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Introspection: An Expository Analysis of Police Brutality 

Against Unarmed Black Men 

Lami J. Glenn 

Department of Sociology 

 California State University, Los Angeles 

 

INTRODUCTION 

 With this sociological analysis endeavor, I am fervently 

interested in the social phenomenon of police brutality against 

unarmed Black men and the role that Critical Race Theory (CRT) 

factors into this conundrum. CRT is defined by the NAACP Legal 

Defense Fund as an academic and legal framework that denotes 

that systemic racism is part of American society—from education 

and housing to employment and healthcare. CRT also recognizes 

that racism is more than the result of individual biases, and is also 

used in sociology to explain social, political, and legal structures 

and power distribution through a “lens” focusing on the concept 

of race, and experiences of racism (NAACP Legal Defense Fund 

2023). 

Recently, in light of the coronavirus pandemic that has 

taken a stronghold of the world and has claimed the lives of over 

1,121,512 Americans to date according to official statistics by the 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), unarmed 

Black Americans continue to be beaten, shot, and/or killed by 

various law enforcement agencies across the country. In 2022, A 

total of 1,096 civilians had been fatally shot, 225 of whom were 

Black. Furthermore, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black 

Americans was significantly higher than that for any other 

ethnicity, standing at 37 fatal shootings per million of the 

population in 2022 (Statista Research Department 2023). 

The videotaped events that evidenced the murder 

of George Floyd led to nationwide riots, protests, and civil unrest 

that would become a central focus of media attention across the 

world. The Black Lives Matter Movement emerged as a vocal and 

demonstrative part of the movement against police brutality in the 

U.S. by organizing many of these marches, protests, and rallies in 

response to the killings of Black men and women by police. While 

Black Lives Matter has become a polarizing mantra and 

subsequent movement within the U.S., often being politicized 



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inappropriately, it has brought considerable attention to the 

number and frequency of police shootings of Black civilians. 

Indeed, a CBS news publication identified that police have killed 

at least one Black man or woman every week in 2020, as of August 

31, 2020. 

 Many prominent Black athletes, including the likes of LA 

Lakers star LeBron James and NBA legend and recent 

philanthropist Michael Jordan, have grown committed to bringing 

awareness to this social injustice and have been advocating for 

systematic changes that would save Black lives. This stance for 

change was on display through basketball players’ camaraderie 

when the NBA season came to an immediate halt in 2020. Many 

NBA players willing to forfeit their salaries in the name of social 

justice in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed 

Black man who was shot (in front of his three children) and 

paralyzed on August 23, 2020, by law enforcement officers in 

Kenosha, Wisconsin.  

CRT seeks to address the general and systemic features of 

the legal system that serves to perpetuate race-based oppression. 

This system that CRT challenges permits law enforcement to 

continue to brutalize and kill Black Americans with no recourse 

and with longstanding impunity. In this way, we see the 

significance of sociology in contextualizing societal issues and the 

undue impact of CRT, to the extent that it transcends itself in the 

domains of community, politics, and sports. This is the eminence 

of sociology, in that it provides a systematic approach to thinking 

about, examining, and comprehending society and its social 

problems, human social comportment, and social groups which 

athletes, politicians, and other societal leaders make up. 

Being a Black man who has experienced police brutality 

growing up in South Los Angeles, I have pondered some 

important questions relative to this experience and seemingly 

nationwide phenomenon: How do people feel about the particular 

issue of race and police brutality? I’ve also been intimately 

curious as to why Black men specifically are targeted at such high 

rates for police-enacted violence. Do people of different races, 

other than African Americans, view police brutality 

differently? Are non-Black people more accepting of police 

brutality knowing that it is directed at African Americans as 



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opposed to their own people? Do people, in all actuality, believe 

that Black men deserve to be brutalized, even killed, if they resist 

arrest or refuse to comply with police directives in any 

encounters? These are some of the questions essential to this 

disquisition. Prior research on this topic has contextualized the 

social construct of race and race relations here in the United 

States, examined marginalized communities and their lack of trust 

and collaboration with law enforcement (Braga, Brunson, and 

Drakulich 2019), the history of this nation and subsequent 

colonization & enslavement of Black people, cultural and familial 

influences including racism and anti-Blackness and the effects of 

such (Alexander 2010), as well as the ways in which popular 

media, including music, television, radio, or social media 

depictions and stereotypes have attributed to the negative 

portrayals of African American men in ways that impact people’s 

views on police brutality against unarmed Black men (Jeffries and 

Jeffries 2017).  

This literature does not necessarily explain the reasons for 

people’s attitudes towards police brutality against unarmed Black 

Americans, but rather addresses the overall scope of how people 

view the treatment of Black people in general. Arguably this 

dearth of understanding is contributing to tolerance of abuse and 

police brutality against African Americans. Simply put, public 

structures, policies, and laws can disproportionately place African 

Americans at a higher risk for “justifiable” violence (Jeffries and 

Jeffries, 2017). We must understand the factors contributing to the 

public’s opinion in order to save Black lives. 

 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT  

 Another conception to be taken into consideration in 

relation to police brutality against unarmed Black men is the 

historical context of the perception and treatment of Black 

Americans since the inception of this country. Race theorists 

contend this is the belief that history has had an influence in the 

present trend of Black men being killed, and legally justified, by 

law enforcement. It’s rooted in our country’s history and systemic 

anti-Black structures. The treatment of African Americans, and 

specifically Black men in the United States, as foundational to 

what we see today in terms of classism, racism, mass 



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incarceration, systemic oppression, and the common use of deadly 

police brutality. Historically, African American men have been 

demonized in this country, and as such, the White establishment 

has created a practice of unlawful and heinous behavior that has 

been accepted by society under the shield of law and order 

(Alexander 2020).  

Authors Anthony A. Braga, Rod K. Brunson, and Kevin 

M. Drakulich (2019:539), speaks to this truth in their article when 

they state,  

policing, however, strike[s] an especially raucous 

chord with people of color, who possibly view 

contemporary policing strategies through 

historical lenses. For example, historians have 

uncovered that, in addition to functioning as slave 

patrols, surveilling and limiting blacks’ physical 

movement, early law enforcement officers were 

instrumental in a wide range of illegal activities: 

mob action, torture, and countless killings of 

freed blacks. 

Furthermore, the authors also postulate that  

Southern blacks’ experiences with lynching are 

well-documented in American history...The 

police—as well as the criminal justice system 

more broadly—have long participated in efforts 

to suppress and exploit Black Americans, 

including enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, 

Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and the convict 

leasing program, as well as enforcing the so-

called tough on crime laws. (Braga, Brunson, & 

Drakulich 2019:539) 

 Additionally, scholars Devair and Rhonda Jeffries (2017) 

address the issue of police brutality in their analysis using 

“Marxist Materialism and Critical Race Theory” frameworks to 

call codified culture into questioning the establishment of style as 

an act of assigning or opposing with regard to the proliferation of 

the dubious and reprehensible treatment of Black males by law 

enforcement. Jeffries and Jeffries states that,  

Materialists point out that conquering nations 

universally demonize their subjects to feel better 



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about exploiting them...For materialists, 

understanding the ebb and flow of racial progress 

and retrenchment requires a critical look at 

conditions prevailing at different times in history. 

Circumstances change so that one group finds it 

possible to seize advantage or exploit another. 

(Jeffries and Jeffries 2017:3) 

 They also go on to propagate that racial categorization has and 

continues to permeate American culture, and Black men are the 

targeted subjects. It is indeed factual that the United States has 

steadily harbored discrimination against people of color 

throughout its history. This is currently demonstrated through 

instances of injustice, especially with the disproportionate number 

of police brutality cases against Black males in recent years.  

 Social scientist Marcelo Diversi (2016) also provides his 

perspective on this in relation to the historical connotations of the 

treatment of Black Americans in his research and critique of police 

brutality against unarmed Black men.  

We are living more than 400 years since the first 

slave ship landed on our Atlantic shores, more 

than 238 years since the Declaration of 

Independence proclaimed us free from the 

tyranny of a faraway King, more than 151 years 

since the Emancipation Proclamation, more than 

149 years since the end of the American Civil War 

and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment 

(and that we had to pass two more amendments 

to spell out Black people’s rights to citizenship 

and voting after that), more than 50 years since 

the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, 

brutality against people of African ancestry 

continues to be justified by the American 

establishment. (Diversi 2016:247)  

Diversi also goes on to assert that, “This is the logic of a hatred 

that is older than the birth of this country, a hatred that continues 

to make Black people fair game for police harassment, abuse of 

power, and perverse brutality. This is the logic of politically 

correct lynching” (Diversi 2016:248). In this case, lynchings are 



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what we see today in terms of Black men being brutally killed by 

law enforcement with no consequence.  

 

 POLICE-MINORITY COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIPS 

Previous studies highlight the relation of police brutality 

with the existence of strained relationships between law 

enforcement and the Black communities in which they serve. 

According to an article written by Anthony A. Braga, Rod K. 

Brunson, and Kevin M. Drakulich (2019), in many destitute 

communities of color, deficient relationships between law 

enforcement and residents undermine effective policing. This, in 

turn, leads to inequitable practices and contemporary proactive 

policing strategies that are hostile and associated with racial 

disparities. This exemplification demonstrated the effect of 

ineffectual police-minority community relationships and the ways 

police-community members’ interactions may differ in Black 

communities in contrast to non-Black communities. There is also 

official data to validate claims such as, “African Americans 

experience substantially more contact with police than do whites. 

African Americans are significantly more likely to be stopped, 

searched, frisked, and arrested by police than similarly situated 

whites” (Braga, et al. 2019:539).  

One can surmise that there are indeed poor relations with 

the community and law enforcement, in which Black men have 

become targets of harassment and encounters with law 

enforcement without committing a crime. This was evident 

recently with Derrick Cooper, a resident and founder of the L.A. 

City Wildcats Youth Academy in Compton, who was wrongfully 

detained and humiliated in his home by LA County Sheriff’s 

deputies after responding to an alleged attempted burglary call 

(DuBose, Fenoglio, and Wynter 2023) With poor community 

relations, there will also exist an erosion of trust and general 

disdain for police officers, thus, resulting in a higher propensity 

for overly aggressive police tactics being exerted by officers in 

everyday encounters with Black residents. We find a variety of 

situations like this exemplified in everyday media in which use of 

deadly force is quickly utilized in confrontations with regular 

civilians, as opposed to a more rational, humanistic approach. In 

specifically marginalized communities where there exist poor or 



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non-existent relationships between law enforcement and the 

community in which they are obliged to serve, we can expect high 

numbers of police brutality against Black Americans, as prior 

studies have suggested (Braga et al. 2019).  

Additionally, authors Keon L. Gilbert, Rashawn Ray, W. 

Carson Byrd, Joseph Richardson, and Odis Johnson, Jr. (2019) 

affirm these notions when they assert in their article that,  

The world has received a front row seat to view 

the erosion of community trust in some police 

officers and their departments. This view has 

been provided by social media outlets and body 

cameras worn by police officers raising many 

questions about safety, police excessive use of 

force, crime in the US, and whose life matters 

more, blue, black, or all? (Gilbert, Ray, Byrd, and 

Johnson 2019:172)  

Based on this knowledge, what seems plausible is that if law 

enforcement is stationed in cities where they are not liked or where 

they have no equity or community accord, they will have 

encounters with residents. We can expect hostile and 

confrontational behavior by the police which often leads to these 

community residents being brutalized or even killed. An 

exemplification of this is how the Los Angeles Police Department 

(LAPD) operates and patrols in areas of South and East Los 

Angeles. They utilize overly aggressive tactics in routine 

encounters with residents, including traffic stops and house raids 

in which, under then police chief Daryl F. Gates, utilized armored 

trucks with battering rams to enter the homes of alleged minority 

offenders (Lindsay and Martin 2017). 

This is compared to law enforcement agencies in a city 

like Manhattan Beach, California that has an overwhelmingly 

White population and have no such practice within their city’s 

department. Indeed, CRT posits that,  

Critical race theory not only dares to treat race as 

central to the law and policy of the United States, 

it dares to look beyond the popular belief that 

getting rid of racism means simply getting rid of 

ignorance, or encouraging everyone to get 



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along...racism is part of the structure of legal 

institutions. (Delgado and Stefancic 2012:28). 

 

MEDIA INFLUENCE  

 The role of popular media through television, radio, social 

media platforms, and other outlets was most influential in my 

findings and provided the most relevant context to date in terms 

of people’s attitudes toward police brutality against Black men. 

Understanding the power of both media and cultural influences 

provided a more in-depth reasoning as to why people may arrive 

at some of their sentiments. Scholars Devair and Rhonda Jeffries 

divulges in their article the significance of this, stating that, “the 

basis on which technology acquires power over society is the 

power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest” 

(Jeffries and Jeffries 2017:4) In this way, people are presented 

ideals about influence and power on a regular basis through a 

number of forms. These types of technologies, including radio, 

television, and film, have seemingly diverse purposes. Media and 

its various platforms have the ability to influence people, for better 

or for worse.  

This has always been the case for Black Americans. 

Jeffries and Jeffries (2017:5) states that,  

Society constructs the social world through a 

series of tacit agreements mediated by images, 

pictures, tales, blog postings, and other scripts. 

Much of what we believe is ridiculous, self-

serving, or cruel but is not perceived to be so at 

the time. Attacking embedded preconceptions 

that marginalize others or conceal their humanity 

is a legitimate function of all fiction.” 

With this being the case, media technologies heavily influence the 

subjects that people should be concerned about, the ways in which 

they should be concerned about them and validate the everyday 

existence and continuation of the seemingly crazed status quo of 

the demonization of Black Americans. These scholars urge people 

to challenge the images and representations they are fed on a 

regular basis in which Black people are viewed negatively through 

various means and to not merely just accept them.  



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In consilience with the media influences of hip-hop, the 

point can be made that indeed hip-hop manifests itself in various 

media forms that contribute to the very stereotypes and negative 

attitudes creating the ideal atmosphere for police brutality, 

commencing with the “blaxploitation” movies of the 1970s, which 

employed the aggressive Black Buck stereotype -A figure regarded 

as “a brutal, animalistic, hypermasculine and threatening African 

American man” (Jeffries and Jeffries 2017:9). Note the keyword 

mentioned being threatening in the description of this prototypical 

Black man. This characterization brings the media’s influence that 

the authors speak of; stereotypes as such that were fashioned in 

the early nineteenth century as a means to dissuade and overtly 

prevent miscegenation and were also used as a mechanism to 

make the Black man in this country a feared individual.  

With this presumption of fear, one could be justifiably 

lynched by the White man well into the twentieth century if he 

transgressed any laws or appeared to pose any threat, real or 

perceived. This is a practice that continues and permeates our 

society today and confirms, in part, why police brutality against 

Black Americans persists. Without question, the media also plays 

its role in maintaining this propriety. There are not many days that 

will pass without local news or talk radio shows reporting of at 

least one Black male who has allegedly robbed, raped, or 

otherwise threatened the presumed purity of American society 

(Unnever 2014). Though, it should be acknowledged that we do 

now have heterogeneous examples of positive portrayals of 

African Americans in various media platforms, such as in the 

syndicated broadcasts of The Cosby Show, A Different World, 

Family Matters, and The Parent ‘Hood, to name a few. 

 

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 

For this analysis, I interrogated the question of intuition 

and included, What factors contribute to negative attitudes 

towards police brutality against unarmed Black men? The 

purpose of this thought has been to ascertain a general 

understanding of how many people feel when they hear of the 

many exemplifications of unarmed Black men being brutalized or 

executed by law enforcement officers across the country by use of 

state-sanctioned violence. I am also interested in the ways in 



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which race and how the application of CRT may further expound 

on this. If those aware of these senseless murders of Black men 

are not Black, how will this impact their attitudes on this delicate 

topic? Previous analysis and research on this topic focused on the 

underlying reasons for police brutality itself, and the way in which 

we have become desensitized to these occurrences. Police 

brutality has been justified many times over time, despite repeated 

evidence showing it unjustifiable.  

In instances in which media depictions of African 

Americans are negative, degrading, and portray Black men in a 

violent, threatening manner, people generally will be more prone 

to accept the practice of police brutality, especially if the narrative 

has been manipulated by popular media and the message has been 

conveyed that the victim or perpetrator exhibited threatening 

behavior. Imagine one contemplating, “maybe he deserved it.” Or 

“The news said that he was a convicted felon…so he had it 

coming.” This was the case with police brutality victims Rodney 

King (Linder 2015) and most recently with Jacob Blake 

(O’Donnell 2020) in which their prior criminal convictions were 

used by various media outlets to demonize them, thus, giving a 

sense of consent for the enormities that they would suffer. Prior 

research and scholarship contend that, indeed, there exists a 

relationship between people’s attitude towards police brutality 

against unarmed Black men and a multiplicity of factors including 

racism, and media influences. 

With my thorough examination of police brutality against 

unarmed Black men, while also applying the CRT to this discourse 

of reviewed articles, literature, and information that was probed, 

it was fair to deduce that this inquiry has more complexity than 

one would originally contemplate. There is no straightforward or 

‘one size fits all’ methodology to this issue. The historical, 

cultural, and social experiences of Black Americans in this nation 

are all of relevance when contextualizing this scholarship with its 

subsequent findings. In consonance with this, people’s sentiments 

on this polarizing topic have variances, and as highlighted in 

earlier sections of this analysis, these variances can be wide-

ranging and racially motivated. In this research, we first have the 

issue of police brutality in itself; and then come to an 

understanding of why people may feel about it in ways that 



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reinforce the status quo. Some individuals may or may not know 

someone that has been the victim of police brutality, may have 

friends or family members that are in law enforcement or could be 

the victim of police brutality themselves, which is the case with 

me. Then we couple that with the current trend of victimization of 

unarmed Black men, which introduces the role of race into this 

study. It is reasonable to assume that indeed White people, Black 

people, and other people of color view police brutality from 

different perspectives. 

 Previous research on this topic speaks to how and why 

police brutality occurs, specifically to African American males. 

There are even explanations presented as to why American society 

has grown to accept this. Most, if not all, of the available research 

on this topic alluded to the ills of racism, media influences, and 

the historical implications of what is taking place today. Since the 

formation of the race concept, African Americans have been and 

continue to be the victims of violence, in which this has evolved 

over time to what we witness presently with police brutality, in 

addition to the tragic and senseless killings of unarmed Black men. 

Not only does the prior research highlight the actuality of this, but 

it further brings due awareness to the countless number of Black 

men that have been executed by law enforcement across the 

nation. In this way, we can discern for ourselves the proper 

application of CRT to this phenomenon and the horrors of police 

brutality, in addition to the dangers presented by simply being a 

Black man in America. The killings that we see daily in news 

reports or read about in the daily newspaper of unarmed Black 

men by law enforcement are no different than the lynchings of 

years past; and the justifications of these murders with officers 

constantly being absolved of accountability continue to validate 

the claim that some lives mean less than others. 

 It is through research like this that I hope to continue to 

bring awareness to this injustice and also challenge society to look 

at their own implicit biases in how their own personal attitudes 

may be impacted in relation to police brutality against unarmed 

Black men. Future research would continue to bring awareness to 

the issue of police brutality against unarmed Black men and would 

be potentially the most relevant, amongst many other developing 

social issues, contribution to the field of sociology. Additionally, 



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further research could be modified to include other sociological 

theories and develop ways to measure people’s attitudes according 

to age groups, political parties, geographical locations, and so on.  

Other individuals interested in expanding this research 

could perform field studies that examine people’s attitudes 

towards brutality by modifying the category of victims to being 

unarmed immigrants, homeless veterans, women, Latinx men, or 

gang members as examples. Furthermore, this information 

gathered through data collection and statistical analysis could be 

used to bring awareness to various diverse communities in Los 

Angeles in hopes of providing informed education and creating 

dialogue about ways in which we can build better working 

relationships and support our collective calls for social justice and 

racial equality. In this way, we can demystify the “divide and 

conquer” mentality that has permeated many of the formidable 

communities here in Los Angeles and alternatively stand in 

solidarity. 

 

REFERENCES 

Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass 

Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New Edition 

ed. New York: The New Press  

Braga, Anthony A., Rod K. Brunson, and Kevin M. Drakulich. 

2019. “Race, Place, and Effective Policing.” Annual 

Review of Sociology (45):535-555. 

Chaney, Cassandra and Ray V. Robertson. 2015. “Armed and 

Dangerous? An Examination of Fatal Shootings of 

Unarmed Black People by Police.” The Journal of Pan 

African Studies 8(4):45-64. 

Cohen, Li. 2020. CBS News. Retrieved December 3, 2020 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/george-floyd-killing-

police-black-people-killed-164/. 

Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic. 2012. Critical Race Theory: 

An Introduction. New York University Press, New York. 

Diversi, Marcelo. 2016. “The Ever-Shifting Excuses for 

Demonizing Black People in America.” Cultural Studies 

→ Critical Methodologies 16(3): 245-252.  

DuBose, Josh, John Fenoglio, and Kareen Wynter. 2023. 

“Compton Community Leader Mistakenly Detained by 



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L.A. County Sheriff's Deputies.” KTLA. Retrieved April 

23, 2023 https://ktla.com/news/local-news/compton-

community-leader-mistakenly-detained-by-l-a-county-

sheriffs-deputies/.  

Gilbert, Keon L., Rashawn Ray, W. Carson Byrd, and Odis 

Johnson, Jr. 2019. “The Matter of Lives Underneath 

Black Male Skin: Using Theory and Media to Explore the 

Case of ‘Justifiable Homicides’ for Black Males.” 

Inequality, Crime, and Health among African American 

Males: Research in Race and Ethnic Relations (20):171-

183. 

Jeffries, Devair and Rhonda Jeffries. 2017. “Marxist Materialism 

and Critical Race Theory: A Comparative Analysis of 

Media and Cultural Influence on the Formation of 

Stereotypes and Proliferation of Police Brutality against 

Black Men.” Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men 5(2):1-

22. 

Linder, Douglas O. 2015. Famous Trials. Retrieved December 4, 

2020 https://famous-trials.com/lapd/576-kingarrest. 

Lindsay, Daniel and T. J. Martin. 2017. LA 92. Washington D.C.: 

National Geographic Partners, LLC.  

NAACP Legal Defense Fund. 2023. “Critical Race Theory FAQ.” 

Legal Defense Fund. Retrieved April 25, 2023 

https://www.naacpldf.org/critical-race-theory-faq/.  

O'Donnell, Dan. 2020. Retrieved December 4, 2020 

https://www.maciverinstitute.com/2020/09/why-is-the-

media-making-a-martyr-of-jacob-blake/. 

Statista Research Department. 2023. “Number of People Killed 

by Police by Ethnicity U.S. 2022.” Statista. Retrieved 

April 24, 2023 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124036/number-

people-killed-police-ethnicity-us/.  

Unnever, James D. 2014. “A Theory of African American 

Offending: A Test of Core Propositions.” Race and Justice 

4(2):98-123.  


