Black Boy Research Paper

The brutality of the police force has been a long worldwide problem, but especially between the years of 2012-2016. Black people are being unjustly beaten and shot in plain sight for doing nothing while being unarmed. Journal of African American Studies “Blacks are viewed as deserving of harsh treatment in the criminal justice system” (482). “Black males with more “Afrocentric” features may receive longer sentences than blacks with less Afrocentric features like lighter skin and straighter hair”(482). Nowadays it is important to know about the police force. It’s important to know our rights as citizens and be careful around cops. Not everybody is good, but not everybody is bad also. In The New York Amsterdam News 21 people were killed by Chicago police in 2008. Entire families were being attacked. They believe it’s because of their skin color and how they are different. The year of racism started off with the world seeing the police murder of Oscar Grant. “The media have pushed people away from hearing the issue of police brutality, and it has fallen off of the radar screen.”(2) “You can’t give in. They will try to make an example out of you, try to break your spirit!”(2) African Americans say do not trust the cops with anything. “They will ruin you.”(2)

“Most officers involved in these killings are hardly indicted, much less convicted, for excessive use of force. The criminal justice system’s high volume of contact with people of colour”. (Burton, 2015). This is a major cause of African-Americans’ unequal proportion of deadly police encounters, as well as of larger perceptions of prejudice in the black communities. “Black lives matter” has become the accumulating social movement to bring light to the inequality and unjustifiable act and the legal system is failing to up hold the citizens right and the basic

In recent years and in light of recent tragedies, police actions, specifically police brutality, has come into view of a large, public and rather critical eye. The power to take life rests in the final stage of the criminal justice system. However, the controversy lies where due process does not. While the use of deadly force is defined and limited by departmental policies, it remains an act guided chiefly by the judgment of individual officers in pressure situations. (Goldkamp 1976, 169). Many current studies have emphasized the racial disparities in minority deaths, primarily black Americans, killed by police through means of deadly force. The history of occurrences reveals the forlorn truth that police reforms only receive attention in wake of highly publicized episodes of police misconduct. The notorious 1992 Los Angeles riots brought the matter to mass public attention and prompted improved law enforcement policy. Significant local reforms resulted, for instance, ending the policy of lifetime terms for police chiefs. Additionally, on a broader platform, in 1994, Congress approved provisions to the Crime Control Act in effort to tackle police abuse in a more structured way.

Over the last two years in the United States the African-American people have been fighting a war within our own backyards. The Washington Post reports that since January 2015, the police have shot and killed over 175 young black men ranging from ages 18-29; 24 of them were unarmed. On the flip side 172 young white men were killed, only 18 being unarmed. With these statistics there are similarities in the numbers but, blacks were killed at rates disproportional to their percentage of U.S population (1.Washington Post). Of all unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015. With 40% being black men make up just 6% of the nation’s populations. In the wake of the killings of Mike Brown, Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling, and many more the world has been made more publicly aware of injustices black people have to handle when dealing with law enforcement. Crime in the black community is nothing new in the black community or should I say black on black crime. There is a bad stereotype that has been put on black people since slavery times that I believe has help fueled the violence between the police and my people.

Richard Wright was born after the Civil War but before the Civil Right Era. If he were writing an autobiography titled Black Boy today (2016) about a black boy growing up in the United States, he would write about racial profiling against African Americans, the wide education gap between black and white, and the unequal job opportunity for African American.

Racial disparities occur in arrests, stops and use of force. A report on the Minnesota police department found that Black people are stopped more than twice as much as they should be, for their share of the population(4); In Ferguson it was found that police arrest black people at a rate three times higher, than their share of the population, and “At least 1,581 other police departments across the USA arrest black people at rates even more skewed than in Ferguson” (5). Force was also found to be used at more disproportionate rates against black people. It was found that blacks are 50% more likely to experience “use of force”(6). These are clear cases of racism in the police force, it shows that there is bias rooted in all enforcement actions. It would be statistically impossible for these disparities to exist, without some element of racism in many actions and levels of the police force, and the only way to change this is to completely reconstruct how enforcement is carried

Police shootings are unfortunate events but whenever there is a shooting, the topic of race emerges. Police shootings have always been the highlights on news channels and there is always the racially biased narrative that keeps repeating itself yet no one seems to dispute this narrative. However, did you know that studies show a police officer is eighteen and a half times more likely to be killed by a African American male than an unarmed African American male is to be killed by a police officer? In fact, a recent “deadly force” study by Washington State University researcher Lois James found that police officers were actually less likely to shoot an unarmed black suspect than unarmed Caucasian or Hispanic suspect in simulated threat scenarios. Some would argue that there are still police shootings all over America and they occur when police officers

The election of President Obama marks the most noteworthy political accomplishment for African Americans in the United States during the post-civil rights revolution, thus bringing about a change in the country’s social and political landscape that was steeped in racial discrimination since the founding of this great nation. Because social and political conditions are subject to constant change, President Obama’s

This experience was not unique to Wright, however; it was a reality felt by many blacks sharing his time and place. Wright was growing up in the Jim Crow era in the South, when, despite the North having won the Civil War, blacks had been successfully segregated by law and custom in “practically every conceivable situation in which whites and blacks might come into social contact”. This was a time when signs dictating where blacks could and could not walk, eat, live, and enter were everywhere, impacting the daily lives of black Americans and shaping their mannerisms to a huge degree. Wealth, skill, and personality did not matter; if one’s skin was black, one was subject to these laws and customs. Thus, skin color at this time was the most significant defining feature among Southern individuals with or without their consent, and by using the term “Black Boy” in his title, Wright drew attention to and challenged this unjust reality of race relations during his early years.

Black citizens all over America are getting abused and killed by police. Mappingpoliceviolence.org states, “Police killed at least 102 unarmed black people in 2015, nearly twice each week (Mappingpoliceviolence).” In addition to being killed by twice a week, black men face a particular hazard when it comes to police. “black men accounted for 40 percent

As being the first African American President of the United States, it is evident that many ‘minorities’ including the blacks were inspired and gained hope for the possible arrival of full equality. Through his serving as president, Obama successfully showed his capability in handling both complicated situations of own and foreign countries to which emphasized that the past thoughts of African Americans being ‘less intelligent’ than the whites were completely wrong. Such has been evident in the Guardian newspaper by Peniel E Joseph, titled ‘Barack Obama forever changed black America’ as it states, ‘the presence of the Obamas on the world stage confirmed deep - seated truths about black excellence, love and humanity that we’ve always taken for granted despite white denial of these very truths’ (Peniel E Joseph, 2017). Taking this word, when Wright writes his novel today, he would express all the joy by the blacks and would then appreciate those who have showed bravery during the Civil Rights Movement as this event would not have been able without the voices they have raised. He would conclude with the worry he may have towards the current President Donald Trump, as, we can clearly see the difference within the thoughts of Obama and

This essay will talk about how Richard in Black Boy was living a life of alienation, created by his oppressors the white man and how the white man's power was able to make the black community oppress itself.

He explains the points made very well. This helps explain why Wright felt the need to move to Chicago, where he eventually succeeded in his writing career. “It was not believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different” (Wright). When Richard moved, he focused on reading, together he began to understand new ideas and view the world differently. This helped him comprehend what the United States’ issues were and why they needed to be changed. “I knew I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive” (Wright). Wright understands that there are bigger issues in the United States, rather than just the racism. He wants to change it, he wants to make things better for everyone, not just himself.

Those who insist on talking about black-on-black crime frequently fail to acknowledge that most crime is interracial. Ninety-three percent of black murder victims are killed by other black people. And is it also the same for whites, eighty-four percent of white murder victims are killed by other white people (“11 Major Misconceptions”). Those who focus on black-on-black crime use it as a diversionary tactic to take down the BLM movement by suggesting that black people do not have the right to be outraged about police violence in vulnerable black communities. The BLM movement acknowledges the crime problem but refuses to locate that the crime problem is a problem of black pathology. Black people are inherently more violent or be involved in more crime than other groups. But black people are more disproportionately poorer, more likely to be targeted by police and arrested, and more likely to attend poorer or failing schools (“11 Major Misconceptions”). Nearly 90 % of documented uses of force by the Ferguson Police Department were used on African-Americans and every documented use of a police canine bite involved African-Americans. Blacks are more than twice as likely as white drivers to be searched during vehicle stops even after controlling for non-race based variables such as the reason the vehicle stop was initiated (Makarechi). In addition, these social indicators place blacks at greater risk of being a victim of a crime or a

One point the Salem Press encyclopedia makes in the article “Police Brutality debate” concerns racism in the police force. The author asserts that evidence such as the murder of the unarmed Michael Brown by a police officer after a confrontation on August 19, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri shows that race does negatively impact police response to civilians (5). Considering that the officer involved was acquitted of all charges further defends the case that racism is a major issue. Arguably, if Michael Brown was white, he could have lived. Another example the Encyclopedia uses is Eric Garner, who was choked to death by police officers, while unarmed (“Police Brutality”). This situation further expresses the argument that black people are more stereotyped to be threats than white people. Cassandra Chaney and Ray V. Robertson focus on how racism correlates to police brutality. In the article, research suggest that Black males are seen as hostile and criminal which justifies the point that racism is present within the police