latimes.com: Seattle in turmoil over police-involved shootings
I thought that this article was quite relevant from a sociological perspective, especially concerning ideas such as ethnocentrism and racism. In fact, the entire underlying context of the article was precisely these issues. I found it quite interesting that the seemingly ethnocentric viewpoint in the article was that of the minorities (in this case, Native Americans), in that, the police force, as well as media seemed to be concerned with the treatment of the minorities, rather than how they looked themselves. However, this could be argued in the sense that one could say they were simply trying to “humor” the minorities with their apparent “concern.” Regardless of the argument, in this particular article there does not seem to be enough evidence to demonstrate an ethnocentric viewpoint from the authorities and media. Conversely, ethnocentrism is quite pronounced in the actions and words of the Native Americans. One indication of this is in the Native Americans stating that this was murder. They view the act by the police officer as an intentional act of hate towards their people. It is as if the world is “out to get them” which is ethnocentricity down to its core.
The issue of racism is seeping out if every sentence in this particular article. As it is written, it leads one to believe that the Seattle Police force must be primarily white, as the complaint is that minorities are being targeted by them (or possibly it is just the white officers involved in these attacks). It is very difficult to really make a completely objective observation in this case as to whether the attacks were racially motivated or not, due to the fact that there are arguments that could be made on both sides (however, none of the arguments truly have all the facts, which leaves them to be more speculation than fact). For example, one could say that there have been a string of attacks against minorities in the area, as the article suggests, or perhaps, that it happens to be minorities that were involved in these situations and/or attacks against white people are not noteworthy enough to make the headlines (as this would kill the story as a whole). At the risk of sounding redundant, this again revisits the idea of ethnocentrism if, for example, if the minorities agreed with the first part of the statement, or white people agreed with the latter. Whether race was the motivating factor in this string of police shootings, I am not one to say, however, when looking at something from a sociological perspective, it is extremely important to examine the issue from all the various viewpoints without neglecting to try and understand why these viewpoints may exist.
When discussing both ethnocentrism and race in this article, I think it is important to also consider a third term: ethnoviolence. In Understanding Race and Ethnic Relations, Vincent Parrillo defines the term as, “hostile behavior against people solely because of their race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation (2008).” If, in fact, the police were targeting these minorities, it would be an ideal example of ethnoviolence in society today. Unfortunately, ethnoviolence is a cultural phenomenon that is very much real throughout all societies, past and present. The outward appearance of a person often dictates the way that they are perceived by another (termed sociologically as “categoric knowing”), and thus, treated by the other.
It is truly unfortunate that there are such hostilities among all of the races in today’s worlds. Given both human nature and history, it is unlikely that this will diminish in any of our lifetimes. One can only broaden the understanding of each other as well as humankind, and human nature in order to understand, and hopefully help to alleviate some of these prejudices. This is only one of an innumerable amount of stories in which racism, and targeting minorities is the primary factor in America today.
Reference:
Parrillo, V.N.(2008). Understanding race and ethnic relations(pp.28). New York: Pearson Education, Inc.
