I would like to come back to a situation I used in a previous diary post and explore the other side of the incident. I spoke previously about the George Floyd case (https://www.adl.org/education/resources/tools-and-strategies/george-floyd-racism-and-law-enforcement-in-english-and-en ) and would now like to connect this with the Breonna Taylor case (https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/23/us/breonna-taylor-timeline/index.html ) and view the injustice toward African Americans. This topic is such a controversial issue still in society and is continuing to grow with the black lives matter movement. This movement is directed toward the fact that African Americans are treated different by law enforcement than whites. This could be anything from physical, verbal or even just stereotyped more often. In New York the population is much more diverse than that of Ohio. According to the NYPD when African American or Latinos were stopped, 85% were frisked compared to whites at only 8% (Quigley 2010). These number are appalling to compare. Why are these numbers so different? Why are certain races immediately more questionable than another? Personally, any person of any race has the power to do good or bad. These stereotypes people create bleed into our government and justice system, it is clearly human nature to perceive people a certain way. Even if it is human nature to feed into stereotypes, it cannot affect one’s ability to perform their job as they are intended too. In this case, stereotypes and personal points of view are affecting the system.
The reading by Ortiz Cofer titled The Story of My Body I feel relates closely to this systemic injustice. The relation between this injustice and this writing is the aspect of judgment based on appearance and race. Cofer experienced a lot of racial stereotyping and hate because of the way she looked and where she came from after moving to the United States. Like Cofer, these African Americans are being judged solely based on their race and/or appearance which is created by assumptions from societal stereotypes.
Quigley, Bill. “Fourteen Examples of Systemic Racism in the US Criminal Justice System.” Common Dreams, 26 July 2010, www.commondreams.org/views/2010/07/26/fourteen-examples-systemic-racism-us-criminal-justice-system.
Obviously, this example of systemic injustice is widespread and has been under a microscope these past few months but I still think it is disgusting to hear these statistics every time and for so many people to doubt the existence of systemic injustice within the policing system. The fact that African and Latino Americans were frisked 10 times more often than White Americans speaks volumes about how the US Criminal Justice System is inherently unjust.