Social Class and Stratification

One significant problem that is facing America is racial discrimination. For many years, The Black community has been enduring and resisting a system of bondage in which they have encountered social, institutional, economic, and political oppression (Freelon, McIlwain, & Clark, 2016). This system overlooked the violence that leads to the death of African Americans since the days of slavery. As properties, Black people were seen and used as commodities, and therefore their dehumanization was justified. In order to understand present-day occurrences, Americans should understand their history. Thus, believing that slavery is not relevant to the position of Black people today keeps them in a state of exclusion, ridicule, and danger. Black Lives Matter is a movement that was formed to fight against oppression, discrimination, and violence against the Black community.

Step One

African Americas have greatly influenced each other in the Black Lives Matter movement, especially on social media. One great example is the recent killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police (Mundt, Ross, & Burnett, 2018). In addition, there were protests demanding the arrest of the police officers who were responsible for his death. The protest brought Black people together with the same interest, and there were conversations about issues that concern the Black community leading them to continue with the chapter of Black Lives Matter, and social media is the key instrument to getting the word out. Social activism methods have changed, and although people still protest and rally, they are not the only platforms used to get the word out. Social media has been largely used to get support for the movement from across the world. Social networking sites such as Facebook are used to not only help the spread of information but also to connect people. For instance, Facebook groups have been created for interested persons to communicate, get to know one another, and encourage each other to be part of the movement to create change.

Step Two

Formal Group Pressures

The Black Lives Matter Movement is known to have been initiated by Black women, and a lot of Black women were and are still actively involved in debates involving the oppression of Black people on social media; however, in the autumn of 2014, discussions about violence against African American women were fundamentally absent from the main discourse only to emerge later on as an afterthought (de Lima, Pereira, Rosas Torres, Cunha de Souza, & Albuquerque, 2019). The concentration on state-functioned violence against African American men had rendered African American women victims invisible. Many activists have addressed this oversight, illustrating the manner in which even benevolent antiracist actions can subconsciously result in the continuous marginalization of minority groups (Carney, 2016). The fact that several activists of Black feminism spoke out against the silence of Black women’s struggles illustrates how such imperfect signs keep on evolving over time as their meaning is contested.

Some of the informal group pressures that make it challenging to solve this problem are how the Black community is disproportionately poor and they belong to the working class (Prescod, 2017). Studies have also demonstrated how police brutality is rampant against poor Latinos, Whites, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. It is not easy to assemble multi-racial coalitions. The continuous separation of most Blacks and Whites working class is a significant factor that makes it so difficult. This is a strategic consideration of what Black Lives Matter coalitions must make to ensure that the aim of the movement is achieved.

References

Carney, N. (2016). All lives matter, but so does race: Black lives matter and the evolving role of social media. Humanity & Society, 40(2), 180-199.

de Lima, T. J. S., Pereira, C. R., Rosas Torres, A. R., Cunha de Souza, L. E., & Albuquerque, I. M. (2019). Black people are convicted more for being black than for being poor: The role of social norms and cultural prejudice on biased racial judgments. PloS one, 14(9), e0222874.

Freelon, D., McIlwain, C. D., & Clark, M. (2016). Beyond the hashtags:# Ferguson,# Blacklivesmatter, and the online struggle for offline justice. Center for Media & Social Impact, American University, Forthcoming.

Mundt, M., Ross, K., & Burnett, C. M. (2018). Scaling social movements through social media: The case of black lives matter. Social Media+ Society, 4(4), 2056305118807911.

Prescod, P. (2017). Black Lives Matter: Challenges and Possibilities. Against the Current, 32(4), 27.

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

We’ll write everything from scratch

Question