Recommended
More Related Content
Similar to Personal Statement of Social Responsibility
Similar to Personal Statement of Social Responsibility (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Personal Statement of Social Responsibility
- 1. Personal Statement of Social Responsibility Candis Clear COMM - 6900: Communication Capstone Dr. Saeid Atoofi
- 2. Positive Social Change “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
- 4. Social Norms “Bad apples” vs. Systematic Problem
- 6. Strategies for Dialogue Email Virtual Presentation Report of findings about police brutality within each department Community Meetings Newspaper Articles Social Media
- 7. References • Bacon Jr., P. (2020, June 4). How The Police See Issues Of Race And Policing. FiveThirtyEight. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-police-see-issues- of-r ace-and-policing/. • Brooks, D. (2020, June 16). The Culture of Policing Is Broken. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/how-police- brutality- gets-made/613030/. • Dutta, M. J. (2011). Communicating social change: Structure, culture, and agency. New Y ork, NY: Routledge. • Maxson, C., Hennigan, K., & Sloane, D. C. (n.d.). Factors That Influence Public Opinion of the Police. Office of Justice Programs. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/197925.pdf. • National Archives and Records Administration. (n.d.). Declaration of Independence: A Transcription. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript. • Pettit, J. (2010). Learning to do Action Research for Social Change. International Journal of Communication, 820–827. https://www.participatorymethods.org/sites/participatorymethods.org/files/Learni ng%20to%20 do%20action%20research%20pettit892-3393-1-PB.pdf
- 8. References • Yates, C., Walker, R., O'Neal, L., & Dodson, A. (2016, July 8). A black police officer's perspective. The Undefeated. https://theundefeated.com/features/a- black-police-officers-perspective/. • Young, N. (2015, November 13). Overcoming police brutality starts with positive community Interaction. WHYY. https://whyy.org/articles/overcoming-police- brutality-starts-with- positive-community-interaction/.
Editor's Notes
- George Floyd laid on the ground for eight minutes and forty-six seconds while pleading for his life, while repeatedly stating, “I can’t breathe.” People outside began to record giving America a glimpse into what it means to be black in America. Americans responded with displeasure and anguish and took to the streets to voice their opinion. These actions have fueled new interest in ending police brutality in the African American community. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.). Police departments must live up to this declaration. Change must start with representation. Young (2015) highlights that many police departments, such as the Philadelphia Police Department, lack representation, and there should be racial and gender representation that reflects the city they police. Police must understand the people in the communities they are serving, especially in impoverished areas. This starts with going beyond policing. We sometimes see videos of police officers stopping to play basketball with a group of African American children or dancing at block parties. These types of actions go beyond policing the neighborhood and can help combat the long-standing mistrust of officers. Positive social change regarding police brutality must focus on the following characteristics: Partnership Modern use-of-force policy Policing without prejudice Accountability Independent incident reviews
- Geography and police interactions play a critical role when a person forms an opinion on the state of policing in America. For example, a study conducted in Los Angeles found that residents from neighborhoods assumed to be crime-ridden and troublesome were less likely to approve of police (Maxson et al., n.d.). However, those with little to no contact saw them in a more favorable light. Supports of police officers see them as doing their job and believe that death is an unfortunate consequence. Others believe there is blatant disregard when policing African Americans because they are not seen as their equal. Tyrone Dodson, a retired African American police officer who served in Washington, D.C. for twenty-nine years, stated that it was apparent that the police officer was scared and overreacted in the killing of Philando Castile (Yates et al., 2016). He added that many of those guys fear black people, and they think the worst. On the other side, Natalie Todak, a criminal justice professor at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, stated she had interviewed hundreds of police officers. The consensus is that they target criminal behavior, and black people are committing crimes at a higher rate than white people. Eighty percent of police officers said the country does not need to make more changes to ensure that black Americans have equal rights with white Americans in the 2016 Pew study (Bacon Jr., 2020).
- Brooks (2020) mentions that after a grand jury did not put the officer who killed Eric Garner on trial, only thirty-three percent of Americans felt that police were more likely to use excessive force on black people than against white people. However, after the killing of George Floyd in 2020, that number jumped to fifty-seven percent, while a June Monmouth University poll revealed that seventy-six of Americans believe racism and discrimination are “a big problem” (Brooks, 2020). Two current ideas explain the norms of police brutality. First, they are isolated incidents involving a few “bad apples” who use their racist views in their police practices. These officers enjoy using their badges to harass, abuse and sometimes kill African Americans. However, the other side believes the system is broken and was never meant to protect African Americans but to police them and help them understand their place in society. Second, throughout history, police were used to keep the racial ladder intact, beginning with slave patrols who were tasked with hunting escaped slaves and crushing revolts to prevent them from overtaking their white owners, as they were often outnumbered. Police brutality has ties to lynchings and many ideas that exist in American society and current police departments.
- Action research gives a person a different option to bring change in understanding, strategies, and practices. Traditional views believe that investigation provides data to a leader, assuming the information will create better methods, which lead to positive outcomes. However, action research begins with a different concept of what knowledge is, where it comes from, and how it contributes to change (Petit, 2010). In addition, action research incorporates several individuals throughout the investigation into police brutality, allow the researcher to obtain various information based on different police encounters, creating improved actions. Dutta (2011) mentions that dialogue offers a lengthy opening for creating social change spaces by transforming the structural inequities in the distribution of resources through the presence of subaltern voices in the discursive spaces. Dialogue is a powerful tool to understand the underlying conditions that have led to police brutality to reach a solution. The challenge is deciding how to work together to find answers on protecting the African American community. Dialogue allows the marginalized group to have a voice that disrupts the status quo and listening to subaltern narratives (Dutta, 2011). As a result, police can be held accountable for fulling their duties without bias, which is beneficial for society.