The Social Problem REVIEW OF LITERATURE

16 among African American during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Yet discrimination did not disappear; it became more subtle, harder to detect, and more difficult to prove. Even more troubling, those for whom past discrimination denied education, job training, and employment experience continued to find the promise of economic opportunity and a better life elusive. Towards the end of the war, he realized that African Americans could become an integral and equal part of this, after he had hesitantly begun to grant them civil rights as well. And still it would be historically incorrect to call Lincoln the father of the Civil Rights movement, though through his actions as war president the abolition of slavery was made possible. He thus paved the way. One of the most prominent African Americans of the 20 th century, W. E. B. Du Bois, once remarked that Lincoln—despite all his contradictions—was “big enough to be inconsistent.” His tendency to take cover under the idea of “colonization” in order not to confront the young republic with the severe test of full racial equality and integration might be one of those inconsistencies.

2.5 The Social Problem

Social Problems by James Coleman 1984, This book discusses social problems around our life. This book contains the meaning, the kind, the cause and the example of social problems in some places. This book helps the writer to understand about the social problems. So, the writer can find the social problems appropriately in each poem. Poverty, racism, war, violence, mental disorders, pollution are the list of social problems. The sociological study of social problems is founded on the belief that something can Universitas Sumatera Utara 17 indeed be done if we first make the effort to study our problems systematically and then act on our understanding. Sociology is a framework for sorting out all of these facts, ideas, and beliefs. Use of the sociological of theory helps reduce confusion in the minds of those who wish to participate in public discussions of these important issues. Most people define a social problem as a condition that is harmful to society. But the matter is not so simple, for the meanings of such everyday terms as harm and society are not clear. According Robert K. Merton in Coleman 1987, social problem are created by failure to close the gap between the way people want things to be and the way things really are. Through this definition, racial discrimination is a social problem because we believe that everyone should receive fair and equal treatment, yet certain groups are still denied equal access to education, employment, and housing. Universitas Sumatera Utara 18

CHAPTER III METHOD OF RESEARCH

3.1 Research Design

In analyzing the subject matter of the problems, the writer uses descriptive qualitative method. According to Denzin and Lincoln in Wahyuni 2004, “qualitative research is multi-method in focus, involving an intrepretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. It means that qualitative researchers discussing about natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. Qualitative research involves the study use and collection of a variety of empirical materials-case study, personal experience, introspective, life story, interview, observational, historical, interactional and visual texts, that describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individual’s live.” Through this method, will describe about the influences of Jackson’s songs to the music industrial and also the society in that era when the songs were written. In obtaining the data, library research method is used. Through this method the data relies on the materials, which considered to be determining or supporting sources of analysis. The data which are going to be analyzed in this thesis are five songs of Michael Jackson. The research design can be seen from scheme; Universitas Sumatera Utara