Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

Since the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, Black people have struggled for individual freedoms and equality in the United States. The notion that this long-lasting fight for equal rights ended after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s is a fallacy. The battle for equality is by no means finished but an ongoing struggle for a large percentage of our American population. In its broadest sense, Black Lives Matter is a grassroots social movement of activists called to action in the face of repeated instances of Black men and women being murdered in notoriously controversial and unjust circumstances. With the conception of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013, a significant contingent of society has pushed to bring forward the voices of underrepresented and unequally treated members of our communities (Lee, 2020). <br/>When formulating a research study, I wanted to combat some common misconceptions about online activism. Living in an online media-dominated age, with the backdrop of a global pandemic and an increasingly polarized political climate, my overarching goal was to observe how social media has contributed to this modern-day civil rights movement. Indeed, this research was conducted during a period of political and cultural divisiveness not experienced in the United States since perhaps the Civil War. Following the 2020 U.S. election where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected over Donald Trump and Mike Pence, political polarization has reached a boiling point. As the foremost social movement in the United States during the era of social media, it is of utmost importance we gain a better understanding of how ordinary people, connected by a common cause, built Black Lives Matter.

First and foremost, I would like to begin by saying that not only has this project been one of the most challenging ones I have ever taken on, but it has also been one of the most rewarding. The point of this project began by wanting to explore the way police officers perceive social justice movements relating to police brutality. I sat down with a total of four current police officers and asked each of them the same set of questions in relation to their perceptions of Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, and the Defund the Police movements. The idea for this project sparked in my mind after all of the events and riots that occurred back in 2020, sparking protests worldwide. These protests were not only about police brutality but also about the treatment of Black Americans and other minorities when confronted by law enforcement.  I am taking a grounded theory approach to this paper, as my point was to go out and conduct my own research and gain my own first-hand knowledge from none other than the officers themselves. I am doing this to understand how they perceive these movements all around them, as well as how they understand police brutality themselves. In this project, I will ultimately tell the stories of 9 voices on police brutality and what they perceive justice to be in situations of extreme injustice, and loss of life. I would also like to clarify the fact that two out of these four victims were not killed by officers themselves, but the officers were complicit in the wrongdoings. I feel that no matter what the color of your skin is, it is important that we all understand and grasp the depth of this issue, as the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans has been much higher and is currently standing at 5.9 fatal shootings per million of the population per year between 2015 and March 2023 (Statista, 2023). Between 2015 and 2022, there have been approximately 2,146 recorded police officer deaths according to National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. We as a society cannot keep living like this, and the sooner we understand the root of the problem, the sooner we can begin to create a pathway to have these difficult discussions needed for true social change.