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Cynthia Cardoso
English 114B
Professor Turner
2 April 2016

Injustice of African Americans

Every person in the United States has acknowledgeable rights which they could freely

exercise, some more than others. One of these rights, for example, is embedded in the 5th

Amendment, which specifies the protection of being charged with a crime unless corrected by

officers of the law. The problem with this approach is that some police officers tend to faulty

accuse, arrest, and on some occasions, murder innocent African Americans. I argue that police

officers mainly target African Americans because the media portrays them as savages and how

they are a minority, that has been targeted throughout the years based on the color of their skin. I

strongly agree that the criminal justice institution contributes to social injustice and should

regulate officers because it is unfair and creates stereotypes about African Americans being

savages, thus, creating hatred against them,when in reality they are just misunderstood.

The first ever recording of police work dated back to the 1600s where men in communities

joined together and formed a Watch. The Watch was, composed of community volunteers

whose primary duty was to warn of impending danger and wasn't considered officially police

work until the 1830s (Potter). Even today neighborhoods, mainly rich neighborhoods, form a

Neighborhood Watch to make sure nothing gets vandalized or stolen and then inform the police

or in some cases take matters into their own hands. Like the Trayvon Martin case, 17-year-old

Trayvon Martin was visiting his father in Sanford, Florida where he was approached by George
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Zimmerman, captain of the neighborhood watch in Lake Twins gated community. Failed to

listen to the police orders to stay away, Zimmerman approached Martin and conflict started

between them that ended up with a gunshot, killing Trayvon Martin. This case grew so much

attention that people, mainly African Americans, accused Zimmerman of being a racist,

furthermore, was not charged with the murder of Martin. This case was known to be one of many

examples of the society against African Americans. Going back to the 1600s, that system of

community Watch I mentioned above was mainly seen throughout the northern states in

America. The southern, on the other hand, had a different approach to police duty. Back in the

south the purpose of a policeman was in fact known as the Slave Patrol, stated by Potter in his

online article. Their job was to catch runaway slaves and have them returned to their rightful

owner, to cause terror among the slaves and also punish slaves as well, in other words, control

minority groups. In the 1600s, many African-Americans were treated unfairly by policemen,

which, proves the long history of social injustice. This correlates to today's events of police

brutality against African Americans, and other minority groups. Furthermore, as the years went

by and the years of slavery ended, the African American community began to grow in size and

police officers both protected and targeted them which brings us to the present days.

As to the people who favor these unfair activities against African Americans, I cannot make

assumptions that white people are those who favor police brutality, not all white people approve

of this,in fact,that is more of a cause and effect situation. In this case, the medias interpretation

of African American causes people to creates false assumptions about African Americans that

affect them as human beings. A brief discussion I remembered having in class was about how

the media has a huge role in influencing people. Barlow in How media portray
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African-American Males quoted one of Larry Davis speech, Overwhelmingly, white

Americans learn about African Americans not through personal relationships, but through

images that are shown by media. Unfortunately, blacks to consume these same images. For

example, anyone can turn on their TVs and tune into the evening news where anchors briefly

cover a story about an African American getting shot by police officers because he was a gang

member and so on. When people watch this, it creates this just-world hypothesis which is a

psychological term for because he was a gang member he was a dangerous person so he deserves

what he got in this case shot by officers. This is a social injustice because the media always tend

to make cover stories mainly about African Americans v.s police officers instead of a caucasian

male and people who see this assume African Americans are no good since they are always

getting in trouble by the law. This issue affects the black community because they see police

abuse everywhere and they are terrified to encounter police officers because of the fear of being

killed by them. These are people who are afraid of coming out in the streets or even driving

because to them police officers are known for beating African Americans instead of helping

them.

Misunderstood, African Americans try to reason with the police which quickly elevates into a

troubling confrontation. Police officers are trained to handle conflict situations but are angered

when suspects resist. Policemen lack in training when it comes to communication which Sarah

Zhang quoted sheriff Klugiewicz in Police Training Is Seriously Lacking In Actual Science,

The universal greeting is taught to most of the country yet its not done. The Universal

Greetings is an approach of communicating to others with good intention but most of the time

when we have seen videos of police brutality, nowhere in the video do we see police officers
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responding politely to their suspects. This can be due to the fact that there is no respect nor

communication between the police and the suspect. Wesley Lowery said in Arent more white

people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no, If you want to deal with this on the

black side, youve got to teach your children to be respectful to the police, and youve got to

teach your children that the real danger to them is not the police, to which I believe is correct to

a certain truth based on experienced. I was in a situation where a fight broke out between two

intoxicated African American women and my sister and I. The cops were called and when they

arrived we explained what had happened, angered the two ladies said you're on their side

because we are black you fu**** pigs! which only angered the officers and handcuffed one of

them. The truth was that we were being careful on how we approach the officers, any type of

disrespect would throw the officer off and all of a sudden we would be the bad guys. However, I

strongly believe police officers should be trained to communicate and handle situations where

people's intentions are to disrespect because some policemen are not racist but are quick to

respond when disrespected like any other person would.

After the Civil Rights Movements, it seemed as if African Americans got a big break against

society who suppressed them. It wasn't until mass numbers of African Americans were being

incarcerated to rot in prison for small crimes or no crimes at all. The documentary The 13th by

Ava DuVernay talks about how government officials found a loophole around the 13th

amendment that said to abolished slavery unless punishment for crime. The social injustice was

made when they figured out a way to ruin the black community like what we hear in The 13th

documentary, We knew we couldnt make it illegal to be either against the war or black

[people]. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin
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and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt their communities ( Official of the Nixon

Administration, 13th). Sadly, but true, many African Americans were being busted through drug

linkages that were punished for many years in profit prisons to be put to work for as little as 12

cents. In the documentary, they talk about how there was wealthy people involved who heavily

profited from the incarceration of the African Americans. These wealthy people owned private

prisons and the police at the time worked with these prison companies to help get people in their

cells, in this case, African Americans. The more African Americans put in jail cells the more

money these investors got out of it that introduced a new business, Right now, we now have

more African-Americans under criminal supervision than all the slaves back in 1850s (Cory

Booker, 13th). Thanks to the rise of television back then, many people tuned into the news where

they saw reporters talking about African Americans and drugs. While many African Americans

were put in jail, many people connected to drug-related so they never questioned it. As they were

put in jail, many profited as well as created a new modern racism that made it okay in society

even though it ruined the African community.

Thousands of people are joining the African American community to put an end to police

racism against African Americans in organizations such as the Black Lives Matter, founded on

July 13, 2013. Unlike the Black Panther organization back in the 60s, BLM has more support

from many races and with the help of social media like snapchat and facebook many people from

all around the world are aware of it. The BLM movements consist of marches and protest

whenever an African American was incorrectly punished or blamed for something he or she was

innocent from, at most times from police officials. The Black Lives Matters protest brought upon

many attention that truly helped changed the opinions of thousands of people. How Is Black
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Lives Matter Winning by Waleed Shahid states, Before events in Ferguson, 46 percent of

Americans believed that more changes were necessary to ensure that blacks and whites had equal

rights. After a year of protests, the Washington Post found that 60 percent of Americans think the

country needs to change to address racial inequality. Today 53 percent of whites believe changes

must be made, compared to just 39 percent in 2014. The Black Lives Matter movement is

composed of the young activists and with the help of social media their voices were heard which

helped put forward in motion, furthermore, many police officers began to be charged for the

victims they wrongfully abused and obligated to wear body cameras which infact is very useful.

The use of body cameras is very beneficial to reduce violence against the African American

community committed by policemen for it, improve the behavior both of cops and those they

deal with, said J.D from Why the Police Should Wear Body Cameras. Most of the times when

we see videos of police beatings we tend to alway see them being thrown to the ground and

beaten. There would be two different sides of the story and now, in this case, we would be able

to see the whole situation and not judged because we saw only a section of a video tape.

Police work has changed throughout the years, however, there are some things that

remained the same which would be the fact that African Americans are targeted by police

officers. For many years they were seen as unprivileged human beings and thanks to the media, it

eased the thought of police abused against African Americans. Through media, a false

interpretation of African American people was created, therefore, when people saw that police

were beating them they somehow thought it was okay because they have seen on t.v that they are

savages. The very same media also helped the Black Lives Matter movement gain thousands of
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supporters through twitter using #BlackLivesMatter. As the years go by, people always find new

ways to hate and every time we as a whole population comes closer and defend for what is right.
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Works Cited

Potter, Gary. The History of Policing in the United States, Part 1. The History of Policing in
the United States, Part 1/Police Online Studies , 25 June 2013
http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1 .

University of Pittsburgh University Marketing Communications Webteam. University Times.

University Times How Media Portray African American Males Comments, Kimberly K. Barlow,
10 Nov. 2011,
https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/?p=18764.

Lowery, Wesley. "Analysis | Aren't More White People than Black People Killed by Police?
Yes, but No." The Washington Post. WP Company, 11 July 2016. Web. 16 Apr. 2017.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-tha
n-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/?utm_term=.30ab0b81adae.

Zhang, Sarah. "Police Training Is Seriously Lacking in Actual Science." Wired. Conde Nast, 17
Aug. 2015. Web. 16 Apr. 2017.
https://www.wired.com/2015/08/police-training-seriously-lacking-actual-science/.

The 13th. Dir. Ana DuVarney.

https://www.netflix.com/browse.

Shahid, Waleed. "How Is Black Lives Matter Winning?" Dissent Magazine. N.p., 5 Dec. 2015.
Web. 18 Apr. 2017.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/black-lives-matter-minneapolis-symbolic-dema
nds-winning.

J.D. "Why the Police Should Wear Body Cameras." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper,
19 Oct. 2016. Web. 18 Apr. 2017.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2016/10/economist-explains-10.