But arguably, even the scientific method is never value free, except perhaps in pure physics. Why do you suppose it’s impossible to exclude the influence of social values in our inquiries?

Recap: The quantitative, positivist approach

Theory: deductive approach. Starts with a theory and tries to prove or explain with research findings.

Epistemology: positivist orientation. We can best know things through experiments and statistics.

Ontological orientation: Objectivism. Phenomena have an objective existence

The role of values: value-neutral or objective stance. Researcher must be unbiased.

Scientists are biased in the very kinds of questions they ask, in the sampling methods they choose, and in the way they interpret the results.

Three ways we conduct research

Positivists believe in objectivity (but can we ever really be value free?) Positivists want to be able to predict human behavior.

Interpretivists: This is all about intersubjectivity; empathy. How does it feel to be _______? Can I “get inside” the other person’s head, to better understand. Like positivists, they believe objectivity is possible.

Relativists: Look for the exercise of POWER. They question objectivity.

Judith Butler on the Rodney King case

Reproducing the video within a racially saturated field of visibility

Defense attorneys for police in the RK case argued that he was a danger to the police officers.

March 3, 1991, Rodney King - 12 km police chase.

KING INTERVIEW:

(CONTENT WARNING)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYAC-KgV0vM&t=2s

Should (objective) video evidence have guaranteed a conviction?

June 26, 1992 - Amnesty Amnesty International accuses the Los Angles Police Department (LAPD) of excessive force, sometimes amounting to torture.

The number of police on the scene when Rodney King was beaten included 21 officers from the LAPD and 4 officers from the California Highway Patrol.

Testimony (CONTENT WARNING)

Singer described in vivid terms how the baton blows “split open King's face” and “blood poured out,” while King “screamed.” She said the other officers used the baton with “power strokes” (motions similar the swinging of a baseball bat)

25 police surrounded King who sustained 56 baton blows and six kicks, producing 11 skull fractures, brain damage, and kidney damage.

Officers charged: Sgt. Stacey C. Koon, Laurence M. Powell, Theodore Briseno, & Timothy Wind.

Filed inaccurate reports, omitting King’s head wounds.

March 15, 1991: arraigned on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and use of excessive force.

March 26 ~ pleaded not guilty

Despite the videotape, a jury in Simi Valley concluded a year later that the evidence was not sufficient to convict the officers.

The acquittal of four officers involved in King's beating sparked L.A. riots. 54 dead, 2000 injured.

Sentencing

July, 1993: Damian Williams, a man of African descent, was tried for beating Reginald Denny, a white man, during the L.A. riot April 29, 1992. The judge sentenced Damian Williams to the maximum allowed by law: 10 years in prison.

August 4, 1993 -- The sentencing date of Koon and Powell. The maximum allowed penalty was 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. They were sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Reuters news: "April 19, 1993

A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll found the majority of Black Americans surveyed (55%) thought two convictions were not enough, while only 21% of white Americans felt the same.

White officers Koon and Powell: Federal Prison Camp at Dublin, California. Nicknamed "Club Fed" - "a prison without walls, fences, bars, gun towers or guns. Escapees called “walkaways.”

Prisoners eat in a dining room with a salad bar, and are provided recreational facilities, including video rentals, gardening, a asphalt jogging track, a sand volleyball court, and a weightlifting room. (From the Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1993)

Controversy was raised when this facility was compared to California's other prisons, which have "death fences" designed to electrocute escapees. (Los Angeles Times,1993).

Can we really be objective, and unbiased?

Scientists’ personal views inform questions they ask and interpretations.

Knowledge is relative; depends on our value system.

Social constructions

Objectivity?

Seeing is arguably NOT an act of direct perception.

The visual field is not neutral to the question of race; it is itself a racialized formation

The King trial demonstrated that we have no simple recourse to the visible, and to visual evidence, which is always an interpretation.

Racist episteme

Racial schematization of the visible field. Racism pervades perception, structuring what we perceive

Whiteness as an episteme operated in the King case, despite the presence of 2 nonwhite jurors.

Episteme: world view which gives shape to the knowledge of that time

Discourse: interpretation. Power exercised through language, images and representations.

Racialized formations

Racialized formation: is a racial categorization as a result of human interaction rather than natural differentiation.

This challenges the problematic 1988 statute that defined a racial(ized) group as “a set of individuals whose identity is distinctive in terms of physical characteristics or biological descent (Quoted in Lopez, 53).”BUT “races” are not marked by significant genetic differences.

Thus, we can say that “race” is socially constructed. Racialized divisions do not reflect fundamental genetic differences.

“Race”

“Race” as a function of skin colour as a marker is problematic. Example in Lopez reading: Light skin – northern Japan.

Intragroup differences exceed intergroup differences. Differences between individuals of the same “race” are frequently more significant than differences amongst average individuals of different “races.” (Lopez 53). Example: More genetic differentiation occurs within populations labelled black and white than between these populations.

History of science, especially since the 19th c. “is the history of failed efforts to justify these social beliefs or constructions (Lopez).” Skin colour, hair texture, facial angles, cranial capacity, brain mass.

Ida B Wells (1862-1931)

“I have firmly believed all along that the law was on our side, and would, when we appealed to it, give us justice. I feel shorn of that belief, and utterly discouraged, and just now, if it were possible, would gather my race in my arms and fly away with them.” (1887)

George Stinney Jr. 1931-1944

Death Sentence on April 24, 1944 ordering Stinney's execution on June 16, 1944

Sammy Yatim, 18, shot by Toronto police, July 2013

Eight of the nine shots fired hit Yatim. Surveillance video indicates that Yatim was lying on the ground when the last six shots were fired

Tamir Rice, 12. Shot for carrying a toy weapon in an “open carry” state

Under two Supreme Court rulings that dictate police use of force, officers must show that they had a reasonable belief that a suspect was a threat up to the moment the last bullet was fired. Grand juries have now backed up the officers, deciding to file no criminal charges against the cops involved in the police shooting.

#BlackLivesMatter

RESISTANCE

The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for liberation.

Trayvon Martin, 17 (2012) Florida