ABSTRACT
Following the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Tray-von Martin in 2013, the international activist movement Black Lives Matter developed to protest systemic racism and violence against people of African heritage, especially in the United States by white police officers. This form of protest became even more pronounced following the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a white police officer. Returning to the old nature/nurture debate, many argue that, since men-as-a-group are more violent than women-as-a-group, there must be something biological that predisposes men to physical aggression. The leap to biology is seductive because it is the most obvious possibility for many people. But human beings are, more than any other animals, creatures of experience. It could be that there is a biological predisposition to violence, but it also true that cultural influences have the power to restrain or to potentiate that predisposition.
