Police Brutality In Ava Duvernay's 13th And Frederick Douglass

Dr. King's 'I Have a Dream' speech maintains relevance today in relation to rampant police brutality and crippling racial inequality throughout the United States. His famous speech is still revered today by many black rights activists. Its continued relevance is very important to the fight against racial inequality of modern society. Specifically his words about police brutality due to it being as similarly merciless today as it was over 50 years ago. The significance of the “I have a dream” speech is shown when Dr. King says “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality”.

In contrast, not only was this "awful barbarism ignored," but these officers of the law also took part in the cruel acts by enabling the lynching. This illustrates that the judicial system was set up in an unfair way, and did not allow black people equal access to a fair trial. It is also notable how Wells expresses her anger by her use of language, while also exposing the outlawry which had emerged during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Because of this extremely brutal type of violence, African Americans continued to live in fear throughout the

‘’ The head, neck, and shoulders of Mary were literally cut to pieces.’’ (page 38). Douglass appeals to the audience by using imagery in a visualizing way, to give the audience a way to imagine it in their head, to see the hurtful things that went on. The use of imagery from Douglass displayed how slavery was heartbroken. Along with paradox and imagery Douglass uses parallelism to describe how slavery was inhuman by expressing how slaves was frequently whipped. ‘’ They were frequently whipped when least deserving, and escaped whipping when most deserving it.’’ (page 18).

"Southern Horrors and Other Writings " by Ida B. Wells (with an introduction by Jacqueline Jones Royster) focuses on the cruel acts of lynching and why it exists. Ida was a school teacher but dedicated most of her life fighting for social injustices for African American people. In the pamphlet "Lynch Law in all its Phases" Ida examines how African Americans were portrayed as a "bestial race", and brutalized as they became individualist. One core concept Wells emphasizes through out her pamphlets are the depiction of is African Americans as "monsters" created by Southern white to stop the Negro man from becoming inferior (Wells 73) .

Just Mercy was written in 2014, In modern day society, racial injustice has a big impact in this world today, as stated in Just Mercy and To Kill a Mockingbird. Showing that they are both related in many ways. The characters from To Kill A Mockingbird deal with racial injustice first hand. Scout, the narrator and daughter of Atticus Finch, experienced racial injustice of her father’s court case with Tom Robinson, an African American. Tom was accused of raping a white woman who was Mayella Ewell, Mayella said he raped her while he was helping her with chores.

The abundant value of her provocative, concerning memoir is in exploring the psychological impact that racism could make on an individual, spreading a stain of self-doubt and self-hatred that, shared with lack of opportunities, abets black people in collectively destroying themselves all together. Drugs and violence, the disintegration of families and a range of other social difficulties are traced back to this common afflicted root. In Men We Reaped, Ward grapples with the self-condemnation: “We tried to ignore it, but sometimes we caught ourselves repeating what history said, mumbling along, brainwashed: I am nothing. We drank too much, smoked too much, were abusive to ourselves, to each other. We were bewildered.” Telling her family history between the stories of the boys’ deaths, Ward, despite her feelings of self-loathing, emerges as an exception in her beleaguered community.

Both statistics explain how African Americans are segregated and mistreated in American society. To wrap up, police brutality and economic disruption are a plague towards African Americans today. However Black Lives Matter is combating that with political/institutional policies to create

To be specific, she situates the imminent feminist struggle by highlighting the legacy of slavery among black people, and black women in particular. “Black women bore the terrible burden of equality in oppression” (Davis). Due to her race, her writing focuses on what she understood and ideas that are relevant to black females. Conversely, since white men used black women in domestic labor and forcefully rape these individuals. These men used this powerful weapon to remind black women of their female and vulnerability.

The essential victimization issues the author addressed was racism in America and police brutality amongst the African American community. The author discussed the death of Eric Garner, Renisha McBride, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, and Marlene Pinnock. Each one of these victims have been exposed to victim blaming. Society tries to justify police brutality by focusing on the actions of the victim rather than the offender.

King speaks of the attacks, “...unspeakable horrors of police brutality” the black community encountered for having a different skin tone. Since the white community did not see the Blacks as equals they did not think they were hurting a worthy human being. King addresses the “... negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one” as something the black community as a whole had to face on a regular basis. The black community was forced to receive social restraint on their lives. This is a real life illustration of the extreme segregation of the time.

The police jumped into action and treated this case with urgency. The type of injustice that this conflict displayed was distributive injustice. Distributive injustice “is concerned with the criteria that lead you to feel you received a fair outcome” (Deutsch, 2007, p. 44). I believe in most cases involving black people the news make the police out to be bad guys. The most recent cases with the killing of African American males will make you think that the police don’t care about Blacks.

Within our police departments and system of justice, the issue of police brutality has been erected in ways that disproportionately impact poor, minority communities. That is acutely clear in these continual murders of our black brothers and

This is used in modern police forces to victimize blacks and other minorities who are thrown to the greed filled prison system in the United States (Scott, 2014). Finally, I am very interested in the future of just forms of punishment for wrongful police officers that target our African American men and women. The lives of slain African Americans in the 21st century, and racist acts committed in “patrols” in the Deep South during slavery can open our eyes to finding new ways to ensure that officers will be punished for racial profiling. These officers should also be held responsible for the killings of innocent and unarmed African Americans that they commit. This can be accomplished by making sure the criminal justice system takes appropriate measures to look at all evidence.