Police Brutality Against African Americans: Social Conflict Theoretical Perspective

Police Brutality Against African Americans: Social Conflict Theoretical Perspective
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Police Brutality Against African Americans: Social Conflict Theoretical Perspective

Introduction

            Police brutality is not just an American problem but also a global one, and black people are often the primary victims. For instance, in the UK, a 2018 survey indicated that Black people were nine times more likely to be stopped by police. Here, while black people form only 3% of the population, 16% of incidences of brutal force and electro-shock weapons were experienced by this community (Deivanayagam, Lasoye, Smith, & Selvarajah, 2020). In Australia, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders form 28% of the adult prison population, yet they comprise only 2% of the Australian population (Shepherd et al., 2020). However, the US ranks top when it comes to brutality against people color. More than half of the people killed by police between 1980 and 2019 were African Americans (The_Lancet, 2021). Thus, the purpose of the current brief is to explain this phenomenon through a sociological lens.

Problem Description

Research suggests that social factors like age, race, sex, income, political ideology, and community type influence police brutality perceptions. For instance, Alang et al (2017) argued that the existing racial stereotypes and prejudice, rooted in slavery, racism, and ideas of White Supremacy, are the basis for the types of laws and leniency that allow the brutalization of African Americans. Further, people who live in more affluent neighborhoods do not have the same level of community policing compared to those living in low-income areas (Peyton, Sierra-Arévalo, & Rand, 2019). Thus, at the local (American) level, race is the fundamental social determinant of police violence. On the international stage, however, income becomes the critical social determinant. Here, wealthy people who live in wealthy neighborhoods are less likely to experience police brutality regardless of less. The difference between these two variables is that one focuses on skin color while the other focuses on income. A similarity, however, is that minority groups are more likely to have low income and, therefore, to live in low-income areas where the frequency of interacting with the police is higher.

Social Conflict Theory (SCT): Stereotypes and Prejudice

            According to SCT, law and the mechanism through which it is enforced are used by the dominant groups in society to minimize interests or perceived threats to their interests by minority and poor people (Gasto...