You might think that black intolerance has stopped but as of lately, it’s been a rise with police.
(1st para)How did police get started? According to the National Law Enforcement Officer Memorial Fund, in 1635 “The City of Boston establishes the first system of law enforcement in the 13 colonies. Called the ‘night watch,’ officers served part-time, without pay.” Later, on September 24, 1789, “The United States Congress creates the first Federal law enforcement officer, the United States Marshal,” which were appointed by President George Washington.” According to Eastern Kentucky University, “It was not until the 1830s that the idea of a centralized municipal police department first emerged in the United States. In 1838, the city of Boston
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Most police treat African Americans unfairly. For example, in 1999 Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times because police thought he was reaching for a weapon when all it was, was a wallet. The list of the killings of African Americans goes on, but all of that turned out to be a misunderstanding. One of the most recent stories found online was the shooting of a 15-year-old boy on May first in Dallas, Texas. Police shoot African Americans when they are unarmed, they claim that African Americans reach for a weapon when all along it’s the complete opposite. Based on stereotypes and appearances, police will question a “suspect”. In 2000, Patrick Dorismond was walking around in Manhattan when a police officer approached him asking where he could buy some weed, this “confronts ensued another cop to shoot him in the chest.” Now, they have rights but the stereotypes continue to affect lives that matter. “An NYPD patrol car collided with Robinson at a Brooklyn housing project, killing him, after responding to a report that Robinson was digging up paving stones to sell them for some extra cash. He was unarmed.” Even though there was possibly a crime committed, police shouldn’t shoot people who can easily be fined or serve jail time instead, not sentenced to …show more content…
According to alternet.org, neuroscientists and psychologists conducted a series of “Implicit-association tests” or IAT’s, and found that white individuals are more quick to identify someone that is black as threatening in blink-of-an-eye decisions, no matter what their views on racism are.
In this specific “Implicit-association test” white individuals were asked to categorize a word that pops up on a computer screen as either positive or negative after a picture of either a black or white face showed up. The results showed that white individuals allocated negative words much faster to blacks than white faces.
Some might argue that, more whites are killed than blacks, in fact In 2015, The Washington Post launched a real-time database to track fatal police shootings, and recorded that as of Monday, July 11, 2016, 732 whites, 381 blacks, and 382 of another race were killed since July of the year before. However, when factored in that African Americans are 13 percent of the population, and Caucasians are around 62 percent, you start to see why less are killed. The Washington posts also calculated that blacks are 24 percent of those killed and whites 49 percent. Which makes African Americans 2.5 percent more likely to be killed by
The power of stereotypes stored in the brain was a daunting thought. This information enlightened me about the misconceptions we carry from our cultural experiences. Also, it startled me that according to (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013) “those who showed high levels of White Preference on the IAT test were also those who are most likely to show racially discriminatory behavior,” (pg. 47). I reflected on this information, and it concerned me that my judgments were simply based on past cultural experiences. This mindbug was impacting my perception of someone before I even had a chance to know him.
Many people claim that racism no longer exists; however, the minorities’ struggle with injustice is ubiquitous. Since there is a mass incarceration of African Americans, it is believed that African Americans are the cause of the severe increase of crimes. This belief has been sent out implicitly by the ruling class through the media. The media send out coded messages that are framed in abstract neutral language that play on white resentment that targets minorities. Disproportionate arrest is the result of racial disparities in the criminal justice system rather than disproportion in offenders. The disparities in the sentencing procedure are ascribed to racial discrimination. Because police officers are also biased, people of color are more likely to be investigated than whites. Police officers practice racial profiling to arrest African Americans under situations when they would not arrest white suspects, and they are more likely to stop African Americans and see them as suspicious (Alexander 150-176). In the “Anything Can Happen With Police Around”: Urban Youth Evaluate Strategies of Surveillance in Public Places,” Michelle Fine and her comrades were inspired to conduct a survey over one of the major social issues - how authority figures use a person’s racial identity as a key factor in determining how to enforce laws and how the surveillance is problematic in public space. Fine believes it is critical to draw attention to the reality in why African Americans are being arrested at a much higher rate. This article reflects the ongoing racial issue by focusing on the injustice in treatment by police officers and the youth of color who are victims. This article is successful in being persuasive about the ongoing racial iss...
This paper was written to discuss the hot button topic, “Black Lives Matter.” Specifically, in regard to law enforcement. This has been an ongoing and controversial issue ever since the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. This is when the movement “Black Lives Matter,” was born, with the belief that blacks are treated unfairly by law enforcement. I, however, do not believe that blacks are treated any more unfairly by law enforcement than any other race.
Explain. Yes and No, the answer is much more complex than that. At first glance you would think that 71% is incorrect and that black people do most of the shootings, because that is what you hear on the news. People tend to believe what they hear on the news, because the news is never wrong ........."right?" First, let's look at it from a statistical point of view. According to the United States Census Bureau as of 2016, the United States consists of 76.9% of the population being white and 13.3% of the population being African American. The remaining percent consists of Asians and Hispanics, which is not relevant to this discussion. If the United States is 3/4th white, would it not make sense that almost 3/4th of the shootings of police officers are done by white people. It is surprising in the matter that even though white people commit 3/4th of the shootings you do not hear about it that often on the news. What you hear on the news is black people doing most if not all of the shootings. This is very shocking and disturbing at the same time. Why is that? Why is the news media not reporting on this? Because when white people murder police officers it is not news worthy and it does not cause a public stir or outcry. The media wants a reaction from the public when they watch the news, because it is all about the news ratings for them. I am sure racism also has a role in it. The media is trying to use
In 2014, the death of Eric Garner in New York City raised controversial conversations and highlighted the issues of race, crime, and policing in neighborhoods that tend to be poor and racially isolated. Garner, an unarmed black man, was killed after being tackled and held in a “chokehold.” According to the AP Polls in December 2014, “Police killings of unarmed blacks were the most important news stories of 2014.” The problem is that young black men are targeted by police officers in which they have responded with the misuse of force and policy brutality. It is evident that this issue affects many people nationwide. The civilians do not trust the police department and the justice system because they hold the perceptions that police officers are immune from prosecution despite their actions. In particular, black individuals, specifically black males, do not feel safe in the presence of police officers because they are not held accountable for their mistakes.
“Unarmed black men are 7 times more likely to die by police gunfire”. This would make a person who’s advocating for Black Lives Matter have a point to get upset about phrases like white lives matter or all lives matter. Race appears to forever become an element once it involves police brutality. When an African American is killed by a white police officer it almost always seems as if it gets additional attention than when a Caucasian is killed. “In 2012, 123 African Americans were shot dead by police gunfire” (Brander).
To illustrate, majority of blacks are stop by police more than any other racial groups. Police brutality is base on ethnicity. Officers seem to target black communities for many reasons. Racist cops might view blacks as less innocent compared to whites. Growing up as an African American you witness hearing your parents telling your male siblings to respect officers and to interact with them differently than they would do their families and friends. After the fatal shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The public wanted justice because the incident was not handled properly. The people wanted to express their concerns. After this incident I remember more allegation from black communities begin surfacing that the police use excessive force against them,
The justice system is in place in America to protect its citizens, however in the case of blacks and some other minorities there are some practices that promote unfairness or wrongful doing towards these groups. Racial profiling is amongst these practices. In cases such as drug trafficking and other criminal acts, minorities have been picked out as the main culprits based off of skin color. In the article “Counterpoint: The Case Against Profiling” it recognizes racial profiling as a problem in America and states, “[In order to maintain national security] law-enforcement officers have detained members of minority groups in vehicles more than whites”…. “these officers assume that minorities commit more drug offenses, which is not the case” (Fauchon). In relationship to law enforcement there has also been many cases of police brutality leaving young blacks brutally injured, and even dead in recent years, cases such as Michael Brown, Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Freddy Gray just to name a few. Many of these young men were unarmed, and the police involved had no good justification for such excess force. They were seen as threats primarily because of their skin color. Despite the fact this nation is trying to attain security, inversely they are weakening bonds between many of its
Referring to the article with the same name “I’m Not Racist, But…”, a social psychology lecturer at the University of Sydney, Dr. Fiona White says, “stereotyping is a normal cognitive process that allows us to efficiently categorise things into groups” but “becomes problematic when people begin to endorse certain negative associations and allows these negative associations to affect their behavior towards certain groups.”
The first police department in America developed in New York and began the first era of policing which spanned from the 1830s to 1900 and is known as the political era (Walker & Katz, 2012). As emphasized by Walker (1999) not only did the political era of policing revolve around politics but provided officers with little to no training, education or recruitment standards (as cited in Police: History, 2014). The era also forced shaky job security for law enforcement and officers could be fired and hired at any point with little to no reason. Even men with criminal records were foot patrolling and women were only seen as “matrons” for the jail; they did not carry weapons and often times had very little arrest discretion (Walker & Katz, 2012). According to Walker and Katz (2012), “a $300 payment to the Tammany Hall poli...
One of the best methods I have seen of detecting this bias is Harvard’s IAT, which can pick up on implicit biases across a variety of subjects. The first test I took was the African-America and European-American IAT, which said that I had little to no preference between the two. This result did not surprise me at all, because in my mind there really is no difference between races, only people. I spent a majority of my life living in a very diverse community, and got to experience a variety of cultures. I believe this certainly played a role in my test score, as a person who grew up primarily in one culture might have a hard time seeing how people of other races could be similar to them. The second test I took was the sexuality
The movement BlackLivesMatter have outed hundreds unlawful officers and victims that never got the justice needed. The same characteristics (color and style) that emulates strong, noble people can backfire. Black people in this country who actively resist dehumanization makes a call to action and a response to anti-Black racism in our current society. (Cullors, 2015) The growth of the movement has moved country-wide, first starting in the south; the south had always had history of racism and anti-black impulses. This movement is continuing to carry up north and west, and is projected that any officer can be the next one to unlawfully kill another black individual. These immoral police officers are no different from the rest of the police force, their uniforms are no different color or style they do not have different titles, there is no distinction between the these two types of officers. African Americans are persuaded to be more cautious and angry towards police officers; anyone with a cop uniform can be considered a threat to their life. Innocent cops were murdered in retaliation to the unfair judicial systems that are not punishing these cops. Once a police-like uniform is worn it not only once symbolizes honor and power, but t too many communities
I have heard a white person tell a black person, that he or she does not act black. I have also heard the statement, “I am not racist, I have a lot of black friends.” When I hear statements like these, it makes me think that people are trying to negatively compare white and black people, even if they are not meaning to. Although I wish we could combat prejudice in the society, I don’t think that we can ever truly stop it, and racism will always be a problem in America” (Friedman, 2007). Unless people stop forming negative stereotypes about different races other than their own, prejudice and discrimination towards races will always be apparent, and passed down to
The police is the one of the foundations of the criminal justice system. The word police is derived from Greek words “polis” meaning state. The main function of the police in the context of the modern state is maintenance of law and order and prevention of crime. The present police system in India is based on the Police Act of 1861, which was legislated during colonial rule and which operates till date. A police station is the primary and basic unit of crime registration; the registration of crime and recording of the FIR is one of the fundamental duties of the police
And the worst part is: we act on them”. I start question if some police officer’s genuinely mistaken harmless object, as noted, just because an African American accompanies it. Reflecting upon this I realized I have been in a similar situation, minus the “weapon bias”. Walking in downtown Cincinnati my Fiancé and I are headed to a show at the Aronoff Center. A few minutes into the walk an African American (whose clothing was holed, covered in dirt and he carrying a large garbage bag on his back) was starting to approach us along the sidewalk. I clenched the arm of my Fiancé a little tighter fearing that something bad was going to happen. I unintentionally reacted with fear. I winced praying, “I hope we are not harmed.” Where could this have come from? Growing up in the Army (moving place to place) my family had many multicultural family-friends. Can people really say they learn these attributes from their parents like suggested in the article? The article reads, “children whose mothers had more negative implicit attitudes towards black…tended to choose white over black playmates” (p.35). I felt unsure in my experience if this was the case. Concentrating on what they called the “weapon bias” during the incident of Amadou Diallo, the police officer may have had similar “fearful” feelings (as I did) only the officer’s justified taking