Police Brutality Against African-Americans

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Police brutality, especially against African-Americans, has an extensive history in America. It’s a recurring problem and its effects on society are often brushed off by those it does not affect. Police brutality continues to have a major impact on our society and through a series of events, leads to several outcomes. For instance, one of the major reactions to police brutality is social movements that are created to both protest and bring attention to the racial profiling and the unnecessary, violent tactics that police often use against African-Americans, all while under the guise of keeping people 'safe '. Social movements have always existed, especially in response to the corruption within the police force, …show more content…
For instance, the Black Lives Matter is a movement that began as a hashtag on a social media platform, and though the positive response it has received from various individuals, has grown into an international, activist movement. However, the movement has received much backlash from people who believe the movement to be pointless and that police brutality in American is not real. Centuries of portraying Black Americans in a negative, stereotypical fashion as either inferior or as criminals, have been used to diminish the value of African-American lives, making many non-blacks believe that police violence is not a problem (Chancey & Robertson, 2015). Taking those circumstances into account, the idea of Black Americans placing emphasis on the fact that many non-black Americans believe the deaths of African Americans do not matter, and calling out to the fact the lives of Black Americans are important, has led to anger from racists who claim the movement to be ‘racist’ and ‘anti-white’. Deeply ingrained anti-black racism has resulted in generations of white Americans being unable to neither comprehend nor understand the treatment from law enforcement that African-Americans are forced to endure, and instead, they choose to get upset and angry because the focus is not completely on them. Next, it is important to examine one final effect social movements have, which is helping Black Americans deal with the grieving

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