By Marinna Stopa
Black people in the United States of America are most likely to be killed by police 3 times the rate of white people and are 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed when killed. 8 of the 100 largest city police departments kill at higher rates than the median US murder rate; per every 100k people in Reno, Nevada, statistically, 12.1 black men will be killed by police, versus the US average of 5. 98.3% of these killings do not result in charges for the officers (MappingPoliceViolence, 2020). While this statistic may include legitimately justified killings, a great percentage of unjustified murders occur without consequence. The lack of justice for the Black community has created a long-awaited uproar in the streets of America; one that has gained international attention and support.
Down to its roots, the United States of America has a huge race problem.
Christopher Columbus, the well-known explorer credited with discovering the land, enslaved the indigenous people he came upon within the Caribbean Islands and along the Central and South American coasts, treating them with extreme violence and brutality.
He forced these enslaved people to work for the sake of his personal profit and even sent thousands of Taino people from their islands to Spain, where many were sold into slavery, or forced to work in gold mines and on plantations
Upon arriving in Plymouth, Massachusetts, he wrote in his journal that the Indigenous people “should be good servants” and “can be subjugated and made to do what is required of them”, despite reporting how “artless” and “generous” they were (Wright, 1950).
He cultivated a culture where white supremacy ruled the land; one that still is present over five hundred years later.
From 1954 to 1968, the Civil Rights Movement in America put a spotlight on the struggle to end institutionalized racial discrimination, disenfranchisement, and legalized racial segregation. Led by activists like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, John Lewis, Malcolm X, and Jesse Jackson, the movement fought for federal policy reform that would ensure equal treatment of racial minorities in the eyes of the law and was - arguably - successful in doing so. The Civil Rights Act’s, Voting Rights Acts, and Fair Housing Act were signed into legislation by the president at the time, Lyndon Johnson, with the goal of ending segregation, Black voter suppression, and discriminatory employment and housing practices (Janken, 2020). Unfortunately, this only led the way for different forms of systemic racism to emerge in American society.
Backstopped by notions such as the one made by Doctor Edward Huntington Williams, who stated that police “...needed higher caliber guns to kill Black men because cocaine made them impervious to normal-sized bullets” in 1914, drugs and the War on Drugs has provided a shield for law enforcement to use in order to disproportionately arrest, prosecute, and kill Black people (Cooper, 2015). Implemented by President Richard Nixon in 1971, overtime the War on Drugs has been exposed to be a scheme to imprison black people and hippies, as they were the “two enemies” of the time period that included the Vietnam War and aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement. Former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman said that “We (the Nixon administration) couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin (,) and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities”. Ehrlichman continued to detail how the administration carried out this self-described disruption of these communities, saying “we could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news”, admitting that “of course” the administration knew their claims were lies (LoBianco, 2016). The “high on drugs” and “drug fiend” defense in court has since allowed police officers to go free after unlawfully killing someone, notably seen in the case of Rodney King, who was beaten by up to fifteen police officers with batons after a high-speed car chase, sparking the 1992 Los Angeles riots. One of the key lines of defense in court was that officers were afraid that he had “superhuman strength” from being high on PCP, despite King testing negative for the drug (Daly, 2020).
Time and time again, this same defense has been utilized. In 2014, police officer Jason Van Dyke was filmed shooting teenager Laquan McDonald sixteen times, claiming he thought the 17-year-old was a “violent drug user” and had “superhuman powers” due to his alleged PCP use. Officer Betty Shelby was acquitted of first-degree manslaughter after shooting unarmed Terence Crutcher, who had his hands in the air, motivated by the suspicion of PCP use, but was only later found in his system. Cannabis, which is now legally available across the United States, led to the death of Philando Castile, who was shot to death in front of his girlfriend and their daughter in their car after officer Jeronimo Yanez said the smell made him “fear for his life” (Daly, 2020). It was even used in the case of George Floyd, where the attorney for one of the four officers involved used the defense that Floyd was an ex-convict whose cause of death was an overdose of Fentanyl, not asphyxiation caused by the Minneapolis police officers.
The ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement has been in existence officially since 2013, erecting following the acquittal of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, who shot and killed the teen as a neighborhood watch volunteer claiming self-defense, although Trayvon lived in the area and was just walking home from the corner store (Channel 4 News, 2020). It was further advanced by the murder of Eric Garner in 2014, who died at the hands of New York City police officers using an illegal chokehold after being accused of illegally selling cigarettes on the street corner; eleven times he cried “I cant Breath”, and was infamously heard around the world (Lowery, 2019).
The Black Lives Matter movement is self-described as an “ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise” and seeks to affirm Black people’s humanity, contributions to society, and resilience in the face of deadly oppression (Garza, Cullors & Tometi, 2020).
The murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man going on a run in his South Georgia neighborhood on one Sunday afternoon, and was chased down by a white man and his son, and shot twice, killing him (Fausset, 2020), shook the already unsteady American foundation to its core.
It has been continuously motivated by the deaths following; specifically the murders of Breonna Taylor, who was shot five times in her own home by Louisville Police Officers carrying out a called off house raid (Oppel, Taylor & Bogel-Burroughs, 2020), and of George Floyd, who was suffocated to death by police officer Derek Chauvin, as he knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds over a suspected counterfeit $20 bill. Protests were seen in not only the United States of America but around the world, demanding justice for Arbery, Taylor, and Floyd, as well as the countless other Black lives unlawfully ended at the hands of law enforcement.
Children are also falling victim to the unjustified actions of American police officers. Tamir Rice, only 12 years old, was shot within seconds of police arrival to the scene, on suspicion he had a gun. After his death, it was found to be a toy. Seven-year-old Aiyana Jones was sleeping on the couch with her grandmother, when a flashbang commonly used to disorient inhabitants in “wartime raids” was thrown through the window, setting her blanket on fire. The Detroit SWAT team then entered her home firing upon immediate entry, one bullet going through her neck, killing her. Turns out they raided the wrong house (Leduff, 2010).
The Black Lives Matter movement wants one thing. Justice. Unfortunately, that is not what they are receiving. Between 2013-2019, 98.3% of killings did not result in the officers being charged with a crime (Sinyangwe, 2020). The lack of accountability stems from the protections they receive as police officers, such as ‘qualified immunity’, union contracts, and close district attorney relationships, which all come together to create this culture that makes it very difficult to convict law enforcement on any sort of crime.
The movement and its supporters have widely called for a mass defunding of the police force as Americans know it; meaning “reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department or other government agencies funded by the local municipality” to health care, mental health services, addiction support, and education. Data shows that nine out of ten calls to emergency services are for nonviolent encounters, which put a spotlight on how out of touch law enforcement is to the training needed for these social interactions when they turn sour. In training, officers focus on use-of-force tactics and worst-case scenarios to reduce potential threats, even though a majority of interactions with civilians start with a simple conversation (Ray, 2020).
Chants of No Justice, No Peace are heard loud and clear at protests around the country, and truly showcases the purpose of the uprisings. But rampid claims of the organization being full of “terrorists”, “anarchists” and “thugs”, popularized by American President Donald Trump, aim to downplay the protests by causing them to be viewed as violent schemes to destroy small businesses and create unnecessary havoc. In late May, a 7:30pm-6am curfew was imposed in Tampa by Florida Mayor Jane Castor, following the damaging/burglarization of more than 50 businesses and damage to more than 50 police cars after a peaceful protest grew violent after the sun went down. But those who participated in the violence were identified by Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister as those who “...were focused on chaos instead of change”, and therefore were not associated with the Black Lives Matter protest itself (Shedden, Miller & Colombini, 2020). In fact, between May 26 and August 22, “more than 93 percent of all demonstrations connected to the movement, demonstrators did not engage in violence or destructive activity” and peaceful protests were observed in over 2,400 distinct locations and violence only occurred in less than 220 (Ali, 2020). It has been proven that the movement itself aims at enacting change through peaceful protests, and those who stray away from this goal are not associated with it.
The mass peaceful protests reveal the unhappiness and dissatisfaction among a large proportion of Americans in how they and their neighbors are treated by those who are supposed to keep them safe. Its media exposure opens the door to more educational opportunities and more voices to be heard, motivating citizens in every town to become educated on local and national issues and fight to dismember the American foundation that is covered in long-lasting traces of white supremacy.
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