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Cynthia Cardoso
English 114B
Professor Turner
2 April 2016

Injustice of African Americans

Every person in the United States have 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 for 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 they are a minority, vulnerable group due to the

fact that they were the race that was 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.

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 Zimmerman, captain of

the neighborhood watch in Lake Twins gated community. Failed to listen to the police orders to
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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 southerns, on the other hand, had a different

approach of police duty. Back in the south the purpose of 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 African-American Males

quoted one of Larry Davis speech, Overwhelmingly, white Americans learn about African
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Americans not through personal relationships, but through images shown by media. Unfortunately,

blacks too consume these same images. For example, anyone can turn on their tvs and tune in to

the evening news where anchors briefly cover a story about a 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 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 sees 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.

African Americans are aware that they should fear the police, however, others tend to

challenge police which ends with bad outcomes. Police officers are trained to handle conflict

situations but are angered when suspects resist. Policemen lack in training when it come 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 to communicate to others with good intention but

most of the time when we seen videos of police brutality, no where in the video do we see police

officers responding politely to their suspects. This can be due to the fact that there is no respect nor
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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 and the two ladies pulled out the racist card in which they 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 is to disrespect because some policemen are not racist but are quickly 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

encarcentativet 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 and then criminalizing both
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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 was punished for

many years in profit prisons to be put for work for as little as 12 cents. In the documentary, they

talk about how their 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 in to 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.

Thousand 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 race 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 consists of marches and protest whenever

an African American was incorrectly punish 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
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that truly helped changed the opinions of thousands of people. How Is Black 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 compose 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 behaviour 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 seen on t.v that they are savages. The very same
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media also helped the Black Lives Matter movement gain thousands of 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-than-b
lack-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-demand
s-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.