Today in America there has been a rise in tensions between African American and police communities. From racial profiling, all the way to questionable shootings between white cops and black “suspects” have shook the nation. This has led to an uproar in not only the African American Community, but also that of the police community and anyone who holds an opinion on racial disparities in America today.
I know exactly what you are thinking me being a young white man knows nothing of discrimination regarding to race and can’t possible come to understand the magnitude these events hold in today’s society. The fact is that is one hundred percent true, I have no idea what it is like to be racially profiled as a criminal due to my race and probably never will. That being said I can give my perspective as a white man on the tragedies that have been seen across the nation that claims liberty and justice for all.
Although this civic issue has many cases to be looked at I want to first give my board view of the racial disparities in America today. Truth be told my view on the racial injustice in The United States was that of a view once skewed by stereotypes and out of context statistics. I thought it was fact that African Americans commit more crimes and thus went to prison more. That then rolled into my thought that it wasn’t because of their race but because of the places they live and the situations they are born into. I soon realized I was the problem in today’s world of policing, police/society shared the same thoughts I did. The worst part being I want to be a cop!
The more I learned the truth about racial profiling and disparity, the more I have begun to see what lies at the root of the problem we see regarding to race in America today. It’s not the belligerent racist’s although there are some out there they aren’t the majority and are easy to point out, but the real problem is the uneducated or miss informed. The fact is, there are more white people then there are black people in America today, which translates into more white people should be arrested and more white people then incarcerated. This isn’t a race thing but simply a numbers thing. If there are more people of a certain race to commit crime numbers say they most likely will. Yet people believe what I once thought and then racial profile African Americans as criminal. This brings us exactly to where this civic issue bred from. Racial profiling is shown in charts like these:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/08/racial_disparities_in_the_criminal_justice_system_eight_charts_illustrating.html. It is precisely these statistics that show the root of the problem as I have said before. These numbers should be reversed based on the percentage of white Americans on the road then African American and Hispanic. Something as small as a six percent gap in police searches of cars is only adding fuel to the fire that is racial disparity.
Recently these disparities have boiled to a head that exploded with the several questionable killings of African American men by white police officers. Thus has prompted retaliation through protest and unfortunately even violence, only furthering the gap between police and the black community. It has been very clear to me that there is clearly a problem with violence between the police and civilians, especially civilians of a dark complexion. However according to a poll in 2015 most white citizens disagreed that thus was a problem. http://www.apnorc.org/projects/Pages/HTML%20Reports/law-enforcement-and-violence-the-divide-between-black-and-white-americans0803-9759.aspx. The finding was that, “Violence against civilians by police officers is an extremely or very serious problem according to nearly three-quarters of blacks and less than 20 percent of whites.” This was extremely shocking to me that although two years ago, white Americans can just simply ignore what is going on in society today.
The pole then continues to show a sharp divide between white and black Americans on their views of police regarding excessive force and mistreatment due to race. Although I’m being very broad I feel I simply cannot give my view on more specific examples and cases of police violence, before I address the division in America on the topic depending on one’s race. There is no way this issue can get better until it is accepted by all as a major problem no matter your race and prior experience. I hope this view can start to show a new perspective to this huge national problem.
I think your article brings up some well thought points with regards to the problem many African-Americans face with regards to police brutality. However, although I agree with your overall message I do think there are some flaws in your argument and article.
1. The first thing is that it was very hard to read your text because of the black background you have so most of the time I had to highlight the text to read. I think it would be a lot easier to read if you made the text white or chose a different kind of background.
2. With regards to the argument itself you say yourself that one of the big problems many African-Americans face today is the fact that they make up a disproportionate amount of the US prison population. You briefly mention that this comes from the fact that a significant percent of them live in worse off situations than the majority of white people. Now this is true ( and an unfortunate leftover side affect of Reconstruction) but I think it would help your argument and credibility to show what the difference in percent for arrests between white and black people who live in the same income brackets in similar neighborhoods. It is one thing if a huge amount of black people from the suburbs are being arrested due solely to bad policing but it is another if a huge amount of both black and white people are being arrested in low-income urban areas. As this New York Times article shows -https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/upshot/middle-class-black-families-in-low-income-neighborhoods.html?_r=0 part of the problem is that many black families still live in neighborhoods with a much lower median income than themselves earn. This means that in certain cases even well to do black families are still living in potential dangerous areas for anyone regardless of skin color. Situations like this can cause police to be forced to arrest more black people of different income brackets since they would still be living in the same volatile neighborhood.
3. You used a poll from Slate.com and although the information on it is more or less correct, Slate is a very liberal site that doesn’t hide its partisanship. You are better off getting your graphs and data from something like http://www.pewresearch.org/
Other than that I really enjoyed reading your article and loved the points you made.