There is a riff. This riff exists between police officers and African Americans. They know that they are more likely to be stopped and have a difficult encounter with police, whether during a traffic stop or just simply walking down the street. I learned more about this through this course and I realized that this is not just an idea in a book it is a real life scenario and it is only getting worse. As police brutality gets more attention in the media the fear of police officers is rising.
Cue Issac Bailey, Interim Associate Director Editor at the Charlotte Observer, who writes that despite everything in the media he continues to stand his ground and “never fear[s] cops”. Bailey explains that he has known plenty of people that have had …show more content…
People are so quick to make decisions based on what has happened to others or what they have heard or seen on the news, that they forget to look at their own experiences and their own environments. It is what has caused the tensions to rise between police and their communities and creates a vicious cycle of one slip up being enough to end a person’s career and raising tensions in a community.
Bailey has not told his son to be afraid of cops either. In fact, he has told him to respect and demand respect from them in return. He is starting a new cycle or at least a new cycle for his community. What Bailey told his son is what my parents told me, and what I would tell my future children out of reflex. But then again I am in a similar position Bailey, I have never had a bad run in with a cop. Honestly, I have to admit I have been lucky and have never had an official run in with an officer period. No one that I know has ever had a bad experience either.
Bailey does admit that although he is not afraid of cops, there is a group of people that he is afraid of, these are people he dubs “the blindy-adherent cop defenders.” He says the are dangerous because they are everywhere, “they serve on juries and populate prosecutor’s offices and wear black robes,” and are quick to label you anti-cop if your first instinct is not to believe every officer on the …show more content…
His biggest reason for fearing the cop defenders is that they, like many people in the African-American community who fear cops just because it is what they are told to do, fear black men for no logical reason. He explains that if a cop shoots a black man out of fear everyone tries to figure out why the cop felt afraid, but if the roles are reversed, the black man shoots the cop out of fear, those same people are going to “spend[] more time demonizing than empathizing.” That is what really scares him, the millions of Americans that will put a cop’s fear or theirs above the life of others. I couldn’t agree with Bailey more. Honestly, I had not thought of this issue in this light, but it is a sort of a take and no give situation. This is a situation that has been running in the background of our country for years, and now the media is causing one side to boil over. And as more and more police shooting get press coverage, making a rare occurrence seem normal, the cycle of African Americans being afraid of police due to what is happening around them as opposed to what has happened directly to them will
Cue Issac Bailey, Interim Associate Director Editor at the Charlotte Observer, who writes that despite everything in the media he continues to stand his ground and “never fear[s] cops”. Bailey explains that he has known plenty of people that have had …show more content…
People are so quick to make decisions based on what has happened to others or what they have heard or seen on the news, that they forget to look at their own experiences and their own environments. It is what has caused the tensions to rise between police and their communities and creates a vicious cycle of one slip up being enough to end a person’s career and raising tensions in a community.
Bailey has not told his son to be afraid of cops either. In fact, he has told him to respect and demand respect from them in return. He is starting a new cycle or at least a new cycle for his community. What Bailey told his son is what my parents told me, and what I would tell my future children out of reflex. But then again I am in a similar position Bailey, I have never had a bad run in with a cop. Honestly, I have to admit I have been lucky and have never had an official run in with an officer period. No one that I know has ever had a bad experience either.
Bailey does admit that although he is not afraid of cops, there is a group of people that he is afraid of, these are people he dubs “the blindy-adherent cop defenders.” He says the are dangerous because they are everywhere, “they serve on juries and populate prosecutor’s offices and wear black robes,” and are quick to label you anti-cop if your first instinct is not to believe every officer on the …show more content…
His biggest reason for fearing the cop defenders is that they, like many people in the African-American community who fear cops just because it is what they are told to do, fear black men for no logical reason. He explains that if a cop shoots a black man out of fear everyone tries to figure out why the cop felt afraid, but if the roles are reversed, the black man shoots the cop out of fear, those same people are going to “spend[] more time demonizing than empathizing.” That is what really scares him, the millions of Americans that will put a cop’s fear or theirs above the life of others. I couldn’t agree with Bailey more. Honestly, I had not thought of this issue in this light, but it is a sort of a take and no give situation. This is a situation that has been running in the background of our country for years, and now the media is causing one side to boil over. And as more and more police shooting get press coverage, making a rare occurrence seem normal, the cycle of African Americans being afraid of police due to what is happening around them as opposed to what has happened directly to them will