Racism and police brutality in the United States of America
Introduction
Racism is the systemic way of discrimination developed by members of one group to oppress members of another group based on race and ethnicity through laws, practices, and actions that adversely affect them. Racism in the United States takes us way back to the colonial period. Biased practices existed between races for thousands of years, but systemic racism arose in the early 1600s along with capitalism.
Capitalism and racism formed racial capitalism, before its formation, racism did not exist. White European Americans created a theory of white superiority and black inferiority. Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, concluded that blacks were inferior both in body and mind (Ehrenfeld & Harris, 2020). Anti-miscegenation laws were passed to forbid interracial marriages which particularly covered the blacks but also included the Indians and Asians in the 20th century.
In 1790, the Naturalization Act set rules for citizenship by naturalization free to whites thus precluding American Indians, Indentured laborers, free Negros and slaves and Asians from citizenship. Citizenship had a huge impact on suffrage rights at both federal and state levels. The Naturalisation Act of 1870 extended citizenship to blacks but not to other non-whites and in 1952 racial and gender discrimination was prohibited in naturalisation.
Even after its prohibition, racism did not end there, it is still a major problem that the US continues to face with different cases being recorded year in year out. Dan Smith is an 88-year-old living historical rarity and son of a slave whose parents followed and were affected by a “twice as good” philosophy that stated that black people have to be twice as well as the white people for equality which was frightening and brutal.
According to statistics, during the 2015-2016 school year, 15% of the students enrolment in the US were of black students, 35% of them had been suspended once, 44% of them have been suspended more than once and 36% of them have been expelled and there was no accountability recorded from the US department of Education. 15.8% of black students also experienced racial bullying and harassment which affected them mentally and physically.
Between 2013 and 2017, white patients received better health care services compared to blacks, Native American and Hispanic patients which was 40%, 40% and 34% respectively. Black women also face death 3 to 4 times due to pregnancy related complications compared to white women, this also happens in education and income levels.
In the year 2018, 88% of the police stops made in New York city were of blacks on which 70% of them were totally innocent. The likelihood of black Americans being arrested is twice as much compared to the whites and when they do, they face long term imprisonment research indicates that it is 19.5% longer (Lumsden, 2017). Black Americans and white Americans abuse drugs at the same rate but Black Americans are 6 times more likely to be arrested.
Black workers are less likely to be employed compared to their white counterparts in jobs that are in line with their education levels and once they get employed, they earn 25% less than the white workers. Resumes with white-sounding names receive 50% of call-backs than those of black-sounding names. Latino discrimination has reduced over the last 24 years but there has not been a change in hiring of the blacks over the years.
There has been a slow but steady progress of political representation for the blacks in government. Obama’s election as president ten years ago was considered a huge milestone that was achieved in decades of trying to gain a foothold in politics especially in the House of Representatives and the cabinet though there hasn’t been much representation in senate and gubernatorial seats.
Over the past 50 years, there has been uneven representation of black political leadership. In 1965, there were only 6 members in the house of representatives with no black blacks in the senate nor a governor. In 2019 the representation increased as there were 52 members in the house of representatives which saw it rise to 12%.
Covid 19 has caused food insecurity and insufficiency to the residents of the Chicago metropolitan area specifically to the people of colour. In a survey in March and April 2020, it was observed that Black Americans and Hispanics were twice as insecure, 37.4% and 39.3% respectively compared to the white Americans. In 2017, cook, Illinois, had lower rates of food insecurity but the rates being much higher to the people of colour.
On May 25 2020, the murder of a black man George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer shook the world. In the video recorded, the police officer is seen holding his knee on his neck for almost nine minutes as George pleads “I can’t breathe”. His brutal and cruel murder led to people questioning the US Declaration of Independence, “All men are created equal”.
Studies have also shown that racially/ethnically heterogeneous areas, mostly neighbourhoods in large cities have higher crime rates, the more racially heterogeneous an area is, the higher its crime rate.
Police brutality is the use of excessive and illegal force against civilians by police officers. Police brutality exists in many forms ranging from mayhem, torture, assault, beating, murder, harassment, verbal abuse and intimidation among many others. In America all races and ethnicities have faced police brutality.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, the poor and working-class whites expressed anger over the unfairness of the police in the northern cities. In the 1920s many urban police departments in New York city and Chicago used unlawful methods against the Italian-immigrants in efforts to restrain organized crimes.
In 1943, Los Angeles police officers were involved in the wrongful attacks on the Mexican Americans by the U.S military men indicating the department’s hostility record towards the Latino’s these attacks were called Zoot Suit Riots. There were other attacks from the police towards homosexuals and transgender and the Muslim Americans in 1969 and 2001 respectively.
Police brutality in the U.S has adversely affected the black community and many believe that the blacks have been primarily targeted. Following World War II, most white officers were unfamiliar with the presence of African Americans thus responding with hostility and racism, it also led to them believing that African Americans had a high tendency to crime (Buggs et al., 2020).
In the mid 1950s, white officers had rethought their missions to basically protecting whites against blacks. This situation gave rise to physical assault and excessive use of force. They also gave rise to sexual abuse against African American women, verbal abuse, threats and unlawful arrests. The police got involved in protection schemes and gun-smuggling in African American neighbourhoods. Many whites were unaware of this brutality until the mid 1960’s.
Even after World War II, the brutality has continued for decades. Many of the African Americans had served in the war and had hoped that their service would bring freedom and democracy. Black Americans began to claim rights and liberties making the white officers have the tendency to see themselves as defenders of the white community.
In the 1970’s, African Americans had been recruited in the local police forces during the aggressive recruitment and affirmative action programs committed brutality to their fellow African Americans because they wanted to be seen as good cops and retain their positions. This and many other injustices led to race riots that took place in urban America including the Watts Riots of 1965 and the Detroit Riots of 1967.
In 1980, there were riots in Miami over murder of an unarmed African American man that took place for three days. During this riot, 18 people lost their lives and 1,000 were arrested. The beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles led to the worst race riots in the US, more than 50 people were killed and 2,300 injured. Many incidences have since been recorded with that of George Floyd being the most recent in 2020
Conclusion
Since police brutality has affected all races and ethnicities, anti-cruelty campaigns have been launched and mounted in cities with a significant number of black people demanding for the end of police brutality and the punishment for the guilty officers. They are putting these efforts with hope and expectation that this brutality will come to an end.