In the week reading the letter by Martin Luther King, we talked about the idea of systemic injustice. Something first came up in my mind is the death of George Floyd, which causes huge attention at that time. At the beginning, he was crying in his car for his mother’s death, the police officer reached him for suspicious activity of using counterfeit and insisted him getting out of the car. When Floyd was explaining what happened, one of the police officer suddenly pulled out the gun without any reason, which scared him quite a bit. Then Floyd began begging and kept saying “I’m sorry, don’t shoot me”. After he came out of the car, the police officer handcuffed him and tried to put him into the police car. While Floyd showed his resistance and insisted that he was claustrophobic. Then the officer named Chauvin decided to let him on the ground and put his knee on Floyd’s neck. The police officer didn’t react at all when Mr. Floyd kept saying “I can’t breath”, which leads to the death of him in the end.
The whole thing shows clearly the police brutality in African Americans. Why would the police officer pull out the gun even though Floyd did not do anything wrong? The reason may be that African Americans are more likely to be suspects and are affected through every stage of the criminal justice system. The status by US census bureau and Statista shows that African Americans are facing much higher chance of being fatally shot relative to their overall numbers in the US population( 14% of the population accounts for 23% of the fatal shootings by the police). As for the criminal justice system( law enforcement, courts, corrections), one out of every three Black boys born today can expect to be sentenced to prison, compared 1 out 6 Latino boys; one out of 17 white boys. All these statistics shows that African Americans are facing systemic injustice. But what more important is that the one who killed Floyd is not punished at all, which makes me believe that this is an example of systemic racism. The system is supposed to protect people with their rights no matter what races they are.
Just like Gayatri Spivak defines what a subaltern is–those are completely separate from the One and Other, the other to the other. George Floyd was also a subaltern. Those oppressed African Americans are able to make their voices be heard through protests or other activities like march. However, George Floyd couldn’t make his voice be heard because he was died. And this injustice will definitely bring lots of impacts as well. For example, when the police brutalities against Black people are more frequent, people from black communities will lose their faith in police systems and less likely to cooperate with police officers. And when they do not trust police systems, they will less likely to report the crimes, which make them more hard to participate in the society. And when they are less participating in the society, a natural “segregation” will show up. To solve the problem, I think the first thing is to acknowledge that the racism actually exists. Only when we begin to face up the problems, can we have a possibility to solve the systemic racism and make all races unite as one.
work cited
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52877678
https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/
Li, I really enjoyed reading your DSI showcase. This whole situation is so saddening. I believe that everything happens for a reason and this situation is what caused a spark of interest for future situations involving black lives. I think that it is so important that we are all aware of how people are being treated. I also really enjoyed reading through the sources that you used. The video you added was very educational. Thank you, great job!
Hi Li, great post! Police brutality against African Americans is very sad and definitely is an issue that needs to be addressed. I think that the statistics that you discussed were helpful in illustrating this issue. I also found the video and graphic that you included to be very informative and meaningful when discussing this issue. Well done!