Fredrick Little
Ms. singleton
105 -18
10 - 09- 16
Compare and contrast essay
“Don 't shoot;” Unfortunately, in the African American community, this phrase is associated with any form of interaction with law enforcement. Recently, the unfair treatment of african americans in the united states, has had a spotlight shined on it. The name of the most recent victim is terrance crutcher.Inspired by the shooting of mike brown, in his song “Be free”, j cole discusses the backlashes of slavery and segregation.In comparison, Terrance Crutchers and the experiences that inspire “be free”, both root from the chains of slavery that cole mentions; in contrast, Terraces experience and the experiences j cole 's discusses, differ by both the date and the destination in which they occur.
Time is an essential aspect that should be taken into account whenever the topic of race is discussed. Terrance Crutcher was a forty year old African american man, who was gunned down by police on September 16, 2016. Jermaine Lamarr Cole , J.cole , is a thirty one year old African American man, who often speaks against the oppression of the african american community through music; As a matter of fact, In the song be free, Cole samples part of Dorian johnson 's recount of Mike Brown 's death. The death of Mike Brown may be the example
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Due to racism, in the nineteenth century life was hectic for people of color; however, this is far from racisms orign. Professor Aristide Sechandice from Bloomsburg University writes, “For as long as humans have recognized differences between groups of people, there has been racism in the form of cultural prejudice. In the nineteenth century,racism acquired a scientific character, primarily as a result of intellectual developments in Western Europe.” (Sechandice 1). The same professor also
The systematic oppression of the underprivileged is an unescapable loop that keeps people chained. J Cole’s album, 4 Your Eyez Only, shows the difficulties of escaping a difficult lifestyle. J Cole, a young North Carolina based rapper, focuses on the consequences that come with choosing to live a life of crime. Although living this lifestyle is wrong, many are forced into this life and tend to glorify it because it is all they know. J. Cole challenges this notion while also realizing the oppression he is facing while trying to escape the life. He chooses to tell the album from the perspective of his dead friend, who chose this lifestyle. Although this album is dark, it has an underlying tone of hope.
The genre of rap and hip-hop music has taken on a whole new persona in the generation of millennials. Fortunately, there are rappers such as Jermaine Cole, or “J Cole”, who work to hold on to a pure form of hip-hop and strive to portray a message in all of their songs. J Cole is a southern rapper with a northern style and flow. His main messages in all of his music is to speak the truth about his life and the world around him. You can listen to all his songs from the start of his career to now and you could understand who he is as and essentially listen to his growth as person. His song entitled “January 28th” is no exception to transparent style. The theme of the songs is to let his audience know that he extraordinary and he gives pieces
On September 21, 2016 an unarmed black male named Terrence Crutcher from Oklahoma was fatally shot by a female police officer as he stood outside his vehicle. Police officers responded to Crutcher, age 40, in response to a stalled vehicle in the roadway. At the moment it was unknown to the officers if Crutcher was armed at the time. Police said Crutcher approached the officers after the officers arrived. Investigators said that Crutcher refused to obey several orders given to him to show his hands. Officials said that when Crutcher reached into his car that is when one officer fired his taser while another officer fired one shot.
Wilkins, Roger. “Racism.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 572 (2000): 159. Sage Publications, Inc. Web. 25 Mar. 2014
Such as, how Tupac used his song “Changes” to refer to the institutionalized racism in America in regards to law enforcement and so forth. On example from his lyrics states, “Cops give a damn about a negro/ Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero.” Another commonly known song that makes ties with Hill’s is Kanye’s song “When It All Falls Down.” Kanye wanted the ties of her lyrics incorporated into his song so much that after his failed attempted to get Lauryn Hills sample cleared he got a replacement singer to perform it on his song alternatively. However, his concept for this song was different as its purpose was more of a self-contemplation of his individualized battle with consumerism. Today society is affected by artists like Lauryn Hill and her lyrics and often quote lyrics like that of hers as references for equality and moral rights in modern society. Today more than ever the incarceration rates are raising extremely. Not to mention, in the past year we have seen some of the biggest out cries for our African American communities with people using the power of social media to come together on a common ground in regards to law enforcement unjustly killing African Americans and other minorities while in the attempt of arresting them. With that being said as Lauryn Hills lyrics state “Ya'll can't handle the truth in a courtroom of lies. Representing security/Holding the word of God
When speaking about the topic of race even today, it is a sore subject among all Americans. The history of race in America has been a long and trying road, one that most Americans tend to ignore and attempt to gloss over. The book, How Race Survived U.S. History by David Roediger, goes into great detail about how discrimination towards others that we deem different than us has always been in American history, and shows no sign of going away anytime soon. In fact, Roediger states that, “race-thinking will survive and in new destructive permutations” (230). The main points of the book include that: race was gradual, discrimination was not only against those of African descent, and that progress has only
The Untied States of America was built on the exploitation of others and the expansion of foreign lands. Anglo-Saxon superiority and their successive impact on governing policies and strong domination throughout every social institution in the nation allowed discrimination to prevail. Scientific Racism reached new heights of justification towards slavery, the massive eradication of the Native people, colonialism and daily occurrences of unequal behaviors and treatments towards colored people. The strong presence of polygenesis helped spur along and justify racism; the idea that all non whites were groups of individuals who ultimately came from another type of species supporting the idea that Blacks, Natives and other colored people were not ‘real’ human beings. Traditions, legislation, domination and acceptance of such social norms allow racism to be principal whether it was apparent through slavery or hidden in new laws and policies to come. Every aspect of a colored person’s life was affected upon, Education, economic status, environmental location and political rights. Those who had the power within the court system followed the Anglo-Saxon ways, making any change difficult and time consuming to come across.
To begin with, black people are victimized by prejudice. Society shows prejudice by having a tainted, preconceived notion of what a black person is—dangerous. This is shown when a young woman runs away from Cole after getting off the bus. This situation elicits a feeling of defence from Cole: “I resisted the urge to call out in my own defence” (Cole, 2015, par. 20). Prejudice is also shown when Cole campaigns door-to-door. On one of the houses, a teenage girl opens
In the earlier days of the 20th century, racism was largely black and white; today racism has become multicultural and multicolored. The period from 1890 to 1940 is known as the Jim Crow era in the history of prejudice against the African-Americans. Millions were brutalized, killed and frightened to death for voting and taking formal education, during these years. The concept of 'lynching', where the whites openly 'punished' the black population, was a rampant practice. White people would publicly hang black people for petty reasons, all over the country. Up through the middle of the twentieth century, for example, African Americans were denied access to certain public places, including hospitals, universities, and parks and were “granted admi...
However, the reading suggests that “everyone expects African American crime victims, the argument goes, so their plight isn’t news worthy” (BMCV, pg. 4). So why are African Americans lives starting to matter to the media? The media does not care about the lives of people but covers topics that are the most appealing to the viewers. “African American victimization does not attract the media spotlight the way their crimes do” (BMCV, pg. 2). “Just recently, Terence Crutcher, an African American man was shot by a white police officer in Tulsa and not long before that a African American man was shot by an African American officer. (Snapchat). However, when Terence Crutcher was shot the media did not specify the officer’s race but when an African American was shot by another African American they included the officer’s race. I feel that media specifies race to make the story seem appealing to viewers or to show that white officers are not always at
In 1996, famed rapper and entertainer Tupac Shakur[1] was gunned down in Las Vegas. Journalistic sentiment at the time suggested he deserved the brutal death. The New York Times headline, "Rap Performer Who Personified Violence, Dies," suggested Shakur, who was twenty five when he died, deserved his untimely death. - (Pareles, 1996) A product of a fatherless home, raised poor in the ghettos of San Francisco, Shakur, notes Ernest Harding of the L.A. Weekly, "lived in a society that still didn't view him a[s] human, that projected his worst fears onto him; [so] he had to decide whether to battle that or embrace it." (Hardy, 1996) As these fears forced Shakur into a corner, Shakur, in the music magazine Vibe, alludes to his own interior battle noting "there's two nigga's inside me," adding "one wants to live in peace, and the other won't die unless he's free." (All Eyes on Him, 1996) While many of his lyrics sensationalized gang violence and ghetto politics, dramatizing the murder of fellow African Americans and, especially, police officers, he also labored over trying to come to grips with African American self-realization, breaking free from imposed societal chains. Unfortunately, as Barry Glassner muses in his book The Culture of Fear (1999), �it seems to me at once sad, inexcusable, and entirely symptomatic of the culture of fear that the only version of Tupac Shakur many Americans knew was a frightening and unidimensional caricature.� (127) In o...
The United States of America was formed on the basis of freedom for all, but the definition of “all” is very arbitrary. Racial adversity has been an ongoing factor throughout the United States’ history. However, from 1877 to the present, there have been many strides when trying to tackle this problem, although these strides were not always in the right direction. All the books read throughout this course present the progression of race and race relations over the course of America’s history.
Since the beginning of colonization, America has been controlled by religiously and ethically diverse whites. The most profound cases of racism in the “United” States of America have been felt by Native Americans, Asians, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Muslims. Major racially structured institutions include; slavery, settlement, Indian reservations, segregation, residential schools, and internment camps (Racism in the U.S., 1). Racism has been felt and seen by many in housing, the educational system, places of employment, and the government. Discrimination was largely criminalized in the mid 20th century, and at the same time became socially unacceptable and morally repugnant (Racism in the U.S., 1). Although racism was
In the poem, he mentions black people that were treated unfairly and how many of those people are not recognized as much. He powerfully wrote: “Names lost. Know too many Trayvon Martins / Oscar Grants / and Abner Louimas, know too many / Sean Bells, and Amadou Diallos / Know too well that we are the hard-boiled sons of Emmett Till” (Lines 53-60). This quote shows how many of our black people are discriminated by their skin color are mistreated. Abner Louimas, Sean Bells and Amadou Diallos were men that were victims of police brutality and were shot several times by police officers. Specifically, Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin’s deaths were great examples as to how people were and still are racist. To take a case in point, Emmett Till who was African-American was tortured and killed because he flirted with a white woman. Trayvon Martin was a teenager who was shot and killed just because he went to grab a bag of skittles from his pocket, which the person who shot him thought he was reaching for a weapon. The many examples that Johnson makes help show how racism and stereotypes play a major role in our society because many people are still victims of discrimination. They are automatically stereotyped into a criminal who is about to do something that is illegal. In the society that we live in, blacks do not have any power, they do not get the benefit of the doubt whether or not
Racism is one of the most revolting things within the vicinity of humanity. Many times it haunts our past, degrading our future. However, a good fraction o...