Читать книгу Barriers to Rebuilding the African American Community - Tywan Ajani - Страница 12
Оглавление“The United States is a country with systemic oppression-centuries of genocide, 336 years of slavery and legal segregation, in about 85 percent of U.S. History (1).”
—Drs. Joe Feagin and Zinobia Bennefield (sociologists)
On August 9, 2014, African American teenager Michael Brown was fatally shot during a scuffle with police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. This was not an isolated or unusual incident as dozens of unarmed black people have been shot and killed by police officers throughout American history. However, this particular event lit a fire of outrage that has perpetuated increased distrust between African Americans and police across the nation. The primary reason is because Michael Brown was an unarmed eighteen-year-old boy when he was shot and killed.
African Americans have long been targeted by police officers for two primary reasons. The first reason is due to the continual animosity between African Americans and Caucasian (White) Americans, that has lingered since the colonial slavery period. The second reason relates to the negative stereotype attributed to black culture in general, and more specifically to African Americans (men in particular) being linked to prevalent violence and criminal behaviors. Unfortunately, this stereotype has led to racial targeting by local police officers often resulting in more frequent traffic stops of African Americans, compared to other racial groups, ←1 | 2→and has led to an onslaught of recent killings of unarmed black male and females. Due to this particular wave of unarmed African American civilians being killed by police offers, a new civil rights movement called the Black Lives Matter has emerged. This social justice movement has become the face of the new American civil rights movement.
Similar to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s efforts of spotlighting unequal treatment of African Americans, the Black Lives Matter movement is attempting to bring attention to the ever-increasing unarmed police killings of African Americans, along with racial mistreatments, inequality, and oppression. This movement claims to provide a voice for the unfairly treated black community well as discriminatory practices of law enforcement agencies and the American criminal justice system.
The Black Lives Matter movement has been accused by partisan groups as inciting a recent wave of civil unrest and protest in multiple U.S. cities. However, the opposing argument is that this movement did not incite racial tension but was rather born out of it. Historically, oppressed people groups have revolted against governments, monarchies, religious leadership, and democracies. The history of the United States is no exception. It is human nature for people to rebel against injustice no matter how formidable, powerful, or self-righteous the oppressors might be. What better example is there in history than the colonial patriots’ uprising against the British monarchy regarding the right for self-governance, sovereignty, and for religious freedom. The Unites States of America was birthed out of this very revolt.
By and large, the African American community accuses Caucasian American leaders of failing to acknowledge and understand that the very ideals and freedoms that they were and are willing to lay down their lives for are exactly what black people and (all people of color) desire for their communities. The reluctance of African Americans to submit to systemic oppression and inequality by various entities of government, particularly law enforcement, with patience and compliance, confounds many Caucasian American leaders. Ironically, colonial Caucasians Americans rose up against their oppressors of the British Empire for similar issues of freedom.
Approximately sixty years after the civil rights movement, the dominant majority group continue to expect African Americans to wait idly for justice to prevail while in the meantime, experience colossal oppression, police brutality, and unprecedented racial mistreatment. Psychologists Dr. Alicia Fedewa and Dr. Thompson Prout said, “in the United States, White Americans are considered the ‘dominant’ reference group, so in the conformity stage, an identification with White American values is preferred to the minority racial/cultural heritage (3).”
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The Black Lives Matter movement matters because the world is watching how the dominate majority race in the United States addresses well-documented racial tyranny and social injustice issues. Despite centuries of torture, systemic oppression, and discrimination of every type, African Americans will remain an inevitable part of the United States’ economy and culture. In the face of unfathomable cruelty handed down to African Americans in the name of religion, capitalism, and imperialism, they have continued to rise over oppression to reach astonishing feats in politics, education, science, religion, sports, the arts, and more. Examples of these contributions are delineated in Chapter Ten. The American public will forget which senators were in office during the birth of this movement in the state of Wyoming. They will forget who won an Oscar or who won the World Series in 2013. Most Americans will not recall what legislation was passed or what epic films were produced in 2009. However, most Americans will remember the Black Lives Matter movement and what it stood for. It is now a permanent part of American history.
Two Primary Viewpoints
Before jumping deeper into the barriers to rebuilding the African American community, this book acknowledges and attempts to address the two chief political viewpoints in the United States: the conservative perspective and the liberal position. This issue of racial tension between the African American and the Caucasian communities in the United States is controversial and sensitive and stems chiefly from a long history of racial tension originating during the period of colonial slavery. From that point in history, the relationship strain has not only persisted but has also escalated. Uprisings due to intense oppression through discriminatory practices such as the Jim Crow laws and others have birthed civil rights movements. Differences in values, cultures, languages, and norms along with a subtle reluctance of the black community to fully assimilate to Caucasian American culture have also contributed to the upheaval. Consequently, the two primary viewpoints that surfaced when Michael Brown was killed on that August 2014 morning vary significantly.
Many within the Caucasian community paint the incident as a justified and appropriate decision by officer Darren Wilson to respond with lethal force to a situation in which he determined Michael Brown to be in the commission of an act of defiance to law enforcement. The African American viewpoint, on the other hand, focuses on the history of racial bias and racial profiling of blacks, ←3 | 4→particularly of young black males, by law enforcement that often result in their frequent incarcerations and deaths.
On May 4, 2015, the United States Department of Justice issued a report in regard to predatory police practices. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is a high-ranking, government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws and the administration of justice in the United States. The DOJ has significant investigative resources, and executive authority, and is one of the most powerful agencies within the American federal government. The DOJ’s investigation into the Michael Brown case resulted in the agency’s release of the following statements: “Police supervisors and leadership do too little to ensure that officers act in accordance with law and policy, and rarely respond meaningfully to civilian complaints of officer misconduct. The result is a pattern of stops without reasonable suspicion and arrests without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment; infringement on free expression, as well as retaliation for protected expression, in violation of the First Amendment; and excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment (5).”
In clear discourse, the DOJ cites evidence of predatory police behavior by the Ferguson Police Department. The DOJ’s report itself lists specific circumstances and examples of both negligent and unlawful policing practices. Page three of the report refers to a case in which an African American woman, known to occasionally be homeless and unemployed, was arrested by Ferguson police officers for parking illegally, and was subsequently incarcerated for six days in the county jail. Take note of the comment below, quoted from page five of the DOJ’s report. “We have found substantial evidence of racial bias among police and court staff in Ferguson. For example, we discovered emails circulated by police supervisors and court staff that stereotype racial minorities as criminals, including one email that joked about an abortion by an African-American woman being a means of crime control (5).”
In 2019, broadcasting agencies InJustice Watch in collaboration with Buzzfeed, published an article revealing abhorrent and racist social media practices of active duty police officers. The article exposes dozens of social media posts on Facebook and other media sites by police officers from cities such as Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, and North Charleston, South Carolina, making disturbing comments along with frightening photos and videos.
Despite escalating racial tensions, a controversial president in power, and growing distrust between communities of color and their governing law enforcement agencies, police officers continue making bold public racial comments unbecoming of common police officer ethics in the United States. These officers ←4 | 5→display no filter, exercise no caution, and boldly exhibit their often aggressively prejudical viewpoints on social media.
You would think that common sense, discretion, and professional ethics training within American police departments would elicit far more careful discretion for officers in their social media posts especially during such an electrifying political and racially sensitive time as these. Emily Hoerner and Rick Tulsky from InJustice Watch report that “local law enforcement departments across the country have grappled with officers’ use of social media, often struggling to create and enforce policies that restrict offensive speech. The North Charleston, South Carolina, police department fired an officer for posting a photo of himself wearing a Confederate flag underwear days after a white supremacist killed nine black worshipers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church just miles away. He later settled a wrongful termination suit (2).”
There are several factors that make this situation both atrocious and detrimental to the black community. First, the mass shooting of African American Christians by a white supremacist had just recently occurred. Instead of exercising discretion and sorrow for the community that lost several members, this officer disregarded it. Second, the officer was fired for his actions, yet instead of embracing the values of law enforcement training, which include taking responsibility for their actions, he fights the termination legally and won a mild victory through a settlement. Last, while black-white tensions are under tremendous pressure, this officer’s actions make it tremendously difficult for the community to regain trust with the police and to dissuade retaliatory attacks. Light punishment could be responsible for encouraging other officers to commit these types of racially motivated behaviors.
This officer’s actions are far from isolated and regional. They are actually frequent and national. The Plain View research organization reported that “of the pages of officers whom the Plain View researchers could positively identify, about 1 in 5 of the current officers, and 2 in 5 of the retired officers, made public posts or comments that met that threshold typically by displaying bias, applauding violence, scoffing at due process, or using dehumanizing language. The officers mocked Mexicans, women, and black people, celebrated the Confederate flag, and showed a man wearing a kaffiyeh scarf in the crosshairs of a gun (2).”
In the city of Philadelphia, America’s sixth largest urban area, approximately 43% of the population are African American. Nonetheless, the Plain View Project discovered the following alarming facts. “In Philadelphia, which has roughly 6,600 officers, the Plain View Project identified 1,073 on Facebook, about a third of whom had made troubling posts or comments.
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The Plain View Project shared its research with Injustice Watch, a Chicago-based nonprofit newsroom, which discovered many officers who made offensive posts were also accused of brutality or civil rights violations. Of 327 officers in Philadelphia who posted troubling content, more than a third (138 officers) appeared to have had one or more federal civil rights lawsuits filed against them, based on name, badge number, and other corroborating details. Of that group, 99 ended in settlements or verdicts against them or the city (2).” It is substantially arduous for a city with nearly half of its population of African American descent to rebuild a spoiled relationship between the black community and their local police force when nearly a third of its officers are posting incredibly offensive, racist, and other inappropriate comments, photos, and videos on their social media pages.
In any large American city, there will always be outliers of officer abuse, negligence, and unethical behavior. However, with ethics training provided in the police academy followed by continual officer training while on active duty, these types of improper incidents should be few and far between. In the case of the city of Philadelphia, nearly one-third of its officers were involved with inappropriate behavior. This is absurd and represents a symptom of a much larger and deeper systemic problem.
Since approximately one-third of the city’s police officers have been boldly posting this type of material on Facebook and other social media pages, one can only imagine the type of discussion of racial bigotry, sexist, and/or Homophobic banter that is occurring in police agency locker rooms, break rooms, squad cars, and other close quarters environments. These factors present a major monumental barrier in the rebuilding of the black American community.
Naturally, proponents of this behavior and/or those that attempt to validate such generalized labels have their reason for doing so. It is a well-documented fact that African Americans have historically been responsible for committing heinous crimes to their own people in their own communities. This is referred to as “black on black” crime. Both Black and Hispanic communities have high rates of violence and poverty.
Teenage pregnancy rates have also been habitually high in black communities. African Americans also make up a disproportionate amount of prison and jail populations. A sociological research study conducted between 2012 and 2013 of Philadelphia residents revealed some powerful findings. The study was published in 2016. The data connected racism and dwelling in neighborhoods plagued with violence and poverty to an entire child’s life trajectory. The report was published by the Child Abuse and Neglect Journal. It indicated the following. “Individually, neighborhood or community-level childhood stressors such as peer victimization, ←6 | 7→neighborhood violence, urban crowding and noise, and perceived racism have been associated with child and adolescent health issues (6).”
All of the above tendencies are based on scientific findings not emotional pleas. Conduct a swift Internet search on the above topics and you will find hundreds of related articles and a handful of other studies. What is disheartening is that because officers frequently patrol these impoverished neighborhoods, many of them have become adjusted to observing frequent criminal behavior. As a result, gross generalizations have led to policies such as “stop and frisk,” mass incarcerations, officer-involved shootings of unarmed civilians, racist social media posts, and worst of all is the blanket negative judgements of individuals that live in these communities. The effects of racism and poverty affect far more than just public unrest and political division. They hinder entire communities from rebuilding and advancing.
It is no longer just a philosophy that African Americans have a major uphill hike to achieve even middle-class status as a community, but it has rather become a scientific hypothesis with corresponding factual data. “To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the effect of both family and community level ACEs on health outcomes in a diverse population. We found that ACEs are associated with various negative health outcomes, including increased risk for sexually transmitted infections, history of substance abuse, smoking history, mental illness, depression, asthma, and fractures. Our findings support the primacy of family relationships on the life course trajectory of a child and the importance of interventions targeted at families to promote long-term health, particularly in socioeconomically disadvantaged populations (6).” Ultimately, this vicious cycle is an inevitable barrier to the rebuilding of the black American community at large.
In this book, you will gain more than just biased complaints about racism. In fact, this book is exciting because it is fact-based and provides a deeper look at both the roots of the American racial division as well as the medical and psychological reasons that peril the black community. Whether you are conservative or liberal, after reading this book in its entirety, you will gain a more complete picture of the factors that hinder the rebuilding of the African American community. In order to fully understand the situation beyond a shallow emotional perspective, a deeper examination of the history, roots, and other contributing factors are required. Read with an open mind and you will gain a full perspective of the plight facing the African American community.
The barriers to the rebuilding of the black community are genuine. They cannot be politically manipulated, rationalized, or downplayed. Dozens upon dozens of sociological and scientific studies have placed a spotlight on the symptons of a ←7 | 8→much deeper root to the problem. The barriers are heavier than just the social media’s accentuation of racism and slavery. Continue reading and you will discover what they truly are as well as some suggested solutions. A study conducted just a few years ago published in the Child Trends journal regarding childhood trauma broken down by race and state reported that “disturbingly, black and Hispanic children and youth in almost all divisions of the United States are more likely to experience ACEs than their white and Asian peers. To some extent, these racial disparities reflect the lasting effects of inequitable policies, practices, and social norms. Discriminatory housing and employment policies, bias in law enforcement and sentencing decisions, and immigration policies have concentrated on disadvantaged black and Hispanic children, in particular, and leave them disproportionally vulnerable to traumatic experience like ACEs (4).”
References
1. Feagin, J., & Bennefield, Z. (2014). Systemic racism and US health care. Social Science & Medicine, 103, 7–14.
2. Hoerner, E., & Tulsky, R. (2019). Cops around the country are posting racist and violent comments on Facebook. InJusticeWatch.com. Retrieved from https://www.injusticewatch.org/interactives/cops-troubling-facebook-posts-revealed/
3. Prout, H. T., & Fedewa, A. (2015). Counseling and psychotherapy with children and adolescents: Theory and practice for school and clinical settings. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
4. Sacks, V., & Murphey, D. (2018). The prevalence of adverse childhood experiences, nationally, by state, and by race or ethnicity. Child Trends. Retrieved from https://ncvc.dspacedirect.org/handle/20.500.11990/1142
5. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. (May 4, 2015). Investigation of The Fergusson Police Department. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf
6. Wade, R., Jr., Cronholm, P. F., Fein, J. A., Forke, C. M., Davis, M. B., Harkins-Schwarz, M., & Bair-Merritt, M. H. (2016). Household and community-level adverse childhood experiences and adult health outcomes in a diverse urban population. Child Abuse & Neglect, 52, 135–145.
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