Essay On Police Violence

Taylor Jones’ powerful imagery delivers the issue of police brutality towards African Americans through the way he literally portrays the boy in a good light and the police in a bad light. He believes that police should stop discriminating against blacks just because of their skin color and the way they look. Irony plays a heavy role in delivering this message in this cartoon. The small African-American boy, a member of the race the police are targeting, is placing a flower in the barrel of one of the guns. The reason the police have armed themselves is because they are trying to stop blacks being violent. However, the boy and his flower prove that the situation is actually the opposite: the police are the ones being violent, not the blacks. This creates antipathy for the police by showing that they are resulting to unnecessary violence, as well as empathy for the boy and all blacks by showing that they are actually the peaceful ones.
The cartoonist’s message is emphasized by several visual elements. …show more content…
While the cartoonist believes the boy’s motive for putting the flower in the barrel of the gun is to show the police that African Americans are peaceful, he could have a completely different motive. He could be giving the police a flower to thank them for their actions. Maybe he is tired of all the crime going on around him and feels unsafe because of it. Now that the police are intervening, he feels much safer in his neighborhood. So, he is offering the flower as a token of his appreciation to the police. Since they have their hands full with their weapons, the boy decides to place the flower in the barrel of one of their guns. Then there could also be an argument that the reason the boy and his flower are the only color in the cartoon is because this highlights that there are some African Americans who appreciate and respect the police instead of hating