...Police brutality in America is an everyday truth of life. The issue posed by the illegal exercise of police power is a current reality for individuals of color and class. Like the Patrick Lee case, a twenty-one-year-old who was allegedly acting in a strange manner, the officers decided to tasered him nineteen times, spray him with pepper spray and beaten with batons to death for resisting arrest. The jury found that the police did not use excessive force in this case and lawyers said that they (police officers) had done their best with the tools they were given. Another victim was Sean Bell; he was killed by the NYPD when his car was shot at fifty times because they saw a gun inside the car. These two men that were shot at by the police have...
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...Racism in Police Brutality Race is an immensely large issue still being dealt with in the world today. The pursuit of an entirely color blind society is still in the process. Black History Month is a time to celebrate how far African Americans have come, but also a time to realize how much further they need to go. Hindrances, such as racial slurs and acknowledged discrimination, are part of the huge race problem still present in America. The result of this is that black men are more at risk to suffer injustices, specifically regarding police brutality. Black males are physically handled harsher, killed at a much higher rate, and are handcuffed or restrained more than white males. In Staples’ essay, “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space,” he says black men are recognized as threatening public space. Despite race and gender both being present in stereotyping, race is the main variable in establishing whether a man poses a public threat....
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...Allegations of the use of excessive force by U.S. police departments continue to generate headlines more than two decades after the 1992 Los Angeles riots brought the issue to mass public attention and spurred some law enforcement reforms. On Staten Island, N.Y., the July 2014 death of Eric Garner because of the apparent use of a “chokehold” by an officer sparked outrage. A month later in Ferguson, Mo., the fatal shooting of teenager Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson ignited protests, and a grand jury’s decision not to indict Wilson triggered further unrest. In November, Tamir Rice was shot by police in Cleveland, Ohio. He was 12 years old and playing with a toy pistol. On April 4, 2015, Walter L. Scott was shot by a police officer after a routine traffic stop in North Charleston, S.C. The same month, Freddie Gray died while in police custody in Baltimore, setting off widespread unrest. The policeman in the South Carolina case, Michael T. Slager, was charged with murder based on a cellphone video. In Baltimore, the driver of the police van in which Gray died, Caesar Goodson, was charged with second-degree murder, with lesser charges for five other officers. There have been no indictments in the earlier cases. These follow other recent incidents and controversies, including an April 2014 finding by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), following a two-year investigation, that the Albuquerque, N.M., police department “engages in a pattern or practice of use of excessive...
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...Police Brutality Police abuse remains one of the most serious human rights violations in the United States. Unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment have all contributing to the ever-present problem. The abuse we see from police officers today is similar to when ending segregation was a national issue. The mistreatment then caused riots to be seen in the news. Police abusing their power has again taken their toll on communities. Recently, just as it did in the past. But today luckily, we have stopped the violence and moved to peaceful protests and marches As Baldwin says in Notes of a Native Son, “It was better not to judge the man who had gone down under an impossible burden. It was better to remember: Thou knowest this man's fall, but thou knowest not his wrassling” (1335). I take this to mean you can't judge people because they crack under a wight, but that you need to understand them and see why they acted the way they did. On August 1, 1943 a World War II veteran , Robert Bandy, was shot in the arm when coming to the aid of a black woman named Margie Polite. The white police officer , James Collins, had gotten called to the incident because Polite had been unruly and loud at a hotel and yelling at staff (“Harlem Riots of 1943”). When Collins tried to arrest Polite, Bandy appeared to defend her. After a brief argument, Bandy struck Collins with his own nightstick and Collins shot Bandy in the shoulder.Rumor spread that Bandy had been...
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...Joey Palmer Oct. 18th, 2015 Essay # 2 Prof. Roliz Throughout history, there has always been situations where an individual or group has rebelled against their government or religion. An individual is justified to rebel against his government when there's an excess of police brutality, that individual can be living in a nation where the government is not an ideal government, or unjust treatment of an ethnicity. There are many ways to rebel against ones government and/or religious institution, in the past rebelling has varied from protesting to a world wide revolution. Revolutionary leaders such as Che Guevara and Martin Luther King Jr. both lead groups which allowed people who rebelled against their government to obtain justice. Two philosophers who spoke on rebelling against their government or religion were Friedrich Nietzsche in “Morality as Anti-Nature” and Henry Thoreau in “Civil Disobedience.” A situation that occurred to justify an individuals rebellion against their government is the act of excess police brutality. A perfect example of excessive police brutality is the Eric Garner case. In this case Eric Garner was put in a choke hold by a New York City Police Department officer named Daniel Pantaleo, he ended up killing him and did not get indicted. This decision came nearly a week after a cop killed an unarmed African American, Michael Brown. This caused many people to walk and protest in Time Square chanting “This Stops Today” and “I Can't Breathe,” which were...
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...The Black panther party was founded in October of 1965 in Oakland California. The party was founded by two African American men named Huey P. Newton, and Bobby Seale. The Black Panther Party was founded for self-defense in the low -income black communities. The Black Panther Party had numerous successful programs like the free breakfast program that feed over 20,000 children before school. They also had a health clinic known as People’s free medical centers(PFMC) established in 13 cities across country. The media made the Black Panther Party look like they were terrorist in their community by showing footage of them in militant uniform and holding militant type weapons. But the reason they started the party were to protect themselves and the...
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...The history of racial violence in the United States of America is extensive and complex, woven through centuries of dehumanization and bigotry. From the days of chattel slavery to the Jim Crow era to the modern day Black Lives Matter movement, racism towards African Americans throughout American history is displayed in a variety of ways. One such example of the social terror that African Americans experienced was that of the race riots of the late 19th and 20th centuries. This essay will explore one of the most prominent examples of race riots: the Tulsa Race Massacre, its details, and the social and historical context that led to the tragedy. The Tulsa Race Massacre took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma between May 31 and June 1, 1921, with the violence centred in Tulsa’s Greenwood district. The Greenwood district was...
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...Essay on Essay Analysis on The Movie "The Terminator" For the purposes of this essay I have chosen The Terminator, a science fiction B-movie feature from 1984. Although I intend mainly to study this purely as a single film, I do intend to study Terminator 2 in addition, thus making the essay a study of the series. In addition, I will be contrasting the theory written surrounding these films in relation to other contemporary postmodern theory, and as a result will be mentioning several other films by way of a comparison or contrast. The Terminator seems quite remarkable to me, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is one of many action films I watched in my early teens; a considerable number of which, like this film, starred the Austrian body-builder turned actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. What is so different about The Terminator though, is that unlike most of these films, this movie has enough depth and substance that, not only does it still bear watching now that I am older, but it also has an archive of academic theory written about it. The Terminator tells of a cyborg, a human shaped machine coated in flesh, that is sent back in time, from an apocalyptic future in which machines have 'got smart' and acted on their own to destroy the human race. The cyborg's mission is to assassinate the mother of the human's great leader, the man who taught the survivors to fight back against the machines. The woman, a young waitress named Sarah Connor, is protected only by a lone warrior...
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...Aristotle and Alexis De Tocqueville’s teachings on morality and happiness creates a similarity in their virtues that protecting rights of the people help produce happiness in a democracy. Aristotle discusses in the essay “ The Aim of Man”, that we aim to set goals to lead us into happiness. He believes that happiness is an activity for our soul. The soul is an inanimate object that can be driven by passion, which drives a person to do certain tasks in their life. These actions lead into happiness if the task is done successfully. Aristotle’s teachings on happiness collides with Alexis De Tocqueville’s teaching that Americans need a daily support of some energetic passion. Happiness from Americans will occur by protecting the American people’s...
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...Daniel Lechowski Mr.Beacham 4/27/16 Research Essay Racism is detrimental to the United States due to the fact that many law enforcers possess this atrocious trait. Where did racism originate from? We are not born with this disgusting trait. To find out you have to research the history of racism. When you think of slavery, your first thoughts and images are probably about African Americans inhumanely crowded aboard ships plying the middle passage from Africa, or of African Americans stooped to pick cotton in Southern fields. We don't think of images of American Indians chained in coffles and marched to ports like Boston and Charleston, and then shipped to other ports in the Atlantic world. Everyone thinks that African Americans were the first...
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...Charlie Fierro Protest Art!: The Rhetoric of Art as Social Activism RBA June 4, 2010 Alexis Charles Chappelle and Pryor’s True Hollywood Stories If you get pulled over wouldn’t you turn your radio down, no body wants to get their ass beat to a soundtrack. --Dave Chappelle Although this comment is humorous and socially clever, Chappelle’s joke says more about American culture, specifically racial and class issues, than most academics can hope to explain. As James Lipton suggests in his interview with Dave Chappelle on the talk show Inside the Actor’s Studio, black comedy has been an important form of art for learning about the black condition. Comedians, such as Bill Cosby, Chris Rock, and Eddie Murphy are just a few of the black comedians that have used their art to provide those insights and induce change in society. The late Richard Pryor understood more so than others that in comedy he had “‘a unique vehicle’ at his disposal that he would be wise to employ for ‘meaningful expression’” and his declared successor, Dave Chappelle, did as well (Simpson 114). The influence of Chappelle and Pryor’s comedy on the American audience has been a highly researched topic. The influence of the most recent and still dominant figure, Chappelle, has yet to be entirely seen, as many of his performances are hardly a decade old. It is undisputed among scholars and critics, however, that, like Pryor, Chappelle through his art “has made us look at...
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...Assignment Two The news media only provides us with representations of reality. These representations are constructed by media conglomerates to manipulate our views on society; politics, international relations and current affairs. While the media is meant to be an objective source of information, it is important to remember that this information is filtered, watered down and often manipulated before reaching its audiences. After all, “one apprehends reality only through representations of reality... there is no such thing as unmediated access...” (Dyer 1993, p. 3, as cited byO'Shaughnessy & Stadler, 2005, p. p.77) This is done by ruling classes of society in order to ingrain dominant ideologies into cultural knowledge and thus maintain their governing status- the process of “hegemony”. The media both mirrors and shapes society- it is a “mechanism of mass control” (Flounders et al., 2000, p.89). The news, as an integral part of the media, does the same. Therefore it is important for us to remember that the image of our world shown by the media is only a portrayal, and not always objective or truthful. “The media define for the majority of the population what significant events are taking place, but, also, they offer powerful interpretations of how to understand these events.” (Stuart Hall, 1978, p. 426) In this quote, Hall states that media broadcasters, although providing important (newsworthy), accurate and up-to-date information to the public, are nevertheless...
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...AP US History Document Based Question Directions: The following question requires you to construct a coherent essay that integrates your interpretation of documents A-K and your knowledge of the period referred to in the question. In your essay, you should strive to support your assertions both by citing key pieces of evidence from the documents and by drawing on your knowledge of the period. High scores will he earned only by essays that both cite key pieces of evidence from the documents and draw on outside knowledge of the period. Analyze the changes that occurred during the 1960's in the goals, strategies, and support of the movement for African American civil rights. Use the documents and your knowledge of the history of the 1960's to construct your response. Document A “We affirm the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose, the presupposition of our faith, and the manner of our action. Nonviolence as it grows from Judaic-Christian traditions seeks a social order of justice permeated by love. Integration of human endeavor represents the crucial first step towards such a society. Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear; love transforms hate. Acceptance dissipates prejudice; hope ends despair. Peace dominates war; faith reconciles doubt. Mutual regard cancels enmity. Justice for all overthrows injustice. The redemptive community supersedes systems of gross social immorality.” Source: Student Nonviolent Coordinating...
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...Comparative Criminal Justice Essay 1 The goal of comparative studies is to extend a person’s knowledge of people and cultures beyond his or her own groups. Some comparative scholars have a better understanding of their own society and of ways that society might be improved. When thinking about research in comparative justice, there are two questions that we should ask ourselves; what is it that we want to compare? What are the strategies of comparison or the perspectives of comparison? There are issues and problems that when comparing you have to deal with both internal and external to the system of criminal justice. There are multiple perspectives that are to be used: historical, systematic, relativistic, and cultural perspectives. First is the Historical perspective, which is the perspective of understanding the history and the evolution of criminal justice. Before the rise of the nation states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most of the world societies were ruled for centuries by different monarchies, kingdoms, and colonial powers. China, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, all had some kind of historical or traditional law. As for China they were under a traditional law that demanded that any offender must confess and voluntarily surrender. But this somewhat changed when the Qing law was reinforced, this caused the obligations to change by making provisions for alternative sentencing for those who surrendered and by lengthening the limitations...
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...Robert Sanders English 2342 (MW 11:302:00pm) Professor C. Robinson Research Essay “The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority” (Ken 1). A management technique used by Ken Blanchard that is very much relevant in more aspects of management. By definition, management is the process of dealing with or controlling things or people. Meaning influence, the power to have an effect on something or someone, could be considered a management strategy. In the black community, leadership is often based off who's influencing the community rather than the authorities. This can be seen in large movements like The Black Power Movement, where those who were influencing and leading the black community, were fighting against the authority. This movement was widely supported during its time. However, how can one be sure if this method can be effective in terms of delivering a message, and promoting the movement? Since these movements are put in place to create change, it is reasonable to base the success of a movement off its impact on today's society. The methods used in the fight for social equality for those lacking political power and cultural institutions, popularized by The Black Power Movement, has been adopted and implemented by today’s hiphop artist like Sean Combs, stage name Diddy; allowing the battle to be fought in a time where unity has become dwarfed by individuality. With black being the absence of hue and brightness, and bright being defined as ...
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