Police Brutality By Thomas Huckins

Introduction Silences can be deadly, and those souls carry a burden that continues forever. This burden can be stopped for future souls or people that have been wrongly accused or killed. These types of silences used in newspaper articles is described by Thomas Huckins, a discourse analyst, that examines what is not said or written in the text, as well as the importances of the missing information. There are five forms of textual silences stated by Huckins: act, presuppositional, discreet, genre-based, and manipulative silences, which will be identified and explained in this essay on the topic of police brutality. Police brutality has been seen throughout history and still remains a major social issue, specifically in America, where people are wrongly accused, persecuted, or killed. The cause of the accusation has predominantly been seen as racial profiling and people doing daily activities — walking, driving, etc— and usually result in extreme measures such as shooting or beating the victim. The number of time race was mentioned is a major …show more content…
I chose this topic because it is a relevant today, and a major public concern that needs awareness. Data was collected online using the Saint Mary’s College of California school’s database, LexisNexis, and the key words used was “(“police brutality”) OR (police AND “use of force)) AND (minorit* OR black OR “African American” OR “people of color”), with the help of Gina Kelser—the librarian. Specifically ranging from 1968, when the civil rights movement ended, to current day because of the obvious police assaults on African Americans during the civil rights movement, and the articles that appeared were analyzed briefly by title and word count. The title had to have relevance to the topic of police brutality and have a word count of at least 200 or more words. The amount of articles needed was twenty-five — the first twenty-five— that appeared were chosen, and no repetitive