An Open Letter to Our Community in Response to Police Brutality Against African-Americans and a Call to Antiracist Action

Human Biology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 199
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Open Letter

Reducing Police Brutality in African American Communities: Potential Roles for Social Workers in Congregations

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 66-84
Author(s):  
Betty Wilson ◽  
Terry A. Wolfer
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
General Public ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Religious Congregations ◽  
Predominantly Black ◽  
African American Communities ◽  
White Congregations

In the last decade, there have been a shocking number of police killings of unarmed African Americans, and advancements in technology have made these incidents more visible to the general public. The increasing public awareness of police brutality in African American communities creates a critical and urgent need to understand and improve police-community relationships. Congregational social workers (and other social workers who are part of religious congregations) have a potentially significant role in addressing the problem of police brutality. This manuscript explores and describes possible contributions by social workers, with differential consideration for those in predominantly Black or White congregations.

Access to justice as a human right, organizational entitlement and precursor to diversity and inclusion

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 787-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quinetta Roberson
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Organizational Policies ◽  
Corporate Leaders ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion ◽  
Policies And Practices

PurposeIn the wake of the death of George Floyd in the United States, many corporate leaders have released statements condemning racism and police brutality and committed their organizations to focus on diversity and inclusion. While such statements, intentions, and goals are laudable, they evade the phenomenon at the crux of the current social movement: access to justice.Design/methodology/approachThis essay draws upon theory and research across a variety of disciplines to examine the accessibility of justice for African Americans in society and in work organizations.FindingsAs corporate leaders have made statements decrying racism and police brutality and offered their support to civil rights groups and organizations fighting for racial justice, there is a need for that same level of scrutiny and support within their own organizations. As a precursor to diversity and inclusion initiatives, corporate leaders need to take actions to ensure the fairness of outcomes, policies and practices, and treatment by others for African Americans within their organizations.Practical implicationsStrategies for reviewing and revising organizational policies and practices to preserve fairness in the work experiences of African Americans and for creating and maintaining cultures of fairness are offered.Originality/valueThe author integrates historical documents, research, opinion, and literary devices to understand the meaning and practice of justice in society and organizations.

scholarly journals Orcs Lives Matter: Representation of African Americans in Bright Film

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-117
Author(s):  
Shafira Ayuningtyas ◽  
Pita Merdeka
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
American System ◽  
Research Problems ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
American Society ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

Exploring the way Orcs are portrayed in the Bright film are the focus of this research and futher analyzing the ideology within. This research uses the qualitative research method to help answering the research questions on how Orcs are represented in Bright and how representations reflect the ideology of the text. Additionally, Hall’s representation and ideology theories are applied in the process to provide an insight into the research problems. The research found that Orcs in Bright are constructed in a very like ways as African Americans as they are portrayed as the designated bad guys, targets for animalization and victims of police brutality which match the image of African Americans in American society. These portrayals of Orcs leads to the discussion of Orcs’ poor social standing in society in comparison to other races in the film and in result reflects the ideology the text tries to convey that is black inferiority, as shown by the way the American system and society treated them. Overall, this research can be used as a reference for researches on representation of African Americans and racial allegories in literature.

scholarly journals The Origins of Bearing Witness While Black

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-44
Author(s):  
Allissa V. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Slave Narratives ◽  
Domestic Terrorism ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Advocacy Journalism

Chapter 2 traces the genealogy of black witnesses through three overlapping eras of domestic terrorism against African Americans: slavery, lynching, and police brutality. Black storytellers in each of these timeframes leveraged the technologies of their day to produce emancipatory news. In this manner, advocacy journalism has remained a central component of black liberation for more than 200 years—from slave narratives to smartphones.

And Justice for All?

2019 ◽  
pp. 91-121
Author(s):  
Monika Gosin
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Local Government ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
The Real ◽  
Cuban Immigration ◽  
White Racial Frame

Chapter 3 analyzes African-American responses to the Mariel boatlift in the Miami Times, a local black newspaper. The boatlift immediately followed the McDuffie Riot, an African-American uprising against the latest incident of police brutality. As the local government turned their attention to the large Cuban influx, some African-Americans feared Miami’s white dominant infrastructure would continue to ignore their concerns. The chapter reveals that the Times endorsed the idea that blacks and white Anglo were the “real Americans” and that Cubans, constructed as white, were receiving preferential treatment over black Haitian migrants. The chapter argues that the seeming disdain for Cuban immigration was a symptom of a pressing desire to challenge white supremacy and promote greater equality for all blacks in U.S. culture. However, the larger presence of Afro-Cubans among the new Cuban refugees forced African-Americans to reexamine modes of solidarity that decide group membership according to a black/white racial frame.

Responsible Church Leaders Should Be Educating Their Congregations About Racism and Serving the Community Concerning the Black Lives Matter movement.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-49
Author(s):  
Darrell Norman Burrell ◽  
Rajanique L. Modeste ◽  
Aikyna Finch
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Profiling ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Current Event ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
God's Love ◽  
Racial Injustice

As our society wrestles with systemic racism, it is imperative that houses of prayer undergo the same reflection. African-Americans have been disappointed with majority Caucasian congregation church leaders who have the capacity to change minds and attitudes during this time of national reckoning over race but are not engaging their worshipers with honest educational conversations about social justice, race, and police brutality. Black lives matter. This is an obvious truth considering God's love for all God's children. When Black lives are systemically devalued by society, our outrage justifiably insists that attention be focused on Black lives. When a church claims boldly “Black Lives Matter” and attempts to educate their churchgoers about the societal and subtle ills of racial profiling, microaggressions, and privilege at this moment, it chooses not to be silent about a racial injustice for those in need. The paper explores the importance of this topic through current event literature.

Bearing Witness While Black

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allissa V. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
American People ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
Black African ◽  
Black Newspapers ◽  
Civil Rights Movements ◽  
American Tradition

Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism tells the story of this century’s most powerful black social movement through the eyes of 15 activists. At the height of the Black Lives Matter uprisings, African Americans filmed and tweeted evidence of fatal police encounters, spurring a global debate on excessive police force, which disproportionately claimed the lives of African Americans. The book reveals how smartphones, social media, and social justice empowered black activists to create their own news outlets, continuing a centuries-long, African American tradition of using the news to challenge racism. It identifies three overlapping eras of domestic terror against African American people—slavery, lynching, and police brutality—and the journalism documenting their atrocities, generating a genealogy showing how slave narratives of the 1700s inspired the abolitionist movement; black newspapers of the 1800s galvanized the anti-lynching and civil rights movements; and smartphones of today powered the anti–police brutality movement. This lineage of black witnessing, the book shows, is formidable and forever evolving. The text is informed by the author’s activism. Personal accounts of her teaching and her own experiences of police brutality are woven into the book to share how she has inspired black youth to use mobile devices to speak up from the margins. Bearing Witness While Black conveys a crucial need to protect our right to look into the forbidden space of violence against black bodies and to continue to regard the smartphone as an instrument of moral suasion and social change.

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