When discussing topics of relevant societal issues as they relate to Public Health, it becomes evident that pop culture – in any form – plays a major role in how said topic is perceived, and often time drives the conversation even more than public health itself. In popular and relevant topics and like the anti-vaccination movement, HIV/AIDS, LGBTQ+ rights, and Black Lives Matter, Public Health and pop culture become interconnected in the way that they both drive out conversation, debates, policy changes, and play a major role in keeping the topic a major topic of discussion. As can be observed by headlines in nearly any news outlet, said topics become regularly discussed when issues affecting those that identify with these groups, or the groups in their entirety, begin to arise. The Black Lives Matter movement, more specifically, is one whose views are heavily influenced by pop culture, but also relates to Public Health, in the way that it highlights the dire need of Public Health interventions within the African American community, along with the change that must be made to the health care system to achieve true health equity.
The Black Lives Matter movement has its early roots in 2013, after the ruling of the Trayvon Martin vs. George Zimmerman case; a case that sparked debate, controversy, petitions, and movements all over the United States. After the cold-blooded murder of Trayvon Martin, an innocent 17-year-old African American, the case gained attention from media outlets and activist movements nation-wide. Marches for social justice were being organized and carried out by human rights activist groups like the NAACP, and spotlights were placed on the state of law enforcement both locally and nationally. Throughout the course of the trial, millions gathered in observation, anticipating on Zimmerman being rightfully convicted for his crime. On June 8th, 2013, however, the nation was utterly astounded by the final verdict; Zimmerman was granted an acquittal under the Florida Stand your Ground law, despite there being numerous pieces of evidence disproving his innocence. Since this case, there has seemingly been a significant upswing in the incidences of white-on-black murders, resulting in the accused being acquitted of their murders as well. In a 2013 investigation conducted by the Tampa Bay Times:
“of 200 cases in which Florida's stand your ground law was invoked, almost 70% of the accused had gone free. The accused were much more likely to face no penalty if a black person had been killed (73%) than if a white person had been killed (59%)” (Pilkington, 2013).
As a result, the need for justice and societal change became clear; many citizens, political figures, and celebrities joined together in what is known as the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM, for the sake of brevity from here on out), to bring to light the injustices faced in the African American community; injustices ranging from social – (e.g., the injustices observed in courts of law, in which African Americans are wrongly convicted of crimes, or are not receiving justice for crimes being committed against them) – to public health injustices – (e.g., African Americans not receiving the same level of care in the healthcare industry).
Pop Culture, as defined by the US Oxford Dictionary, is “modern popular culture transmitted via the mass media, that can be enjoyed by ordinary people rather than experts or very educated people;” thus, aspects of pop culture can include social media outlets, movies, TV shows, music, video games, and so on. Pop culture, over the course of the past year and a half, has played an integral role in helping the BLM movement remain a central topic of discussion. One major outlet for all things BLM related, has been social media; from the start of the movement in 2013, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, have been the easiest way to share news updates, ideas, and videos nationwide. They quickly became a key feature in allowing ordinary citizens to share information and news updates regarding recent court rulings or events pertinent to the BLM movement. In early 2015, another death that lay in the hands of law enforcement agents swept nearly every social media outlet, was the extremely questionable death of Sandra Bland. After being pulled over for running a stop sign, she was taken to jail and booked for reasons in which are still entirely unclear, and later died by what was reported as suicide. Reports of her death circulated the internet, as people were providing evidence that she was, in fact, killed while she was in custody. “Ordinary” citizens were utilizing all the evidence they could find regarding the prison, Ms. Bland herself, and her mugshot, to prove that she was already dead before her mugshot was taken. Despite numerous attempts by the Texas county jail to stray away from addressing the speculations, and attempts to have her death be one of the many African American deaths that become unspoken after a while, social media played a vital role in ensuring that this would not happen. People began using hashtags like #SandraBland and #SayHerName, to share new discoveries regarding her arrest, and simply to ensure that her death, along with the death of numerous other African American women, would not go without receiving the justice they deserve.
In later 2015, in efforts to make sharing updates even easier and faster, social media platforms began offering a “live” feature, enabling people to livestream momentous events like protests, or events involving police brutality, that were crucial to have documented – ultimately arising the birth of citizen journalism. In 2016, Facebook live allowed people to witness the death of Philando Castile in real-time, after he and his girlfriend were pulled over for a broken taillight (Mezzofiore, 2016). After receiving over 500,000 views and reposts and shares by BLM activists in less than 24 hours, the livestream became just one out of many that offered tangible proof of innocent African Americans being murdered senselessly; ultimately, a call to action was needed. Social media became a tool for the BLM movement to use as a means of demanding change in our political system, as many African Americans believed that they had a better chance of having their voices heard there, than elsewhere; according to a Pew (2017) study:
“Black and Hispanic social media users are more likely than white social media users to see social media as an effective tool for political engagement… That trend, experts say, is likely because those groups don't feel that their views are represented elsewhere – by political institutions or the mainstream media…Traditionally, people of color in our society have felt that our political institutions do not represent them, for obvious reasons, Einwohner said, ‘When we have social media, people can have a voice.’"
Nonetheless, social media was not the only aspect of pop culture that kept the BLM movement relevant throughout the past few years. As aforementioned, BLM found its way into other forms of pop culture as social media influencers, artists, and TV producers began diverting the focus of the messages they were conveying through their media productions, towards addressing the systematic injustices against African Americans. In 2015, rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar released his album, To Pimp a Butterfly, in which he highlights social injustices in nearly every lyric. In songs like ‘The Blacker the Berry’ or the defiant ‘King Kunta,’ he makes his message the most apparent through lyrics such as “You hate me, don’t you? You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture” and, “it’s evident that I’m irrelevant to society, that’s what you’re telling me, penitentiary would only hire me” (Lamar, 2015). This message continued to be conveyed in TV shows like Orange is the New Black, in which during the season four finale, the character Poussey Washington, a black inmate, was killed by a white guard during a protest held within the prison. The guard was depicted “accidentally” suffocating her to death while holding her down with his knee, echoing the disheartening real-life events of Eric Garner’s death and subsequent “I Can’t Breathe,” and the BLM movement. Evidently, said movement went from being a social justice movement, to being an aspect of Pop Culture itself.
Throughout the course of the BLM movement, many major movements began to present themselves in efforts to alter the way in which people viewed said movement – both positively and negatively. Movements like the “All Lives Matter” campaign, arose in attempts to negate the BLM movement, proposing the idea that the movement wasn’t fair due to the fact that it proposed the idea that one race took precedence over all others. The All Lives Matter movement, however, seemingly did nothing but helped the BLM movement gain even more support, as more journalists and bloggers responded to the All Lives Matter campaign in ways such as:
“Imagine your house is being robbed, and when you call the police, instead of coming to your house, they respond in ways such as ‘what about all the other houses in your neighborhood?’… There is a difference between something being true and something being relevant… It’s the same error people who respond to “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter” are making. It’s not that what they’re saying isn’t true; it’s just that it is unhelpful” (Huckabee, 2015).
Ultimately, people began realizing the way in which All Lives Matter was merely an attempt to diminish the ongoing reality of social injustices against African Americans, along with white supremacy in America. As a result, ordinary people began informing themselves, joining the movement, and using their privilege to speak up for members of the African American community – e.g., white Americans began putting themselves in situations with law enforcement agents that would allow them to test the extent of their white privilege. On Facebook, video accounts were being shared of white Americans flaunting their weapons to police, and still not being killed or even tased, but rather, being carefully detained and arrested; thus, disproving the notion that these law enforcement agents were simply “undertrained” in deescalating situations without having to shed blood.
While the primary form of discussion for the BLM movement was driven out by means of pop culture, said movement also began to spark Public Health debates, highlighting the overall health inequities within the African American community. Public Health professionals began analyzing the issue and discovering that Black Lives Matter does not only pertain to the amount of innocent black lives being lost, but also the way in which African Americans are being unfairly received by health care professionals, and the way in which Public Health incentives are not doing enough to ensure they are targeting the black community. The overall goal of Public Health is to ensure optimal health is being achieved for all, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, gender, or sex; thus, the violent, premature deaths of these African Americans became a major issue of concern in the field of Public Health, as it goes entirely against the vision of the CDC’s Healthy People 2020 initiative: “A society in which all people live long, healthy lives” (CDC, 2010). Public Health analyst, Kelsey Donnellan explains how her experience working in Public Health as a white, cis-gender, straight woman has made the health disparities against African Americans even clearer to her. While continuing her education in Washington D.C., she had witnessed firsthand the protests occurring in Baltimore, and noticed how protected much more protected she was than her black counterparts:
“I was taken to my bus stop by car… I rode in a car out of the neighborhood while the students I worked with walked home on the same streets that a murder occurred the night before… I was protected more based on the color of my skin, the level of education I obtained, and the neighborhood I called home” (Donnellan, 2016).
She then argues that there must be change made in the way Public Health officials are working when addressing the issues pertaining to the African American community. “As public health leaders” she argues, “we represent a field that forced segregation on the sick and the healthy, mandated vaccines without proper health education, and built a response to AIDS primarily for white, gay men” (Donnellan, 2016). With the systematic health disparities faced by African Americans for decades now, how could it be possible for African Americans to begin trusting those that are responsible for ensuring their overall health and well-being? Why are Public Health initiatives and safety measures not doing what they should to prove that Black Lives do matter?
The BLM movement, nevertheless, has done so much to advocate for change in the field of Public Health. Racism – the ultimate grounds in which the BLM movement fights against – is the driving force of the societal determinants of health like housing, education, and employment; therefore, racism is a major barrier to achieving health equity. The American Public Health Association (APHA) realized this to be so, and launched its Presidential initiative: A National Campaign Against Racism – a campaign that “builds on the commitment to social justice and health equity, and raises awareness about racism’s impact on the health and well-being of the nation” (APHA, 2018). The goals of this campaign are to:
1. Put racism on the agenda by naming racism as a force that determines the social determinants of health
2. Ask “how is racism operating here” by identifying how racism drives past and current policies, practices, norms and values that create the inequitable conditions in which we are born, live, and grow.
3. Organize, strategize, act; by promoting and facilitating conversation, research, and intervention to address racism and its negative impact on the health of our nation.
When addressing racism becomes a priority within Public Health, we have less instances of African Americans dying as a result of health issues – ranging from physical to mental – and death rates due to them simply being too afraid to seek the proper help they need, out of fear that they will be turned down or that their problems will be belittled. While it is clear that Public Health officials are working towards creating change through the creation of health initiatives and campaigns targeting the proper groups, there have still unfortunately been little to no policy changes that would ensure health equity is being reached in the African American community.
In a recent conversation I had with a friend of mine (who will remain unnamed for the sake of anonymity), we discussed the way in which we have personally seen the BLM movement in action at each level of the social ecological model, in ways that we often overlook. At the individual level, it became clear to my friend and I, as African Americans, that the need for an entire movement dedicated towards the validation of Black Lives is enough to put African Americans at a greater risk of experiencing mental health issues. Racism is seen as one of the greatest stressors for African Americans, and the BLM movement brings to light just how prevalent racism continues to be in America. According to research conducted, and the biopsychosocial contextual model developed by Rodney Clark, Norman B. Anderson, Vanessa R. Clark, and David R. Williams – a group of African American psychologists – “racism provokes a series of exaggerated psychological and physiological stress responses” (1999). Not only are African Americans being naturally at a greater risk of higher stress levels as a result of racism, but we are not receiving the proper education on the resources and tools accessible to us to deal with these mental health issues. At the interpersonal level, the BLM movement has sparked a slight change in the way people interact with those within the African American community – both positively and negatively. With the heightened amount of people witnessing the firsthand accounts of police brutality through means of social media, empathy began increasing for the black community, as they began realizing that these lives really were being taken away for no reason. Through one of the initiatives laid forth by the BLM movement, African Americans began stopping whenever they noticed another African American being racially profiled by law enforcement agents of any kind, regardless of whether or not they knew who the individual being stopped was. At the community level, the BLM movement has done much to create a stronger sense of community within the African American community. Ordinary people having a network of millions, across the world, advocating for their voices to be heard, and for change to occur, creates a stronger sense of self-awareness at the individual level, and gives people the courage to speak out when noticing injustices of any kind, because they know they have a strong support system. Finally, at the societal level, the BLM movement has brought to light the need for social change. As previously mentioned, there has yet to be much change in terms of policies that affect the African American community directly; however, the recent passing of Amendment 4, restoring voting rights to formerly convicted felons, has given much hope to members of the BLM movement, as African Americans – making up 37% of the prison population, despite only making up 13% of the American population (Gramlich, 2018) – have been granted their right to vote towards policies that directly affect them and their community.
Overall, pop culture has played a considerable role in helping Public Health interventions for said issue. Physicians, journalists, and human rights activist groups have used social media as a means to spread as much information as possible to people across the nation – including Public Health interventions. Platforms such as Facebook, have made it easy for people to share videos with one another regarding the changes being made within the healthcare system to ensure the proper and fair treatment of African Americans, so that more people who identify with this community are no longer hesitant to seek the medical attention they need. Facebook and Twitter have also served as a platform for ensuring people going against these Public Health initiatives are receiving the justice they deserve. Human rights activists use their platforms to bring light to instances of African Americans being denied the proper care they need, which result in the inspection, review and, at times, termination of these health care providers. Pop culture has given the BLM movement a voice, validation, and has unveiled the dire need for systematic change.