They were triggered by micro issues from conflict between members of minority community and the justice system, the violence was initiated by members of the minority community, and the looting and burning of businesses were the major forms of property crimes. In addition to the immediate trigger of the Rodney King verdicts, a range of other factors can be concluded as reasons for the unrest. A micro issue can be the anger over Korean American shop-owner Soon Ja Du's weak sentence for fatally shooting a black teenager Latasha Harlins was pointed to as a potential reason
A group of offices named themselves “S.N.A.T” squad. This acronym stood for “Special Nigger Arrest Team” and they made it a point to harass African Americans whenever. “The number of people killed by police has gone down from the middle 1970’s to the middle 1980’s in major cities,” says Patrick V. Murphy, former head of police commissions in Detroit, New York, and Washington, D.C. Also, in Kansas City, Missouri, a police department there has 1,110
Moreover, further statistics show that black people are seven times more likely and Asians twice as likely to stopped by police compared to their white counterparts. Some may say that racism can be a result of a ‘canteen culture’ where some officers hold negative stereotypes of ethnic minorities and pass on their views to their colleagues which will lead in a general negative stereotype among the police force. Reiner explains that characteristics of canteen cultures include cynicism, suspicion, macho values and racism. On the other hand, the McPherson inquiry after the murder case of Stephen Lawrence concluded that the police force was institutionally racist. This meant that police procedures and culture disadvantaged non-white people in an indirectly racist way.
In New York City, an average of seven Latin Americans were killed a year from 1986 to 1989, but in 1990, that number increased greatly. In that year, twenty-three Innocent Latin Americans were killed by police gunfire. It is obvious that racism is still prevalent in today’s world and its no surprise that there would be racist people in the police force. This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed because this can cause many problems externally as in random arrests and internally as police conflicts. People should be interviewed and maybe even subjected to a lie detector test to prove that they have no outstanding hatred toward certain people.
Wealth may be a big issue but it doesn’t mean that the issue of race has diminished. Just 6months ago a race related shooting occurred. In August 2014 a shooting of a young male in the state of Feguson, Missouri occurred by a white police officer. It is said that Michael Brown an African-American citizen was not committing any offensive or threatening behavior when he was shot, causing concern why the police officer thought necessary to shoot dead Michael Brown. This event resulted in both peaceful and violent protests, and the white police officer was cleared of all charges.
Racial Profiling Racism unfortunately has been a huge part of our nations history, and racial profiling stems from this racist history. “Racial profiling is the police practice of focusing on members of particular race groups for extra surveillance. The most common example of racial profiling is traffic stops of young, Black men, and it appears to be most commonly employed as a drug-trafficking interdiction strategy” (Glaser 2006, 396). Some law enforcement claim that racial profiling serves a legitimate purpose in protecting security, but in my opinion all it does is cause an unproportional amount of minorities; mainly Black males, to be incarcerated. Racial profiling does exist, and I believe is quite prevalent, whether it’s a Black male being pulled over for no apparent reason, or someone of Middle-Eastern descent being “randomly” checked at an airport, racial profiling is definitely used.
Stereotypes Three stereotypes that I have encountered in my life have had to do with African Americans. I myself am an African American male. One of the most common stereotypes that I have encounter was African American males are violent. African American males are commonly associated with crime, even though it is proven by the FBI that the majority of crimes in the United States are caused by Caucasians and Hispanics. According to the FBI, in 2008 there were a total of 10,662,206 arrests in the United States, 69.2% of the people arrested were Caucasians, 28.3 % African Americans, 1.3% American Indians or Alaskan Natives and 1.1% Asian or Pacific Islanders.
This movie reveals a sign of regress of our society because, most lynching incidents in America which occurred in public spaces and were usually the result of rape allegations involving black male supposedly assailants and white women who were purportedly their victims has not been seeing as a pure act of cruelty and hated from white supremacist calling for “justice”. A proof of this is that today, the noose appears in secluded areas such as school grounds and workplaces (Hyde Turner tragedy at work Conrald, Texas) as a result of racial tension in the U.S. Years after the Civil Right Movement, the battle for respect among all people regardless of the color of their skins and the end of racist organization or movement is far from over. A change has been operated but it is not enough to prevent such actions in the first democratic country of the world. In my opinion, the fact CNN host Kyra Phillips emphasize the importance that “youth people understand the horrors of the noose.” shows that American youth today are more sensitive about racial violence than previous generations of Americans. The essential reasons is because these major racial acts of violence occurred in the past so we should now be able to look at it from a clear, reasonably coherent and tolerant point of view in order to make these events stop.
If the incident in Tampa Bay does not show a person racism, this event might. In New York City, an average of seven Latin Americans were killed a year between 1986 to 1989, but in 1990, that number increased greatly. In that year,twenty-three Latin Americans were killed by police gunfire. When asked how he felt about racism being involved in police brutality,Yussuf Naimkly of the University of Regina commented: "Excessive police force against blacks has always been tolerated, because as a formally enslaved minority African Americans are trapped in a cultural context specifically designed to inhibit their development and thus minimize their threat to white hegemony" (C.C. 72) Executive Director of Police Misconduct Lawyers Referral Service Karol Heppe commented, “Brutality against minorities is a daily occurrence in Los Angeles,” she says.
Stiffer consequences for police brutality against violence towards black lives increase gun control, save lives and promote equality amongst the races. Strict gun control laws reform needs to take place in order to prevent unnecessary killings towards Black lives. “A study published in the American Journal of Public Health has found that fatal police shootings were about half as common in states whose gun laws place them in the top 25% of stringency than they were in states where such restrictions ranked in the bottom 24%” (Aaron J. Kivisto PhD, Bradley Ray PhD, and Peter L. Phalen MA,2017). If police officers would stop labeling African Americans, everyone would feel equal. African American lives have been labeled and targeted.