This is REALITY
I have to say to begin, that this book is absolutely amazing. It focuses on the hardships that I see everyday being a young African American woman and even gets into depth of the hardships of being a young, black, African American man. One thing that this book focuses on that I just had to be sure to discuss is the police brutality. Police brutality has been around for so many years and even in today's society is not letting up in any kind of way. Police brutality is the use of any force exceeding that reasonably necessary to accomplish a lawful police purpose. Although no reliable measure of its incidence exists—let alone one charting change chronologically—its history is undeniably long. One thing that was amazing but expected to see, was that in class, when the speakers asked the classroom have they known anyone or have them, their-selves been victims of police brutality, the majority of the people that raised their hands were minorities. The sad truth about police brutality according to the research that I did was that a African American person is twice more likely to suffer from police brutality.
The example that I chose to use for police brutality may be a little on the funny side but it does set a very realistic reality to police brutality. In the movie, House Party there are two white police officers who constantly racially profile the young black men in the community. There is even one point in the movie that once the police officers have arrested three young black males, instead of taking them to the police station like they should and let the law prevail, they instead say they rather take them to a secluded street where they can beat them up and they laugh and say "no one will be able to hear them scream". The link provided to the movie is provided at the bottom. There are multiple scenes of police racial profiling along with police brutality. At 23:55 they are pulling 'Kid' over from walking because they claim they need to know where he is going. At 45:55, 'Pops' is pulled over by the police because they claim they want to know where he is going and because they had a phone call from a disturbance and he may be coming from that very disturbance. At 55:00 this is the example of the police thinking its funny and can save on the paper work if they just beat the three boys up instead. This kind of reality is very sickening yet extremely true. This movie was a popular movie in the 1990s and police brutality has only gotten worse. Now people are not only being beaten and suffering from excessive roughness, these people are being killed.
I named the title of the this blog, "This is REALITY", because this is our reality. There are so many people who have suffered from police brutality and the book showcases another person who is the victim of the wrongdoings in the black community. The scary thing about the book is that when we were little we read books and then were told by our parents that this book is not a real story, or that the book is only make believe. In today's society, this is the reality. Its not make believe. Its real, and we have to do something about it before it gets even worse than it is now.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2csnv6_house-party-1-1990-dvdrip_shortfilms
http://mic.com/articles/119970/25-actual-facts-about-police-brutality-in-america#.IVOP5zhL2
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2csnv6_house-party-1-1990-dvdrip_shortfilms
This is a beautiful blog post, Jasmine! I loved your references to the movie 'House Party'. Sometimes lighthearted references can really help to shed light on very serious and difficult realities. That is why I loves your reference to House Party. I also liked it however, because the three incidents that you pointed out in the movie were excellent examples of inequalities that blacks often suffer from at the hands of police in the United States. Their policing was completely unprofessional, biased, and racist and those are realities that often seen in policing methods today.
ReplyDeleteI also like how you tied in the reading to the topic of your blog post. The way you pointed out how our parents always told us that what's in books isn't real, but in this book the circumstances presented in the book couldn't be more real was a deep point. Drawing parallels like that from readings to reality go a long way in aiding or understanding.
I would also like to briefly comment on the article link you included. Honestly, I did not read the whole article simply because the statistics were too much to bare. They really shed light on an unfortunate reality of our times.
First off all I have to say this is an excellent blog. I myself lived in Little Village for most of my life which is a neighborhood in Chicago where there are mostly Latinos living (which I am as well- Mexican!). I did see a lot of police officers that would racially profile my friends just because of the way they looked or dressed. Now I live in Archer Heights where Laquan McDonald was killed. This impacted me a lot because I am currently trying to join the Chicago police force. I hope that if I get this job there will have been many changes done within the department because I do not know how I will act if I happen to see an officer hurt other people when they are there to serve and protect. There are many other ways in which police officers could stop people without having to use extreme violence. A simple tazer would have stopped Laquan. Then the first response is that they felt fear for themselves. I have seen many other videos in which officers lives are actually at risk, but thanks to them carrying a tazer that’s how they stopped the suspect, but not in the video of Laquan as we see that he was walking away from the officers when he was shot. This is also why I also want to join the force as I believe that as long as I change the mentality of one officer then that officer could change the mentality of another and then cause a domino effect and then the entire department will be out there doing what they are supposed to be doing, Serving and Protecting.
ReplyDeleteI also feel like your title was perfect. As a minority we go through many things that other people do not. We see a lot of violence in our neighborhoods and nothing being done to stop it except for the law putting labels on everyone living there. That is why every time I see a minority in campus I get happy because it shows me just how many people really believe that they could do better than what society thinks we can do.