Policing The Lives Of Black And Latino By Victor Rios Oakland

“The African American community is not making this up. It’s not something that’s being politicized. It’s real”

My first scholarly article that I read was Racism and Police Brutality in America by Cassandra Chaney and Ray V. Robertson. The article begins by highlighting the beating of Rodney King in 1992. Police brutality has gone on for a long time, and with the help of technology it has finally been brought to the light. In 1992, four white police officers beat an African American man named Rodney King. The events were caught on camera and were aired that night by a local TV station in Los Angeles. In the video the officers kicked, tasered, and beat King until he was left with an inch of his life. The injuries King sustained were crushed bones, shattered teeth, kidney damage and a fractured skull. The Rodney King beating showed American people the

This separation from his family caused a longing in his life. But this longing was superseded by what he suspected his teachers could give him. Rodriguez develops a double personality of sorts. The person he is at home, the polite child who lovingly does what his parents ask of him. And then the academic persona he

Determined to help his audience - people who stereotype against and do not understand gang life - find commonalities with gang members, Fr. Boyle shares his experiences with gangs in Los Angeles. At the beginning of the novel, Fr. Boyle articulates his thesis and expresses his purpose for sharing his experiences when he states, “Though this book does not concern itself with solving the gang problem, it does aspire to broaden the parameters of our kinship. It hopes not only to put a human face on the gang member, but to recognize our own wounds in the broken

Daniel Holtzclaw is a former Oklahoma City Police Department police officer. When he was a police officer, Holtzclaw sexually abused thirteen black women. He targeted women from poor, African American communities. Holtzclaw ran background checks on women with warrants or other criminal records and targeted those victims. The majority of Holtzclaw 's victims had criminal histories such as drug arrests. Holtzclaw 's crimes were unlikely to be discovered because rape is a highly underreported crime. Only one of the women filed a report. At least 68 percent of rapes are unreported. For every 100 rapes, only 7 will lead to an arrest and only 2 will spend a single day in jail. Men know that and they know it is very unlikely they will be arrested, a police officer like Holtzlaw knows this all too well. Holtzclaw used his power to rape women and he knew that the public would support him because he is a white heterozexual man, he is an exemplar man for the rape culture. Not only did he have the advantage of being a man, but also the advantage of being white and a police officer.

According to Scott Johnson, “racial profiling is the use of race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed an offense” (Scott Johnson). The United States Supreme Court has ruled that racial profiling violates the constitutional requirement that all persons should be accorded equal protection of the law. However, is this requirement defensible in public policy? It has been proven in previous research studies that racial profiling, if applied correctly, can be a useful defensible public policy. Studies such as the one conducted by David Harris, who is a law professor at the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio, show that the racial inequality in arrests made as well as crime rates have been reflective of one sided racial policies.(Harris). Also, Harris stated that, “crime rates are equal among racial groups and arrests, convictions and incarcerations are unequal based on the premise that police, prosecutors and courts systematically pick on minorities due to the color of skin (Harris). For example, the Trayvon Martin case is evident that racial profiling was negatively applied due to stereotyping. Stereotyping is an exaggerated or distorted generalization about an entire category of people that does not acknowledge individual variation. Stereotypes form the basis for prejudice and discrimination. They generally involve members of one group that deny access to opportunities and rewards that are available to that group. This is a fundamental

The book Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys was written by Victor M. Rios, containing 174 pages, and was published in 2011 by the New York University Press. In total, the book contains eight chapters with a preface, expanding on the methods and measures Rios used to collect information and interviews, and an appendix that Rios used to further explain the sociological impact criminology and race have had throughout history. The research for the book takes place in the ghetto of Oakland, California over a three-year period from 2002 to 2005. Having a previous history in Oakland, Rios decided to shadow and interview black and Latino adolescence males from poverty and lower-class

Victor Rios starts of the book by giving a brief background of his own life and what he experienced as a child in the ghettos of Oakland, California and the events that caused him to turn from his old way of life. During the span of Victor Rios’ juvenile years he decide to join and become a gang member Rios states “I joined the gang seeking protection that I thought police and other authority figures in the community had failed to provide”(Rios ix) Rios’ quote is the most commonly known reason why youth in urban areas seek out membership in gangs which is a lack of protection and involvement from police and authoritative figures in bettering these communities. Along with his membership he partook in deviant acts and so on. Rios talks about this boy he knew that went by the name “smiley” that would hang around the gang a lot. Before “Smiley” was initiated to the gang Rios notes how Smiley would tell him stories of how teachers would treat him punitively meaning that they were aiming to punish him based on his prior actions and his color. Rios mentioned “Smiley” as being a naïve boy, he suffered physical abuse from his parents along with that his parents often kicked him out as a punishment for questioning them and informing them about the negative ways his teachers went about treating him. Soon after “Smiley” was initiated into the gang, Rios states that they became best friends and had a sense of looking

Child of the Dark covers the time period between 1955 and 1960. It gives insight into the way that many Latin Americans lived during these times. The story takes place in Brazil and focuses on the life of Carolina De Jesus and her journey through countless obstacles of life. Like Carolina, many Latin Americans lived in rural areas known as Favela’s. Through Carolina’s experience and everyday life the reader learns the struggles of living in a society governed by the colonial legacy of a stratified society.

Victor Rios is not only an author of a book called Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys, but he is also an ex-felon. Rios holds a PH.D. in sociology and is now an assistant professor at the University of Santa Barbara. Victor Rios has published on juvenile justice, masculinity, and race and crime in scholarly in journals such as the Critical Criminology. He has not only lived the life he preaches about, he has shown to be extremely knowledgable in this life he has once lived and is also considered an expert in his field of sociology among his peers . Rios grew up in the streets of Oakland, California and found himself in the midst of trouble when he joined a gang at the age of 13. Victor Rios lived the life of the typical stereotypical hispanic young male, living in high crime poverty neighborhoods. As a young boy, he began dealing drugs, participating in the killings of people, and violence. Throughout his life, he has witnessed a great deal of horrific tragedies that not many thirteen year olds experience ever in their whole life. Throughout his experiences, he was able to live and tell his stories through his book, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. Victor Rios has used his past experiences for the good, he has mentored many kids who are going through what he went though as an adolescent. Throughout the many obstacles he has faced, it has opened up the opportunity for him to write this book about his life and the gang

As a person, we judge people by their skin color, and what other people with same skin color are doing. Many people make a commons on African, such as African Americans have crime and drugs connects, but not all of them are like. As a person, we all have to contribute to bring a positive thinking about people, and we can't judge them because one or two people did bad thing and we see all of them in negative way. In the article “Black Men and Public Space" by Brent Staples, explain that there are many people in the world who still thinks that African Americans always have to do with crimes, drugs.

The unorthodox and nonmatching culture of youth of color is often demonized and portrayed as deviant in mainstream media, even though youth in poorer communities attempt to adjust themselves in ways that can be fully accepted by the labor-force. Although one may be quick to assume that this concentrated working-class culture can easily be defined as malicious or spiteful to the mainstream culture, it is actually “organic capital” that is wrongly misrecognized by the authority. When youth of color in Oakland partake in “devious” or “criminal” activities, it is actually a strong political statement on their marginalization and a valid attempt in trying to get back the dignity and respect that are forcefully relinquished to the criminal justice

Reading your essay on Policing and African Americans, jogged my memory back to a documentary I watched, Slavery by another name. It talks about vagrancy and pigs law similar to the black code that you talked about. These laws damage the African American communities, and up to this day, our communities will never be better.

Since the foundation of the police forces was to criminalize the experiences of communities of color, it is not surprising or a coincidence to see how those social conditions resemble among the prison system we have today. In the article “Black America’s state of surveillance” Malkia Amala Curis writes, “Black people alone represent 40 percent of those incarcerated “according to a study in 2012, black defendants are least 30 percentage more likely to be imprisoned than whites for the same crime” (Curis 33). African American and Latino males are overrepresented at every step in the criminal justice system, and not surprisingly are also overrepresented in the numbers of expulsions and suspension from school. In the article “Exclusion, Punishment, Racism and our schools: A critical Race Theory on school discipline David Simson writes “Equally as alarming as the general societal costs associated with school punitive school discipline outlined above is the fact that studies over the past thirty yeas suspensions, disproportionately affect minority youth, especial African American students” (Simson 522). Low-income communities of color are more likely to face unemployment, drug addition, mental illness, and homelessness than white people therefore they are easier to criminalize, not only in schools but society

Jericho Brown discusses a myriad of topics in his poems, from depression to the perils of growing old. However, one of his works stands out to me in particular. In his poem, “Bullet Points,” Brown deals with police brutality. Specifically, he says, “I promise that if you hear Of me dead anywhere near A cop, then that cop killed me.” This powerful statement asserts that the unarmed black teen we consistently hear about in the news was not the one at fault.