Throughout African American history , the police force has been accountable for numerous detrimental deaths in the African American community due to racial discrimination. In 1960s, African American protesters were targeted by the police force because of the their desire to be be deemed as equal. Likewise, in today’s society African Americans are still experiencing active racial discrimination and injustices from the police force. African Americans have expressed their level of frustration with the inhumane actions of the police force. Police brutality of African American protesters has been rebirthed into 21st century by ongoing racial injustices through Henry Louis Gates Jr. and victims of the detrimental equality marches , evidence is presented.
Since African Americans came out of slavery,
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In the 1960s the amount of injustices African Americans encountered were higher than ever. Africans Americans were merely fed up with the dehumanizing treatment , so they began to protest. This was called the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans were lynched , sicked by K-9s, hosed down , and even beaten in the streets by the police force for their equality. In fact as stated in Henry Louis Gates Jr’s Civil Rights Protest he elaborates on the police brutality African Americans experienced. In 1964 numerous black students stayed home to attend a non violent protest- rally to ensure a school boycott due to racial injustices in hopes to achieve racial harmony. This quickly backfired. The peaceful protest led to urban violence and horrific police brutality. After a white policemen shot and killed a Harlem teenager , African Americans apart of the NAACP and CORE began to attend non violent marches for justice of this young teen. There was never justice for the teen’s death , so therefore police
Police brutality and racial profiling against has became a huge problem in America. In 2016 more than 250 african americans were killed by police officers. Two thousand and fifteen an estimate of 306 blacks were killed. Mainly our african american men have been killed innocently by an officer because the color of his skin.
Addressing police brutality must be done with empathy for and awareness of the plight of the African-American community. Historically speaking, there has not been a period wherein the African-American community was not inhibited by institutionalized barriers. American enslavement provided the foundation for later oppressive provisions that are especially prevalent within inner-city, predominantly Black communities, which, incidentally, many of the prominent instances of police brutality have taken place. Political regimes like the “war on drugs,” “school to prison pipeline,” and mass incarceration criminalize and dehumanize the African-American community, and thus affect the collective mindset of the population. I believe that an imperative first step that has not been taken is acknowledging the effects these may have on the Black community.
“Over the last 500 years people of different race, especially African Americans, have encountered a pattern of state sanctioned violence and civil and human rights abuse. To enforce capitalist exploitation and racial oppression the government and its police, courts, prisons, and military have beaten, framed, murdered and executed private persons, and brutally repressed struggles for freedom, justice, and self-determination. (Sundiata,1)”. Because of this African Americans began to fight back against the beating of their race with riots. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and more recently the Black Life Matters movement have placed emphasis on shedding light on how people are being treated and what can be done to get rectify everything that is wrong with how our government and police
In recent news we have seen massive riots following the killings of African American men by caucasian police officers. These all follow after one of the most prominent not guilty verdicts of the 21st century on the Rodney King beating. With these riots we see the words of Teju Cole begin to take life.
America, home of the free, founded on ideals of equality and opportunity, or so we once thought. “Black Lives Matter”, has been a commonly heard phrase nation wide that represents police brutality against the African American community. Where and When did this popular hashtag start? Authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kelly brought the two sides of this racial conflict together in their recent book, All American Boys.
Martin Luther King Jr. tried to talk to the people of the community and enforce the idea of nonviolence, but it did not work. This attack sparked the Watts riots in 1965. In 1966 at the civil rights march in Chicago people began to throw bricks and bottles. The marchers caught them and threw them back. This act indicted that nonviolence was not going to work in the North anymore.
Firstly, protesting or boycotting were some way many people used to show a sign of change in society. Boycotting was used to show how much African Americans contributed to the society. This is also seen when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr promoted boycotting as a form to grab the authorities attention for a change. He along with others
During the 1960’s, the Civil Rights Movement was a big topic and controversy with all of the United States. It was quite clear that African Americans did not get treated the same way that whites did. It had been ruled that it was constitutional to be “separate but equal”, but African Americans always had less than the whites did. For example, the schools that they had were run down, and had very little classrooms, books, and buses. Martin Luther King had a large role in the Civil Rights Movement, as did Malcolm X, and others.
The 1960s brought a completely different aspect to police violence in that police brutality was the most prevalent among African American communities that were trying to achieve social and political equality through peaceful or radical means. As social tensions rose, African Americans across the country tried to change the dogmatic thought of African American inferiority through either peaceful or radical social movements. Martin Luther King Jr, a prime example of peaceful integration of African Americans into American society, led nonviolent resistant movements that allowed some movements to be successful, and others to be catastrophic in terms of brutal police intervention. For example, The Birmingham Civil Rights Protest of 1963 clearly
In this article, Staples discusses the treatment of African Americans by U.S. police, emphasizing the history of racial profiling and discriminatory treatment. Staples focuses mainly on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. who got arrested in his home located in Cambridge, Massachusetts which relvealed the sharp racial divide over what police could do to innocent black people. Robert goes on to explain that the racial underpinnings cause the majoritity of the public to favor law enforcement as a slutionto crime. Robert claims the political support for U.S. legal discrimination leads the people against minorities in criminal penalties over small crimes which usually are nonviolent offenses. I will use this academic article to support my conclusion
The treatment many police officers have towards African Americans is unjustified. Police officers have certain protocols and rules to follow certain scenarios. This is to prevent casualties as much as possible and to protect bystanders. However, when do some of these actions go overboard? Recently, there have been many cases involving police brutality against African Americans in which some had costed their lives.
So far in the year of 2015, 66 unarmed African Americans have been killed by police authorities. Ever since the death Michael Brown in August 2014, the world has become much more aware of police brutality. According to wisegeek.org, police brutality is “a form of police misconduct in which officers engage in an excessive use of force.” Police brutality against African Americans is an issue that has been causing a lot of controversy in the past year. This issue needs much more awareness than ever before, since there have been many startling cases during and after the Ferguson protest.
This will show how police brutality has affected black communities and how African American communities’ have responded to it with movements and protest, and how they try to overcome
Images and video of Eric Garner’s murder by police generated outrage and protests across the nation. Many wept for the loss of this innocent, but for Black America, it was just another offense in a long series of transgressions against the black body. To them, the pain was familiar—they had known it by many names: slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration. Police brutality was nothing new. This situation was different, however.
They expressed their protest by sitting. It was highly effective because it initiated by black students. When Martin Luther King was in jail, the leaders in Birmingham decided a new strategy. A group of black children would march in Birmingham to protest against racism. If the children of Birmingham couldn’t awake American’s conscience, they thought, then nothing would.