opinion: The Effect Of Racial Profiling on our neighborhoods
By: Steven Ramsey Jr. November 2, 2018
A Cultural Anthropologist, Jesus Boy, and World Wide Historian. Book writer and poet, as well as Zoologist and Artist. One with an opinion; an opinion that is not hesitated to be shared.
Look around you, People!
Does instability in our communities in Philadelphia result from police brutality? When a racist, hateful police officer takes the life of an innocent black teenager, this pain is felt in the neighborhood. The hatred and the biased beliefs and racist actions of authority figures and law enforcement contribute heavily to the instability of our communities.
What's the scoop, scoop?
Photo credit: ADD HEREThe mistreatment and brutality by law enforcement around the country raises and causes huge instability in our neighborhoods. The hatred brought out in the actions of law enforcement heavily effect and hurt the lives and thoughts of citizens all around us. One result of the brutality is constant death and destruction of not only individual people, but also the death and destruction of our entire community of people as a whole. The everyday nature of racial profiling and the harmful actions resulting from it prove that there is calamity within the neighborhood because of it, along with other systemic issues.
Positive sense of community: You are my family
Photo credit:PS this photo doesn't really work here... better to have pic of Black community as familyThe root of racial profiling, which in turn leads to police brutality, goes all of the way back to when Black people were still enslaved. Throughout history, we see the that certain mentalities result in these things becoming ingrained into the society of people in the current age. An example of this is how African Americans today call each other brother or how in a family, you would call certain people family, even though they themselves are not family (like calling your mom’s best friend your aunt). After and during the end of slavery, black people were developing a new culture for themselves, and this specific aspect was all about extending your family to include your "brothers and sisters" around you. We still create our own fictive families today and it stems all the way back from what black people did after slavery,
Sowing mistrust
Even though as a Black community we purposefully call each other family, institutional racism creeps into our psyches and brings mistrust. The methods used to season enslaved blacks as well as the ways they were treated when working on plantations has become ingrained into the minds of people and in systems in the United States like policing, education, and housing. Black people experience blatantly racist and hateful actions as we interface with systems around us, sometimes without even realizing it. These ties and relationships have been built up throughout time and were never cut down when we had the chance to do it easily and with little trouble. Now, this once small sapling has grown into a rather large tree, the tree of systemic racism, which will be difficult, but not impossible to uproot.
Interview Status
What's the word on the street?
It is apparent that this issue of racial profiling is a real issue and it is a serious issue. The community suffers from more than just this in terms of crimes like the selling of drugs and gun violence. It does NOT help that the people who are trusted to control and stop these crimes are contributing to the instability that we see around us. To show the voice of the community more, I interviewed Mr. Ernest Milton, who I knew could elaborate on this issue more, in addition to the stories in the link above.
Interview with Mr. Ernest Milton,
African American History Teacher at H.S.E.S.
Q1. What do you believe is the root of racial profiling as well as police brutality and racial prejudice? - The history of the treatment of blacks and other groups in the past has been embedded into our society. This leads to the rise of racial profiling and police brutality.
Q2. Have you or anyone you know had an experience with racial profiling concerning the police? I was once unfairly pulled over by the police for “driving a stolen car.”
Q3. What should be done to prevent police brutality and racial profiling? Officers and people of high authority need to have better training; we need to put people in those positions who are not racist or biased and have a much better understanding of the importance of their task as well as the negativity of racism, and finally, we should have better psychological evaluation, preferably yearly.
Q4. What does racial profiling and police brutality do to the community? It builds distrust towards officers and causes there to be an extremely negative relationship where it is really important to have positive one for serious situations.
Q5. In your opinion, who is affected the most by racial profiling and police brutality? The community itself, and a good portion of the time, the black community. People are unfairly perceived as criminal because of what they looked like.
So what does it mean?!
Where we are, and where we're going.
Racism has been around quite a long time, and with the way that things are looking, it isn't going anywhere for quite some time, unfortunately. We know that it stems back for quite some time, even before slavery began in the Americas, and doesn't just affect the black community, but humanity as a whole. It is only if we choose to evolve, change, and alter our world view, and the views of those different ourselves that we will find the cure to the horrible disease that is racism and racial profiling.
By: Steven Ramsey November 2, 2018