The topic i’m going to speak on today is one that has been a pretty sensitive subject the past ten years, as well as the overall, misunderstanding of people which then tends to fuel the split/ divide between both sides of the idea of police brutality of minorities in America. Overall as you can see this topic has brought us upon a bunch of things that people are uncomfortable with talking about for various reason, either out of fear of being judged on their opinion, fear of not having a popular idea, etc. In the past years we have seen very many instances where the actions that have occured with police officers and minorities have sparked a whole bunch debate about where America is when it comes to race related issues as well as issues with the law enforcement. This is a subject that has a lot of aspects and ideas that go into this issue which can lead to there being a whole bunch of confusion, bias, as well as blindness to how things differentiate between people of difference views and races.
One thing I have noticed over the years is mainly the bias and the inability to really hear and see both sides of the story and situation that people have to say on the subject and instances that have occured over time in recent years. People nowadays are good at trying to understand rather than to understand which I feel is a frustrating matter simply because it leads to nothing at all, it gets nothing accomplished and then people wonder why change seems so impossible within our country. We as americans are supposed to uphold the idea of us being the “greatest country in the world” yet again day in and day out over time not just in the last recent years but the last 50-70 years have been an almost similar reoccurring thing when it comes to the barrier between people in society. After reading Healing the heart of democracy i’ve come to realize a lot of things that have been happening right in front of my eyes, and I won’t play the victim card I am guilty of a bunch of things that have come into play with why us as people can’t seem to cope with “different”, the “stranger”, “those people” now before I get off topic i’d like to say those three things are big factors in why things bad tend to happen amongst us without the feeling of sympathy or desire to ask questions on why things are as screwed as they are.
Right now with the subject of accountability, and the issue of police brutality has been the primary issue when it’s come to the treatment and scenarios between African Americans and the fellow officers who are part of the law enforcement whose purpose is the protect and serve us. It has seem to be the opposite, and based on how social media has seem to have a mixed issue/ idea and view on the police, most of that split seems to always be based on what race is talking about the issue. What I mean by that is there seems to be for the most part a split between Whites views, and then minorities views on the police. This isn’t is a blind view, this is just a basic thing I have noticed is that on social media which has become a powerful outlet for the world to voice their opinion, things seems to be very biased on which side is right on a subject.
The reason for this is that the debate in america is the targeting of young African American, or African Americans in general. When you look from both sides of the spectrum not all people in each race think of have the same view, of course that is not what I am saying in this essay but my point is this subject has a root that fuels the fire with all of this. Over the years we have developed false views and stereotypes that have reinforced the ongoing problem with this countries issues with race relations amongst Americans. It’s no secret, with the ongoing issues with black on black crime, households problems with black families on average, how much of the percentage of the African American population is incarcerated, and then the idea that rap music has done more damage to the black community than racism itself according to Fox news CNN’s Geraldo Rivera who stated this after Hip-Hop artist kendrick Lamar stated in his hit song “Alright” back in 2015 when Lamar said “And we hate popo, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure”. This is a lyric that people feel is the real fuel to why African Americans put themselves of are influenced to act upon ways people would call “misbehaving”. This is sort of an example of the divide I am referring to whenever I say there is a difference on the view of the police and the misconception of the black community. Lyrics like that aren’t said for no apparent reason whatsoever, this is something that stems from anger and experience with the unaccountability and issues with those who feel there actually is a clear difference in the reality of being a black man in America compared to those with the idea that “we’re all equal” in this country.
The statistics and research that have been done to debunk the idea that this country is ran equally in terms of who the Law Enforcement tends to decide to run a tight ship on regardless of where the environment is varies. Based on statistics that have been collected from the Washington Post, the use of lethal force by police officers between 2015-2017 which was last year have indications that things might be swinging towards african americans. Relative to the portion of the population in America, blacks are overrepresented among all those killed by the police under all/ any circumstances MOSTLY those that involve them being unarmed. In the first figure that you’ll see in the source for this, (looking a the bottom blue bar), us African Americans make up 13% of the population. But however, in 2015 they accounted for 26% of those that unfortunately were killed by the police, in 2016, 24% and in 2017, 22% of all those killed by police. So in other words, you can say blacks were victims of the lethal use of force by police at nearly twice their rate in the general population. Population wise whites make up the plurality of victims of police use of their lethal force, which was 45% in 2017, but you have to understand they make up the majority of the population which was 62% percent in 2015. As of April of 2018, 58 blacks which is 21% of 277 people, 121 whites, and 37 hispanic/ latinos had been killed by police. https://thesocietypages.org/toolbox/police-killing-of-blacks/
Now the big problem with this is WHY this is to be, this is the main issue to what people debate, this question that seems to come up more often than not is “Why”. Now this is where the question comes in, are African American males being targeted? Of course most people in reaction to that question are quick to immediately say that more whites are killed than black, but the statistics above kind make that idea debunked to a degree. Especially if you look at the percentage of those people are unarmed, now another subject that plays into the plethora of black killed by police is the idea and stigma of African Americans carry. Over time things have been done on blacks part that has ultimately given us all a bad name, a certain perception has been taken away from that and turned in something that has been used to fuel the idea of the “ridding” of African Americans, whether that’s by laying down hard incarceration time for crimes that aren’t worth the high number of times in prison, or by another way, killing them.
Now though that is a major speculation you have to look into this from a psychological standpoint, like it was mention in “Healing the heart of Democracy” people are dealing with a broken apart based on experiences, based on people seeing things that they might not understand nor what to understand about another person of another group of people they see. The fear of the unknown, but it’s ironic because though we fear the known we tend to judge based on something that’s being shown to us, yet we don’t want to try to learn be mindful of those that we might not live in relation with, and when I say relation with I mean in terms of social class, rich, poor, the hood, of suburbs, etc. As Palmer stated in the Novel, “So we have developed a variety of strategies to evade our differences, strategies that only deepen our fear, such as associating exclusively with “our own kind” of using one of our well-tested methods to dismiss, marginalizing, demonizing, or eliminating the stranger.” http://www.couragerenewal.org/PDFs/HHD/HealingHeartDemocracy-DiscussionGuide-Palmer.pdf.
This is all a prime reason to why the barrier between whites and black has almost been an impenetrable wall, I bring up that point to try to paint an idea of how the misconception of African Americans has been painted badly so easily and vise versa. That last paragraph was to then go into another topic of whether of not the idea of blacks being thugs is the fact of the matter. I only bring this up because literally every single African American that's being gunned down had his of her death justified with the words, “ he was a thug”, “He probably was a criminal”, “He looked like a threat”, etc all these things that are portrayed as the average African American man, each unarmed, each gunned down. With all of that none of those that have been unarmed and killed didn’t get much justice if any at all. Now according to the U.S. Census Bureau between !980-2008 Black offenders committed 52 percent of homicides recorded, only 45 percent of the offenders were white. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf Also not to mention that when it comes to black on black crime statistics tend to show that black kill each other more than police does. It is possible that this trend has ushered in a sense of urgency and paranoia in America between whites and black leading up into the recent years of differences as well as fear amongst one another. But at the same time this due to environment and the atmosphere of most predominantly black neighborhoods which could tend to be one of poverty or of a lower social class, black are more inclined to run into crime and danger with one another due to that so that also plays a back and forth factor into that.
All in all there is just a back and forth pushing force of just erratic issues can only be taken from different angles, of course there are a lot more aspects to this that can be taken to account but the ones I mentioned are the main subjects that are brought up on the daily when it comes to the social issue of police brutality. It for sure is a sensitive subject where people want to avoid and sweep it under the rug, and just avoid talking about it but thats been the narrative for a lot of unusual things that happens in this country. A lot of people especially the few blacks with a voice such as Colin Kaepernick who in 2016 decided to take a knee in order to protest and bring awareness to the issue of police brutality was slaughtered and slammed by media for it, calling him a disgrace to America, a traitor, and a man who was disrespecting the flag and those who were serving in the military when that couldn’t have been further from the point and mission of his protesting. Athlete Lebron James who recently went to twitter to voice his opinion on Donald Trump's scrutiny of Kaepernick anthem protest was told to “shut up and stick to basketball” by media, new reports, and normal citizens.
It’s examples like this that allow for issues within this country to continue the way it does, and I apologize for using the word “country” a lot but America is a place that I live, my family lives, friends, etc so this isn’t something I take lightly because I can just as easily fall victim to these kind of act as someone I know could. There is hope for this issue, there are multiple organizations that are in working force to eradicate these issues in their communities and around the country, which is important because it’s good to look within when it comes to taking on issues. (C.U.A.P.B.) Community United Against Police Brutality in Minnesota takes an approach to fighting police brutality that deals with the overall issue by targeting day to day social issues and incidents as well as working towards ways to bring some sort of complete resolve in ongoing cases through a variety of methods including educating the surrounding communities, demanding legislative action and advocating for justice on the behalf of all the victims families affected by the heartbreak and injustices from police brutality.
There are many more who are in the fight such as “Baltimore United For Change” in Baltimore City Maryland an organization who aims to combat injustice in baltimore city through “grassroots” efforts. They also consist of including african-american economic empowerment and educating the community to have a pathway for ways to take action towards building a better more promising future. When it comes to actions I feel people should take to better these things are as a fellow black man, this is important because we can’t just point fingers at the world, we have to find way to empower and better our own kids, from the youth up to young adults to help try to put themselves in better positions to be successful and maybe avoid the bad the walk the streets of America, but even then sometimes discrimination comes no matter where you think you are in life. Secondly is to try our best to regulate the training that goes on with police officers, as well as more strenuous investigations that involve these incidents, of course what's done is done, you can’t change the past, can’t bring these people back. One thing we can do is try to help to make sure to close the barrier between whites and black, within America. Though the overall spectrum of racism in America isn’t only limited to Police brutality, but us starting somewhere is beginning progress that we need.