Police brutality and racism seem to be consistently connected to one another. This has become a serious issue in which circumstances have ended violently or even fatally when involving police officers and African American citizens. In 2014, the United States Census Bureau reported that African American people make up only 13.2% of our population. Anyone can become a victim of police brutality, regardless of their race; but statistics show that African American people are being killed by police at more than twice the rate of Caucasian and Hispanic people. It is also considerably more likely for the African American victims in these situations to have been unarmed at their time of death. It is every individual 's responsibility to hold themselves
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Hinds wrote, "Between 1960 and 1968 police killed 1,188 black males and 1,253 white males in a population in which about ten percent were black. The rates of homicides due to police intervention increased over the years of both whites and blacks, but remained consistently at least nine times higher for blacks for the past 18 years." After learning this, it seems that race does contribute to police brutality being an issue. In recent years, the media has brought a more widespread awareness to the severity and frequency of incidences that occur involving police brutality. The act of law enforcement members mistreating minorities—specifically African American members of society—has commonly been mocked, and normalized. Most of our society chooses to ignore racism, or even deny the existence of racism completely. People seem to believe that racism will just go away on its own if we all just stop acknowledging it. Unfortunately, racism is very real, and is still very prevalent in our society. Ignoring the existence of racism, or claiming to be "color blind," when it comes to race, does more harm than good. Racism seems to be one definite explanation as to why so many police encounters end with an officer using excessive force on an African American individual. Racism is fueled by hate, and decays our morality. This hate causes people to dehumanize certain groups of people, which …show more content…
An assistant psychology professor at UCLA, Dr. Phillip Goff showed examples of incidents that had involved a law enforcement officer using deadly force; the examples showed that 80% of these incidents began after the officers’ masculinity was threatened. Surprisingly, in Dr. Goff’s research, during realistic simulation exercises; threats to the officer 's masculinity were much more "predictive of deadly use of force," than "explicit measures of racial prejudice." Often police officers have been acquitted of the murders of an unarmed African American individuals because the officer claimed that they had felt threatened by their victim, or killed them out of fear. A few examples of these heart breaking cases of a cowardly police officer going unpunished after murdering an unarmed African American individual due to feeling threatened:
Michael Brown, who was killed by officer Darren
Hinds wrote, "Between 1960 and 1968 police killed 1,188 black males and 1,253 white males in a population in which about ten percent were black. The rates of homicides due to police intervention increased over the years of both whites and blacks, but remained consistently at least nine times higher for blacks for the past 18 years." After learning this, it seems that race does contribute to police brutality being an issue. In recent years, the media has brought a more widespread awareness to the severity and frequency of incidences that occur involving police brutality. The act of law enforcement members mistreating minorities—specifically African American members of society—has commonly been mocked, and normalized. Most of our society chooses to ignore racism, or even deny the existence of racism completely. People seem to believe that racism will just go away on its own if we all just stop acknowledging it. Unfortunately, racism is very real, and is still very prevalent in our society. Ignoring the existence of racism, or claiming to be "color blind," when it comes to race, does more harm than good. Racism seems to be one definite explanation as to why so many police encounters end with an officer using excessive force on an African American individual. Racism is fueled by hate, and decays our morality. This hate causes people to dehumanize certain groups of people, which …show more content…
An assistant psychology professor at UCLA, Dr. Phillip Goff showed examples of incidents that had involved a law enforcement officer using deadly force; the examples showed that 80% of these incidents began after the officers’ masculinity was threatened. Surprisingly, in Dr. Goff’s research, during realistic simulation exercises; threats to the officer 's masculinity were much more "predictive of deadly use of force," than "explicit measures of racial prejudice." Often police officers have been acquitted of the murders of an unarmed African American individuals because the officer claimed that they had felt threatened by their victim, or killed them out of fear. A few examples of these heart breaking cases of a cowardly police officer going unpunished after murdering an unarmed African American individual due to feeling threatened:
Michael Brown, who was killed by officer Darren