, as stated before, the support for BLM movement was not prominent among the respondents (42%), most of the survey takers recorded that they feel that police stereotype the African-American with crime.  To further explore this, we analyze how respondents who expressed their support for BLM responded to the issues of bias in the police community.  It can be seen that a vast majority of this sub-group (80%) who supported the BLM movement felt that the police were biased.   

The final hypothesis relates an individual’s political standpoint to how he feels the police should handle the racial divide.  However, as stated in the Methods section, the related question was removed from the survey due to space constraints.  Hence, we try to deduce the political standpoint of our respondents with how they have answered most of the questions in the BLM section.  Though 60% of the people think that the police are biased and 70% of the people think that racism is a problem, the overall support for BLM is only 42%.  It must also be noted that a significant percent of the population were neutral on most of the issues related to BLM.  For example, 40% were neutral on their opinion about police shootings and 25% were not aware of the motives of BLM to any extent.  Hence, we state that with this scattered data, it is difficult to arrive at an affirmative conclusion about the political standpoint of the population studied. 

Discussion 

We now discuss in detail the results observed in the previous section.  In general, as expected, the majority of the respondents acknowledged that racism is a problem in the country.  This is not a surprising result, as most of the survey participants were between the ages of 18-25, and in line with many national polls which suggested young Americans acknowledge the racial tension prevalent in the society.  Another general observation is that, despite many national polls suggesting that the support for BLM movement is increasing among college students, we found in our survey that the support for the BLM movement was not as prominent as expected.  The reason for such an observation could be because a significant percent of the population either were not aware of the BLM movement to any degree, or had any opinion on the incidents about police shootings.  On the other hand, though many of the respondents did not have a strong opinion about the BLM movement, many expressed their concern about the anthem protest of Collin Kaepernick.  As we previously hypothesized, respondents who believed racism was not an issue in the country were the majority of those who opposed the anthem protest.  We believe that one’s strong sense of nationalistic pride is the reason for correlation between these two facts.  Also, the respondents who believed racism is not an issue in the country had a negative view on the BLM movement as it can be seen from the data presented in the results section.  This sub-group of the respondents are the majority who were bothered by the stand of the BLM movement, thought the movement is a violent organization, and also believed that the BLM movement is exaggerated in all senses.  We believe that the recent incidents involving the shooting of police officers by some African-American protesters could have made these respondents take a negative stand on the BLM movement. 

We now focus on the first hypothesis, which states that social media users in class should be the ones who are unaware of the BLM movement.  However, as reported in the results section, there was no correlation between the two facts.  This observation is directly attributed to the lack of data on people who use social media in class.  The data collected represented, significantly, the non-active social media users, and hence we conclude that the lack of correlation in this hypothesis is due to the lack of data collected.  We also analyzed the social media pattern of the respondents who were not aware of the BLM movement to any degree.  As showed in the results section, Twitter was the least preferred social media application of this sub-group.  It is also interesting to note that Twitter also was the least preferred app among the group of people who were well informed about the BLM movement.  Out of the popular social media applications available, Twitter is the one based on informing people about current and social events.  Though Twitter is perceived as a major medium for spreading awareness about the BLM movement (Anderson & Hitlin, 2016), the low popularity of Twitter among most of the current set of respondents, who are aware of the BLM movement, refutes the common perception.  On the other hand, most the respondents (around 70%) who used social medial for checking news were aware of the BLM movement to some extent.  Also, it is interesting to note that only a small percentage of people (about 30%) who believed that social media can bring about social changes were aware of the motives of the BLM movement.  To sum up all the information put forth, we conclude that social media plays some part in educating the respondents about the BLM movement, but it is not the only platform for spreading awareness about the movement.
We also hypothesized that majority of the respondents who supported parental leave would also support the BLM movement, as both these issues are related to the equality of certain group of the population.  However, as mentioned in the results section, there was no clear correlation in the data between the two factors.  This indicates that the perception of equality among the respondents was not the same across the issues.  We also perceive that, since parental leave is an issue of direct personal concern to the majority of the population, as opposed to the BLM movement (as only the African-American community would be the most affected and concerned section about the BLM movement), striving for equality may not be of the same degree in both the issues. 

Another important conclusion which can be arrived from the data is, though a significant percent of the respondents agreed that police stereotype African-Americans with crime, the empathy and perception did not translate into their support for the BLM movement.  In fact half of the population who believed police stereotype African-Americans with crime recorded that the BLM movement is moving in the right direction and the other half said that the movement is not heading in the right direction, and is propagating violence in many cases.  This perception is understandable in the wake of recent confrontations between the police and the African-American communities.  This could also be the reason for the mixed perception about the BLM movement, though majority of the respondents acknowledged the existence of racism in the country. 

Finally we discuss the hypothesis which tries to correlate an individual’s political view to his opinion about the BLM movement.  As we previously emphasized, data about this particular topic was not gathered due to space constraint in the survey.   Hence in the results section, we tried to deduce an individual’s political view from his view on the BLM movement.  As stated previously, we observed a lot of scattered data.  There were mixed opinions about the BLM movement, though the majority of the respondents acknowledged racism. This had made it difficult to support or refute the final hypothesis proposed. We also suspect that a simple correlation such as the one proposed herein might not be relevant as one’s political leaning depends on a variety of stands such as economic issues and not just on social issues.

Conclusions

To conclude, this survey intended to study the perception of people of Texas Tech on the issues pertaining to Black Lives Matter movement, resulted in several conclusions.  The survey participants, who were mostly between the ages of 18-22, on an average admitted that racism is an important issue concerning the country.  Despite this observation, the support for the BLM movement among the respondents was not prominent.  While half of the survey takers agreed that the BLM movement is heading in the right direction, the other half argued that the movement is resulting in violent protest of late.  A significant percent of the young population also lacked any knowledge of the movement, leading to the question, if social media, where youngsters spend a significant amount of their time, serves any purpose in spreading social awareness among the population.  Analysis of the results from the survey suggested that social media is not the only platform where respondents gathered their information about the BLM movement yet it does play some role in spreading social awareness about the movement.  Also, it was observed that a small percentage of the respondents who did not acknowledge the existence of racism of any form in the country, widely held a negative perception of the BLM movement.  This sub-group of the population often thought that the BLM movement is exaggerated and even condemned the national anthem protest of Collin Kaepernick.  Also, a significant majority of the respondents believed that the police stereotype African-Americans with crime.  We also note that all the conclusions arrived herein are based on a random sample of approximately three hundred participants.

Bibliography 

Anderson, M., & Hitlin, P. (2016, August 15).  The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter emerges: Social activism on Twitter. Pew Research Center. Retrieved on December 4, 2016, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/08/15/the-hashtag-blacklivesmatter-emerges-social-activism-on-twitter/ 

Balko, R. (2016, July 6).  Alton Sterling’s death appears to be another police shooting that was both legal and preventable. The Washington Post.  Retrieved on September 08, 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/07/06/alton-sterlings-death-appears-to-be-another-police-shooting-that-was-both-legal-and-preventable/?utm_term=.e892c67f7271

Bui, Q., & Cox, A. (2016, July 11). Surprising new evidence shows bias in police use of force but not in shootings. The New York Times. Retrieved on September 27, 2016 from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html

Byrnes, J. (2014, December 22). Poll: Nonwhites more likely to see police bias. The Hill.  Retrieved on September 27, 2016 from http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/227893-poll-non-whites-far-more-likely-to-see-police-as-biased

Edwards, B. (2016, September 6).  Poll: Support for Black Lives Matter growing among young white adults. The Root. Retrieved on September 28, 2016 from http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/09/poll-support-for-black-lives-matter-growing-amoung-young-white-adults/

Ekins, E. (2014, October 14). Poll: 70% of Americans oppose racial profiling by the police. Reason-Rupe Poll. Retrieved on September 27, 2016 from http://reason.com/poll/2014/10/14/poll-70-of-americans-oppose-racial-profi

Horowitz, J., & Livingston, G. (2016, July 8). How Americans view the Black Lives Matter movement. Pew Research Center. Retrieved on September 28, 2016 from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/08/how-americans-view-the-black-lives-matter-movement/

Jackman, T. (2016, April 27).  This study found race matters in police shootings, but the results may surprise you. The Washington Post. Retrieved on September 15, 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2016/04/27/this-study-found-race-matters-in-police-shootings-but-the-results-may-surprise-you/

Lowery, W. (2016, July 11). Aren’t more white people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no. The Washington Post. Retrieved on September 28, 2016 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/?utm_term=.19fdc2846467

Swanson, E. (2016, August 31). Poll: Most young adults say police show racial bias. The Columbian. Retrieved on September 28, 2016 from http://www.columbian.com/news/2016/aug/31/poll-most-young-adults-say-police-show-racial-bias/

Taylor, G. (2016, July 7).  Cops shot Philando Castile, his girlfriend streamed the horrific aftermath on Facebook.  The Daily Beast.  Retrieved on September 07, 2016, from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/07/cops-shot-her-boyfriend-she-livestreamed.html

Waldron, T. (2016, September 8). Seattle Seahawks are planning some sort of national anthem protest. The Huffington Post. Retrieved on September 28, 2016 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/seattle-seahawks-national-anthem-protest_us_57d1b856e4b00642712c6b12