The False Truth of Racism Racism is something that has been big on the news recently. Almost every day it seems like there’s some new problem occurring somewhere in the world that raise questions of if equality still exists. Examples of these problems are the multiple fatalities that have occurred within the past few years, for example: Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and most recently Terence Crutcher. These were very heavily televised cases in which a black person was killed and protests ensued. The problem with these cases are that they throw around the word “racism” rather than look at the evidence. Racism has and still exists –but not in the way that the media portrays it—racism is not commonplace. The media portrays these issues to happen
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There’s this thought that has been spreading that the police are going on killing sprees within the black community. This is just completely false—studies have shown that “50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black” and while it is true that the black population only consists of 13% of the population—it was found that “the majority of these victims had a gun or were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force"(Daily Mail). This rings true with one of the cases mentioned in my intro, Michael Brown. Michael Brown was an 18-year-old from Ferguson, Missouri who was shot and killed on August 9th 2014. Before the fatal shooting, Brown had robbed a liquor store with his friend and was walking down the middle of a street when officer Wilson arrived on the scene. Witness statements said multiple different things, however; when compared with the forensic evidence it is suggested that Brown was bent forward and had moved closer to Wilson—charging towards him. With this evidence, it seems pretty simple that it wasn’t racially motivated—even some of the witnesses that claimed to see Brown charge at Wilson were black—yet the media pushed this story over the edge which ignited riots and cop hate. From then on it only got worse—to the point where riots became a regular thing. These riots don’t help anyone though; these riots …show more content…
But racism doesn’t exist on a police basis only; racism is supposedly much more mainstream with other issues as well, and income is one of them. It is a belief among a lot of people that income inequality is, not only, a major issue—but a racist one at that. Income inequality is the thought that a white person earns more money doing the same job solely for being white. This has also been a topic also discussed between men and women known as the wage gap. The fault of these accusations is that they don’t include all the information. Black people are only 13% of the population in America—so comparing 13% to 77%, which is the white population, there’s going to be a gap. Within the 77% there could be more people in managerial positions earning much more money—this doesn’t mean that the job system is racist. Earnings won’t ever be the same between everyone due to the population gap that there is—but simply pointing at a difference in total earnings between two races does not prove racism. Income inequality does not equal inequity—especially when there’s no outright evidence of
There’s this thought that has been spreading that the police are going on killing sprees within the black community. This is just completely false—studies have shown that “50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black” and while it is true that the black population only consists of 13% of the population—it was found that “the majority of these victims had a gun or were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force"(Daily Mail). This rings true with one of the cases mentioned in my intro, Michael Brown. Michael Brown was an 18-year-old from Ferguson, Missouri who was shot and killed on August 9th 2014. Before the fatal shooting, Brown had robbed a liquor store with his friend and was walking down the middle of a street when officer Wilson arrived on the scene. Witness statements said multiple different things, however; when compared with the forensic evidence it is suggested that Brown was bent forward and had moved closer to Wilson—charging towards him. With this evidence, it seems pretty simple that it wasn’t racially motivated—even some of the witnesses that claimed to see Brown charge at Wilson were black—yet the media pushed this story over the edge which ignited riots and cop hate. From then on it only got worse—to the point where riots became a regular thing. These riots don’t help anyone though; these riots …show more content…
But racism doesn’t exist on a police basis only; racism is supposedly much more mainstream with other issues as well, and income is one of them. It is a belief among a lot of people that income inequality is, not only, a major issue—but a racist one at that. Income inequality is the thought that a white person earns more money doing the same job solely for being white. This has also been a topic also discussed between men and women known as the wage gap. The fault of these accusations is that they don’t include all the information. Black people are only 13% of the population in America—so comparing 13% to 77%, which is the white population, there’s going to be a gap. Within the 77% there could be more people in managerial positions earning much more money—this doesn’t mean that the job system is racist. Earnings won’t ever be the same between everyone due to the population gap that there is—but simply pointing at a difference in total earnings between two races does not prove racism. Income inequality does not equal inequity—especially when there’s no outright evidence of