Another major cultural issue which has contributed to the prevalence of racial profiling and police brutality against Africans-Americans is prejudice. According to Martin and Nakayama (2013), prejudice is the negative attitudes towards other people that are based on faulty and inflexible stereotypes. In the society today, African-Americans have continuously experienced prejudice in the hands of police officers especially in police traffic stops. Warren and Farrell (2009) note that a driver from the minority community is two times more likely to be stopped by a traffic police officer compared to a white motorist. This is because the police have thought that African-Americans and those of the minority races are more likely to be involved in crimes unlike their white counterparts. This puts people of a minority race especially African-Americans, at a huge societal disadvantage. This can evoke feelings of seclusion and discrimination to the point where members of specific groups may not feel comfortable driving a car or being out in public in certain areas.
Another issue which has contributed to the increased cases of racial profiling and subsequent police brutality is stereotyping. According to Martin and Nakayama (2013), stereotyping is a generalized belief one may hold about a group of people. When stereotyping occurs, groups are generalized and connected to certain behaviors that people view as negative. Over the years, African-Americans and members of the Latino community are specifically targeted in our country in beliefs that both groups are not providing good for our society. These generalizations make it easy for law enforcement agencies to act inappropriately towards members of the society that they believe are in engaging in illegal activity. In his article, Romero (2006) notes that the Latino community in the US has suffered stereotyping in the general society and at the hands of law enforcement agencies.
Social histories and cultural imperialism are the other two factors which have contributed to the rampant racial profiling and police brutality against minorities and especially African Americans. Martin and Nakayama (2013) argue that social histories help us to focus on everyday life experiences of various groups in the past. An understanding of the social history of African Americans paints an image of a race which has witnessed increased persecution and discrimination in the hands of the majorities. Cultural imperialism which describes the unevenly distributed resources throughout our society is another factor which has contributed to increased racial profiling and police brutality (Madden & Vekker, 2017). Edelman, Luca, and Svirsky (2017) define cultural imperialism as the use of politics or economy by a dominant community of various aspects of its own culture onto another. Cultural imperialism has seen the majority of whites culturally dominate the black minorities which have seen African-Americans being treated as lower than the white community.
Understanding these concepts and how they contribute to racial profiling and police brutality is essential in understanding how communication can be used to address them. One of the methods which can be used to address the concerns of racial differences through communication is through adopting the integrative model of communication. The model is best adapted for minorities to make them feel more comfortable and assimilate to the local population. This process of adjustment represents a psychic breakdown of previously held attitudes and behaviors ones that worked in original cultural contexts. This model fits very well with our dialectical approach in its emphasis on the interconnectedness of individual and context in the adaptation process. Other than this, understanding the role of addressing racial profiling and police brutality through the local institutions, like schools, religious institutions, and social service agencies is important. These organizations can help to foster communication around the issues affecting the community helping come up with unique solutions to the current social problem.
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