Why Are Blacks Discriminated in Crimes and Police Brutality

Why Are Blacks Discriminated in Crimes and Police Brutality

Deaquan Dunham

Barry University

        Abstract

        I decide to conduct research on why black people are the targets of crime and police brutality because as a young African American man, I feel like this is an issue that is very important to me. It is also a social issue that always leaves me curious, wondering why us, why black people? This paper uses a variety of research methods such as internet research, articles, videos, news reports, and documentaries in order to gain a better understanding of the topic. Through these methods I found that a majority of the problems come from the fact that a lot of law enforcement agents get away with police brutality against blacks and that this system of targeting blacks comes from a sense of white supremacy. The importance of my findings are that it helps a lot of people including myself understand why we still have the problem of racial injustice in America. This paper focuses on the roots of white supremacy and how police officers have gotten away with the murders of blacks and how they tie together on why blacks are the targets of crime and police brutality.

Introduction

Hundreds of years ago, millions of Africans were brought to America against their will to labor for European Americans who settled in the colonies. Different cultures, different languages, different personalities of Africans all brought together to be slaves. When they realized how mistreated they were and being told they weren’t equal to a white man, they knew it was time for a change. For centuries blacks have been fighting to be treated as equals. No matter how hard they fought to gain equality, there was always a setback. Once blacks were freed from slavery there was the Ku Klux Klan, then Jim Crow laws, and then every barrier was seemed to be broken to set blacks on the path to true “freedom.” Even though every legal law was taken away that discriminated against blacks, there is still evidence of racial discrimination in today’s society. African Americans are often deemed as thugs, criminals, animals, or not even human. So the question remains, why are blacks often the targets of discrimination and police brutality? Well, the answer is simple, the hundreds of years of passed down hatred has made it possible for things like police brutality and discrimination to become a regular occurrence in today’s society. Blacks are discriminated in crimes and police brutality because they know they can get away with it and there’s a sense of racial superiority that is rooted from a history full of hatred.

Background Information

During the past 3 years there have been many cases where a headline often features a story of a black person being the victim of a crime or police brutality. It almost seems fake with how many examples of this there are. It’s almost like an American is waking up and reliving the same story everyday when they watch the news. This is reality though, no dreams. At least once or twice a month there was a new story every since the Trayvon Martin incident. 385 fatal police shootings in the United States that had occurred in 2015. This means there was about two officer-involved shooting deaths per day, was more than twice the rate that the government had recorded over the past decade ( 10 Police Brutality Statistics That Are Absolutely Shocking, 2015). With all these stories on the news and in your face all the time, the real question has become why does this keep happening?

Getting Away With Murder

        “ Mapping Police Violence found that black people living in Oklahoma were six times more likely to be killed by police than in Georgia. It also found 98% of these events did not end with an officer being charged with a crime” (10 Police Brutality Statistics That Are Absolutely Shocking, Kathleen Wong). African Americans are often seen as the scapegoats for the problems in America. Blacks are often blamed for such high crime rates in America but African-Americans comprise only 13% of the U.S. population and 14% of the monthly drug users, but are 37% of the people arrested for drug-related offenses in America. With that being said, why do blacks seem to have this huge target on their backs when it comes to these social injustices. Blacks are often the victims of police brutality to this day because a majority of the white officers who have abused their power against African Americans, have often got away with it. Not only do they get away, but they get away with little or no repercussions. There are far too many examples of this each and every year where a black citizen is brutalized by a white officer and no legal action is taken against the officer. The first major example of this was the Rodney King beating. Rodney King was an African American man living in Los Angeles who was brutally beaten by multiple LAPD law enforcement officers. This was one of the first instance of police brutality that was recorded. This video was aired on national television stations and angered many people around the country. This anger incited fierce riots and plenty of backlash. All these events sound very familiar in today’s society. This is because the discrimination and brutality is still prevalent. Examples like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray are some of the more known instances. These cases have sparked the same kind of repercussions and usually the same ending. Unarmed black person is killed, many are angered, cop gets away with it. This repeating pattern is why minorities (especially blacks) continue to be the targets of discrimination and police brutality.

        Racial Supremacy

The racial superiority of white people is a major staple in why blacks have been targeted in crime and police brutality. This is called white supremacy. A white supremacist is a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races. Where did this sense of racial superiority come from?  From the time African slaves were brought over for slavery, the tone was set that whites were superior to blacks.They had to put in a racially biased system that bypassed a class system. Next, they needed to find a way to get people to buy into the mindset that dehumanized and pathologized blacks. They promoted the narrative that blacks were more likely to be violent, lazy, and brutish. This replacement of a class system seemed very attractive to lower class white people who could now themselves as a superior to someone else. This belief system made these people treat blacks  as if they weren’t even as humans. They were seen as savages, monkeys, apes, and beasts. Whites were deemed as smarter, more attractive, and wealthier than blacks. This mindset has been passed down from generation to generation to reach today’s society. Although this sense of superiority is not as strong as it was hundreds of years ago, it seems to remain relevant in today’s society. One of the most famous forms of white supremacy came after the liberation of slaves in America. This group is the reason that white supremacy is still felt today especially with some of the more important jobs like law enforcement. After the liberation of slaves following the Civil War, a group was created for those who were against the policies that elevated the rights of the local African American population. Under a platform of philosophized white racial superiority, the group employed violence as a means of pushing back Reconstruction and its enfranchisement of African Americans (“KKK Founded”, 2017). These seeds of violence against blacks sewn by the KKK are still seen to this very day. They saw themselves as the law and even claimed that one day they won’t have to hide themselves under a hoodie or mask. They proclaimed that one day they’ll be the people in power like lawyers, judges, district attorneys and police officers. This is how they would be sure that white supremacy would be enforced. So, centuries of propaganda, biblical dominionism, racial science, imperialism, literature, culture that degraded black people really got imbedded into the culture and psyche of most white people (“Where does this irrational hate of black people come from?”, 2016). These values that were instilled by the Ku Klux Klan are one of the primary reasons that blacks are seen as targets of violence and police brutality.