In the United States today, there are many debates about the crimes against African Americans that are being committed by police officers. For years there has been a worrying amount of news stories about police officers shooting unarmed African American males with little to no provocation from them. These shootings have led to massive outcries from the citizens of the United States as well as created movements such as "black lives matter." These groups want to see a change on how police officers are trained and for racial profiling to stop. One of the cases that added the fuel to the fire is Randall Kerrick versus Jonathan Ferrell.…
In a video called “I Am Sean Bell”, directed by Stacey Muhammad, one of the men interviewed says “It’s unfortunate that it has to happen over and over again for people to actually feel something about it”. This video features young men featured in this documentary talk about how they feel about the incidents of the police shooting young men and what should be done to change the prejudice and stereotypes that surround young African American teens. The teens in the video feel like the police continually get away with taking the lives of young black men and there is no justice. This is a serious problem because these young men are being traumatized by the brutality of police officers…
We live in a judgmental world; believe it or not that’s just how it is. People are going to judge you before even knowing you and what your intentions are. Brent Staples, who is an African American, experiences the moment of feeling like a threat to women and people based on his color of skin and the way he is dressed. Almost all black men in today’s generation are likely to be suspects or looked at as a criminals or dangers to people. This is due to the fact that colored people are usually the race that’s being placed under arrest. It is correct that colored men have the highest criminal rate, but not all colored men should be distinguished as criminals for the actions of their race. In the essay “Black Men and Public Space,” by author Brent Staples, he uses ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade his of the prejudiced nature of our society.…
The criminal justice issue that I plan to study is the Stand Your Ground Law. This paper will analyze the history of the Stand Your Ground Law and the NRA’s (National Rifle Association) involvement in getting this law passed in Florida as well as in other states. I will give statistics of how race plays a huge role in this law. The “Black Lives Matter” movement will also be discussed. Recommendations will be given to commissioner Bratton on what to do if these laws were to be passed in New York City.…
A rising problem in our world today is police brutality. It is happening everywhere and little to nothing is being done to stop it. Then what is being done to help is being undone by rival movements, damaging media coverage, and violence against innocent people. The “Black Lives Matter“ movement was created to bring awareness to the atrocities facing the African American population today. But due to the reasons mentioned previously, their efforts aren't doing much or anything to help, and as more and more people of color are being executed the more tension builds between minorities and the police, which continues the vicious circle.…
In the past year there have been multiple cases of “racial discrimination” against the police, these cases have been associated with police brutality. Segregation and racial prejudice was a large part of the history in the United States but not in a positive way. Many Americans are not proud of the way the African Americans were treated by their fellow citizens. Prejudice and racial discrimination are prevalent today in both the same and different ways as when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought against it. In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” he uses periodic sentences, syntax, diction, and allusions to write about his beliefs about the immense struggles African Americans experienced to gain their rights, how he…
Police, courts, and the judicial branch enforce laws and punish transgressors. The capability and fairness of the “justice” system, however, is not always effective. Members of the court and police men are humans with varied backgrounds and beliefs. It is difficult to have no prejudice and bias whatsoever when judging offenders of the law. A prime example of discrimination by law enforcers is the Ferguson riots in 2015. An African American teenager was shot by a Caucasian police officer. The incident led to “riots and tumults” between two diverse racial groups, which Paine identifies as nonexistent. America’s justice system works to ensure equality and unity, but the system in turn forces people to make debatable…
People never want to know about tragedy when it happens, especially when it relates to black youth in America. The infamous Trayvon Martin story down in Florida drew massive attention, inspiring the type of controversy around the nation that helped make “racial profiling” and “stop-and-frisk” household phrases. Florida’s “stand your ground” law has been used as a defense in many cases where unarmed people were shot and killed by frightened shooters who feared for their personal safety. However, studies are now showing that this law is being used disproportionately against minority youths who are predominantly black and Hispanic in ethnicity. In this particular case, Martin was a seventeen-year-old black male walking home from a convenience store situated near a gated community in Sanford, Florida. George Zimmerman, a neighborhood crime-watch volunteer of mixed white-and-Hispanic heritage, shot and killed young Martin. This unfortunate act was committed by Zimmerman as a direct result of racial profiling; he stated to police that Trayvon looked suspicious because of his oversized hooded sweatshirt worn over his dark-skinned complexion. It is a sad testament to the daily life of some Americans who are stereotyped because of what they look like, as opposed to the content of their character. Many lessons can be learned from the Trayvon Martin case. One is that clearly, young black men simply cannot wear what they want to wear. Otherwise, they are in danger of scaring white people and being murdered in cold blood. Another lesson is that the media, like it or not, is going to report on whatever they want, regardless of what the actual truth may be. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, police officers are free to profile whenever and whomever they please, regardless of agency procedure. These lessons may not be the most politically-correct, but the reality of…
Racism is an important ethical issue facing the United States. Although the 1960s Civil Rights movement denormalized racist behavior and discrimination against African-Americans and other minorities, racism never truly disappeared. Thus, the Black Lives Matter movement surged as a response to the “extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes” and serves “to re(build) the Black liberation movement.” Despite BLM’s good intentions to heal race relations in the country, the movement is met with criticism and questioned for its legitimacy.…
How would you feel if a state officer pulled you over for driving two miles above the speed limit? As you wait on the side of the road, the cops search your car and every motorist stares. Unfortunately if you grew up in New Jersey, had a parent with a license and you’re African American you have most likely experienced this reality and do not have to imagine, for it has created a vivid image that has stained your memory. “In New Jersey the data showed that only 15% of all drivers on the New Jersey turnpike were racial minorities, yet 42% of all stops and 73% of all arrest were black motorist. Despite the fact that blacks and whites violated traffic laws at almost exactly the same rate.” (Alexander 133) As researchers examine traffic laws and drug laws many gathered data concluding that most of these laws are violated equally among racial minorities and whites but for some reason African Americans make up the largest percentage of people affected by these laws. “Truth is Supreme Court has actually granted the police license to discriminate.” (Alexander 130) The system reinforces racial caste by accepting legal violation of the fourth amendment targeting African American Men.…
Hands up. Don’t shoot. The image of black men and women repeating the simple action at protest in Ferguson, Missouri and across the globe—generates its power from what happens before that moment. In Ferguson and too many places, police are more likely to pull over people of color for driving-indeed, often for simply being a person of color. But there is lasting power in the stories people never forget. They are stories of ‘broken’ taillights, police brutality that doesn’t show up in an arrest report because there never was one, of no justice because nobody knew where to turn. To help reach beyond Ferguson, the opinion department of Guardian US and the St Louis Post-Dispatch partnered to gather hundreds of reader experiences.…
Abstract: While racism is thought to be not present in today’s society, this dissertation will present various topics and relations supporting a cause against that. It examines the results of police brutality and how racial profiling and racism is closely tied with it. This dissertation also tests the arguments that racism is non-existent in the present day. By researching further into these topics, information was collected and presents the Michael Brown (Ferguson) case as a major reason why these issues need to be addressed and fixed once and for all.…
In today’s society, equality has been achieved for most, and very few pockets of prejudice still exist. However, these pockets are not like those that existed in the early 1900s. Frequently, racism is displayed from African American individuals towards the “privileged” caucasian population. Similar movements pertaining to the rights of the LGBT community have began to protest the right to free speech. Modern activism has seen a major shift from what it once stood for. In the past, activists stood to increase the rights belonging to their own group. Now, protests seek to remove the rights of others in order to defend the opinions of the protestor.…
In his brilliant article “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan explains the effects of racial profiling in black and hispanic neighborhoods in the U.S. Current laws allow police officers to stop suspicious individuals based on very vague and unclear premises such as “furtive movements.” Once stopped, an officer can search them with little reasoning and more often than not become extremely aggressive, using unwarranted force and pat-downs in order to find guns, drugs, or other illegal items. Moynihan’s research shows that blacks and hispanics were stopped extremely often on unclear terms. Some individuals might say that this is a good thing, that blacks and hispanics are constantly partaking in illegal activity and must be stopped to prevent them from “killing each other.” However, Moynihan states that “between 2004 and 2009, officers recovered weapons in less than 1 percent of all stops - and recovered them more frequently from whites than blacks.” Despite this fact, blacks and hispanics are still 14 percent more likely to be subject to force (Moynihan). In a shocking article written by professor Bill Quigley, he informs readers that criminal cases going on trial is extremely uncommon. This being the case, many cases are simply plea bargained, and he…
In the Pulitzer prize winning novel The Devil in The Grove by Gilbert King, King states that ... Through years of suffering, slavery, and segregation, African Americans have experienced such cruelty, which some believe to have ended more than 50 years ago, however this cruelty is still widely abundant today. Whether it be discrimination in the workplace, or the perceptions and stereotypes people create about them, African Americans are severely mistreated. Although progress has been made in decreasing the amount of racism in America, there is still much work to be done.…