http://mic.com/articles/96452/one-troubling-statistic-shows-just-how-racist-america-s-police-brutality-problem-is#.jcd9P6qlW
Statistics show that white police officers kill 2 black people every week in the United States. That's around 100 deaths a year, a quarter of the 400 reported deaths by police officers each year. In America, black people are "disproportionately more likely to be killed by the police". These numbers are obviously an issue and need to be addressed. What do you think could be done to help lower the number of black deaths by white police officers?
The statistics above are definitely eye-opening, but what's even more shocking is the amount of allegations towards white police officers regarding the use of excessive and deadly force towards black people are ruled justified. "The Urban Institute estimates that white-on-black homicides in states with Stand Your Ground laws are 354% more likely to be ruled justifiable than white-on-white ones." 354%. If you Google any case of police brutality where a black person was either beaten or killed by a white police officer, it can almost be guaranteed the officer will not be held responsible for the crime. Why do you think this number is so high? What does racism have to do with the outcomes of the trials? What, if anything, can be done to help solve the issue of racist police brutality?
This extremely relative and important issue within our society, in my eyes, is a very complex issue. The police and their actions handling suspects have come under intense, and in many cases, warranted scrutiny in recent years. Everyone has seen the stories and coverages of police officers killing suspects, in many cases being African American. The shooting and killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson caused riots and for this issue to reach the homes of all citizens, regardless of their demographic. Realizing this, and all the information and statistics that are brought forward, the main question comes forward and is present easily in two parts: Why and how can we stop it? The main reason that the numbers for these statistics being so high can be attributed to cops targeting blacks, but not in the way we all usually think. Policing methods of the past, mainly in the Crack Craze of the 80's and mid 90's, taught cops to target minorities who they thought would be more likely to be selling narcotics. I believe that this is one of the main reasons why cops seem to be targeting blacks, it has just been internalized into their "cop mentality". This is also true in the court system, as many times in the past, blacks and others were seen as "criminals". I think that this idea, and the racism as well, can be curbed by intense exposure to their "enemy". If the cops are exposed to African Americans, and see them as kids and human beings, then they will be more likely to think twice about shooting them.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that there is a clear answer for this problem that we see all the time in the news. However, I do believe that this problem is still occurring because we see so many African Americans in the news being targeted and it just continues a stereotype. It continues to persist when more and more African Americans are seen as "criminals." I think that police should be educated in race issues and should be taught, I don't want to say tolerance because I think that is also an issue, so I'll go with coexistence. I think the word "tolerance" is not something that should be promoted in schools like it is now. We teach that tolerance is the way to cope with differences. This is part of the problem. Tolerance is "the ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with." We should not teach to "tolerate" others just because they are different. We should learn to embrace differences rather than just "put up with them" because it's polite. I think that could be part of the problem is that we are not taught to work together and differences like religion or skin color is a barrier that we just have to "put up with." If we start there, I think that it could slowly make a difference in people's views of each other.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of police brutality targeted at African Americans is certainly a touchy issue in modern society, but it is a problem that is incredibly hard to figrue out, especially about how to possible fix the problem. It's hard to give suggestions about how to prevent the deaths of black people by the hands of white officers without appearing predjudice towards one side or the other. In this society, criticism of any ethnic group, no matter what kind of criticism is met with some kind of backlash, where people claim that the critic is racist for criticizing the ethnic group. If I was to come out publically and say that the best way to prevent the death of black people by officers would be for black people to commit less crimes, I would be branded a racist, even though that couldn't be farther from the truth. I am simply looking at the statistics about crime rates committed per race, and the statistics say clear as day that black men make up the majority of crimes committed against other black people. This is a statistic, not an opinion, and statistics are neutral. While I'm not trying to divert the conversation away from police brutality against black men, I simply wanted to bring up a statistic that may give people an idea about just who is killing the majority of black people in the United States, and that is other black men, not white police officers. The best way to reduce the deaths of black people at the hands of police officers would be better training in trigger discipline, and better forms of non-lethal takedowns being offered to officers. The only thing I can say about the high rate of justification for the officers in cases of a white officer killing a black suspect is that these numbers may appear misleading. This 354% statistics may be misleading, as this number may be explainable simply by the number of cases that are being reported. Since more cases of white officer-on-black suspect deaths are being reported than white officer-on-white suspect deaths, so of course the numbers will be higher, just based purely on probability. I'm not saying that there aren't any problems with racism in the police force, I'm just saying that this may not be the place to be looking for problems, as these statistics can be explained using probability, as opposed to an actual issue with race. In order to reduce racist police brutality, we have to stop treating every case of a white officer killing a black suspect as a racist case. Yes, white police officers have killed black people due to their racist mindsets, but these cases are in the minority. Most police officers are upstanding, honorable people who are going out in the world to protect and serve the people of their communities, not to find excuses to kill minorities, it's just that we only hear about the cases of the bad apples on the tree, which gives a bad impression for the rest of the apples on the tree of police officers
ReplyDeleteThe problems with racial inequality and racial profiling are likely never going to change. Unfortunately people always believe that black people or people of color are apparently up to no good. A main reason to this is because of the oppression this country has applied heavily to people of color for centuries. Even back in the 1950s and 1960s black people were still "below" white people. They had horrible jobs and they were always under scrutiny and being watched by the police. Nowadays black people are still worried about police involvement in their lives but they no longer "settle" for horrible jobs or being less than they can be. the problems with police and their violence towards black people are not going to be settled because racism still exists. Black kids are still taught by their mothers how to interact with police officers so they do not get hurt or killed. It is ridiculous but is not going to come to an end until white men stop being entitled and racist.
ReplyDeleteI believe that racially motivated police brutality is a huge issue in our nation, but is overshadowing some of the good police officers in our country. I will be the first to agree that there has been and most likely will be cases of police brutality with a racist aspect. However, I will also be the first to share a video that shows police officers playing with African American children in their neighborhood. I feel like police brutality is a huge issue, but we must not categorize ever cop as a killer or racist. Are there many who are, YES, but are there many who are not, YES! Media wants to make a story out of things that will sell, and a police officer playing with kids is not going to sell over police brutality. I am not saying it should be left unchanged because I believe it is unjust that these incidents keep happening. I am just saying we cannot categorize all police officers as racist and killers.
ReplyDeleteI think that racism has always been a forefront issue of American Culture. But in different ways. From slavery, to the Civil Rights Movement for more freedom, and now police brutality. I think that the police brutality rate has skyrocketed because of all the tension between the heavy black community and the white officers. Everyone is on high alert and are quickly to act without thinking. I believe that another big part of police brutality is racial profiling. Judging someone based off the color of their skin, what they are wearing, who they hangout or live with, and where the come from. We see in the news how these attacks against black men by white male police officers tend to happen more at night. I think that this also falls under racial profiling because if a person say a black man walking down the street at night there are already predisposed warnings going off in our head that we can't control. It's sad but its the truth. I think that the police officers are quick to act because one, they want to prove how "manly" they are to fellow coworkers, two, they are scared, and three, they don't like black people to begin with. I think this last point is sad because that shouldn't be how it is today. Everyone should be accepting no matter the race. In 2015, it shouldn't matter the race of the cop and person killed by sadly it still does.
ReplyDeleteI think that this a huge issue in our country today. I do not think there is a clear answer to solving this problem. I hear about police brutality in news and I am not sure how our country can end this. I think that it stems from stereotypes that have been prevalent in the United States for centuries. As we have discussed, racism is still one of the biggest problem we face today. In order to stop some of these killings, we must address the issue of racism. However, racism is not the cause of every one of these deaths. We only hear about the brutality that is shown on the news. The media likes to blow these issues up to get more viewers and make more money. Some of the problems are actually real examples of racism and stereotypes, but not all are. We need to stop assuming that all of the police officers in the country are brutal, racist killers.
ReplyDeleteThe way to end racist police brutality is to help educate cops in order to have them feel (if it really is a racism issue) that skin color doesn't make a difference between people and basically educate the racism out of them. This might not be a race issue, I know in one persons report in class officers respond more violently because they don't feel safe in certain areas which unfortunately black people inhabit because of a lack of opportunity. If that is the true issue then two things could happen to try and solve this. One way to try and fix this would be to educate cops in order to make them feel more confident in these seemingly dangerous situations so that they won't feel the need to resort to violence. Another way to fix this would be to improve black communities so that the cops will feel as safe there as they would in white neighborhoods.
ReplyDeleteRacism has been an issue in America since a long time ago. Even if efforts have been made to eradicate discrimination, there is still some of it remaining and those remnants are one of the principles of police brutality against the black community. I think that throughout the years, the black community has been portrayed as a community of burglars and people who tend to be criminals. One of the class discussions this past weeks was how people tend to commit crimes because they live an unjust live and sometimes work harder for less and see no progress in their life so they are obligated to commit such acts of violence to obtain what they are working for but they don't get. The black community, which was permitted to climb the class ladder not long ago, started from the bottom and not all of them have been able to go out of poverty, maybe cornering them and causing them to commit such acts. These acts affect the black community because people generalize and attack them as a whole. Police officers tend to over react when facing a black suspect, and the fear in which they operate might be reasonable due to the belief that black people are dangerous. Wether the sense of fear is real or not, police officers should be capacitated to make rational decisions under fear and control it. As well, they need to know that not all black people is dangerous and they should see them as a person not as a race.
ReplyDeleteI feel like there will always be tension between whites and blacks in America. I mean racism has been around for so long and getting rid of it will be virtually impossible. Nick's point of officers reacting violently in places they don't feel safe in is partially true. I mean there have been incidents where the cops just cops just completely overreacted even in public places like schools. We've talked in class about how cops are basically trained to look at people of color differently verse white people. These issues lie deep in the roots of everyone and when we look at a person of color we can't help but notice the color of their skin first before anything else. It's just who we are and our sub conscious.
ReplyDeleteI think people tend to believe that all police brutality is rooted in racism. I disagree with this statement because a statistic I have seen has said that only 54% of police homicides are African American. This means, that it's only roughy half of the time. This shouldn't really tell us anything because all it says is that sometimes it's a black person and sometimes it's a white person. We need to stop generalizing so much and making everything an issue. Police have one of the most dangerous jobs and they're only there to protect us. There is so much reasonable fear within those police officers that it's somewhat disrespectful in my opinion to degrade police officers and assume that they are all out to kill African Americans. Almost all of the African Americans that are killed by police officers are far from innocent individuals. It's time we opened our eyes and understood both sides of this issue.
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