It is sad that at this point in America's history, we are still fighting the war of racism in 2016. Over the past couple of years, police brutality against Africa American's is the most talked about topic on the news. I think it is so sad to see how far African Americans have come since slavery, and it makes me sick that America has taken a step backwards for them.
Here is a list of Killings by Law Enforcement Officers by age
Last year in Ferguson, Missouri Michael Brown was walking down the street, unarmed, and a police officer pulled his car in front of him and shot him. Again, what is so sad about this story is that this isn't the first time this happened. But this started riots in Ferguson shortly after.
Eric Garner is another example of police brutality when he was unarmed and being harmless. He was put into an illegal chokehold for 15 seconds by a white police officer, only because he was selling cigarettes. He yelled 11 times, "I can't breath!" His story became a symbol, and everyone was hash tagging: #Icantbreath in honor of his death and to show support for the lives being lost around the country to police brutality.
When I heard these stories I didn't know what to think of them. I was confused, sad, angry and again, confused. Why are officers targeting only black men? This made me believe that racism is still around in America, even if these officers deny it.
During my research on this topic, I found these key points:
-Police killed at least 102 unarmed black people in 2015, nearly two each week.
-37% of unarmed people killed by police were black in 2015 despite black people being only 13% of the US population
- Only 9 of the 102 cases resulted in officers being charged with a crime!
I have a couple of friends that go to the University of Missouri, and I actually applied there myself. My close family friend is a freshman there and she did not have school for a full week because of a racism issue. Payton Head is the Students Association President, and he is black, and said that a group of kids drove by him in a pickup truck and yelled something racist at him. There were other cases of students calling other black students the n word. These incidents led to incoming freshmen having to take online diversity training classes.
In conclusion, racism in America is still around and we all need to do our best to treat everyone equally and punish the ones who do not.
