racial biases and police shooting
According to the Gun Violence website, 8,786 victims have been injured, and about 13,094 individuals have succumbed to gun violence since the 2020 year begun in the United States. According to the data, many of the shooting accidents have been police shooting based on bias and race, making the race remain the number one factor that influences the way law enforcement in the United States considers African Americans’ descendants. Acknowledgment of the duty of obvious and implicit biases has continuously participated in creating disparate systems of law enforcement and brought about the tension between the police and the black people, which is a reality that needs to be addressed. Hence the paper will briefly reflect on racial biases and police shooting while focusing on reducing racial preferences in policing.
The events that have led to the eruption of several policing shooting of the back civilians has caused many people to question the allegiance and the institution such as the government. A gap has continued to develop between civilians and law enforcement, making many people question whether they are being persecuted or protected by the same institutional authorities. Furthermore, according to research by the feral information on the police’s fatal shooting between the years 2010 and 2012, young black citizens were 20 times more likely to be killed by the police than the young white civilians (Gabrielson et al., 2014). It is an aspect I believe has made the race to be a polarizing and influential subject in the unveil of killing between the black males’ citizens and the law enforcement. Moreover, research on explicit and implicit bias argues that the general citizens tend to favor whites’ people over black civilians beyond and above police officers.
It is where the explicit bias happens when the discriminator can introspectively self-report these theses attitudes and behaviors where implicit bias occurs when the discriminator is not aware of their preference. Also, I have learned that the way law enforcement and other citizens perceive young black civilians has created an increase in the shooting of young black people’s lives. For instant, black youth have detrimental stereotypes due to racial biases than other fellows. It is because they are being considered to less innocent, vicious, violent animals and older than the white boys. The “adult-like” quality of the black boys made them an appropriate candidate for the police force. Secondly due to the declaration ” Black Lives Matter: which had become very trendy in social media and persistent theme during a civil demonstration that suggested that most people believed that the black citizens could be seen as subhuman within the society, meaning that the lives of black are devalued than the lives of the white citizens. According to research, most people over the years have been dehumanized within our culture. For instance, Goff et al. (2008) found out that black people are implicitly linked with monkeys.
Also, black people are seen as superhuman, which means that their physical and entail qualities are supernatural. Most people believed that black people have higher pain edges, and they are more invisible to any physical blows and less susceptible to harm than white people. The police officer also perceives black people a superhuman, which causes enormous material consequences for African Americans under the police purview (Edwards, 2019). Furthermore, blacks were perceived as violent and criminal threats. It is a stereotype that is perceived at an implicit level within the society. Over the years, blacks have been considered to be bad people and associated with criminal activities. Most of them may believe that they are unbiased against the black people but subconsciously associate them with criminal-related activities.
Similarly, the stereotype of black people is also influenced by “Shooter bias.” Research has shown that when a person is told to decide whether to shot or not to shot, they tend to shot an unarmed black man than a white man or woman or unarmed black woman. It is an act that I believe that it is perpetuated by the knowledge of the cultural stereotypes than the apparent tendency to discriminate against the blacks.
The understanding of racial profiling can further understand police violence and racial biases. It is because racial profiling is used to determine the extent of racial prejudice and the desperate police officers in law enforcement. Many national police foundations have also created conditions that have brought about negative interaction between the minority community and the police. For example, there are histories of police departments using deadly power and doubly extreme against the minorities (Devine et al. 2012). There are inflexible practices used in investigating claims of the police officers’ misbehavior, such as the shooting of unarmed black men.
To reduce police brutality on minorities such as black civilians, there is a need to reduce racial biases. Hence several recommendations can be implemented to ensure there is a reduction in racial discrimination. First is by increasing cross-racial engagements. Some of the intergroup bias can be reduced through interaction and interracial arrangements. Communication between the groups can increase the depth of thoughts that will allow people to question the entire groups’ broad assumptions, such as black men are criminals. When whites are engaged in racial issues, the discussion can help them think more about police brutality and interracial relations. Secondly, society needs to racial prejudice in the broad population at a very young age. It is because young children are more amenable to the instruction about stereotypes and biases than adults. After all, adults are influenced by their own personal experiences, and changing their minds about people is difficult (Devine et al. 2012).
Thirdly, for community efforts and joint police, there should be support community policing. Hence, there should be positive, high-quality, frequent interaction between citizens and officers centered on mutual goals of then ensuring the public’s safety. Community policing is an approach that will bridge the gap that exists between civilians and officers and assist in improving the quality of life for the people and effectively decreases severe crimes within the society. Fourthly is that the law enforcement needs to diversify its police forces in terms of values and demographics.it is an aspect that will make law enforcement organizations to inhibit less homogeneity, insights of prototypicality that will weaken the “us vs. them” discrepancy and increase positive intergroup attitudes (Gatto et al. 2020). Law enforcement departments also need to implement rotational assignments that will address shooter bias. It is an approach that is vital since I believe that rotational work will make the officer interact with a large number of minority citizens, which will reduce the cultural stereotype that links black to crimes and also lessen the shooter bias for all people who fall as victims to the stereotypes. Finally, there should be diverse officer training and increased accountability for both civilians and police officers.
In conclusion, there have been questions about whether police shooting and racial bias do exist. According to many researchers and scholars, it has been proven that racism does exist, and it lives among us. It has rough about the high rate of police brutality among the minority groups, affecting society at large. To reduce racial bias, al people within the community, starting from citizens to the government to law enforcement, need to work together to ensure the safety of all and high quality of living. One should be another person’s brother keeper at all times and understand each other culture.
References
Devine, P. G., Forscher, P. S., Austin, A. J., & Cox, W. T. L. (2012). Long-term reduction in implicit race bias: A prejudice habit-breaking intervention. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 12671278. http://dx.doi.Org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.06.003
Edwards, C. (2019). “Race and the Police.” National Police Foundation. https://www.policefoundation.org/race-and-the-police/.
Gabnelson, R., Jones, R. G., & Sagara, E. (2014). Deadly force, in Black and White. Retrieved from http://www.propublica.org/ article/deadly-force-in-black-and-white#update-note
Gatto, L, Dambrun, M., Kerbrat, C., & De Oliveira, P. (2010). Prejudice in the police: On the processes underlying the effects of selection and group socialization. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 252269. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.617
Goff, P. A., Jackson, M. C, Di Leone, B. A. L., Culotta, C. M., & DiTomaso, N. A. (2014). The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing Black children. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 526-545. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0035663
“Number of Deaths in 2020.” Gun Violence Archive. May 1, 2020. www.gunviolencearchive.org/.