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Racial Stereotypes and their Effects
Racial Stereotypes and their Effects
Racial stereotypes and their cultural effect
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Before the actual passage, we are provided with a brief biography of Brent Staples, the author of “Just Walk On By”. Following this, Staples begins his personal narrative with a somewhat sarcastic tone, “My first victim was a woman”. When he says “first victim”, he is actually referring to the first encounter he had with a woman who was noticeably uneasy when around him. In the midst of telling us about this experience, he adds a self description from the woman’s eyes, “A young black man- a broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket.” This was the first time he realized how much of a negative impact just his appearance could make on a social situation.
However, there are probably thousands of people in this world that have gone through this, too, whether they be black, white, male, or even female. The pathetic truth is that this social issue follows the same truism that one would tell a
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We see so many mugshots on the news, we think we can assign certain characteristics to “those types of people” and then tell ourselves to be aware of people who seem scary or even simply avoid a burly man. Unfortunately in this day and age, we can’t trust strangers and we have to look out for ourselves. This especially applies to the big cities such as New York City, Manhattan, and Brooklyn; street violence is considerably more apparent in crowded, urban places such as these. Although, some go about it more professional than others. Too many incidents have occurred in which police officers are too quick to judge the situation, and they end up shooting someone that didn’t deserve that kind of repercussion. Staples includes a similar but less extreme
Magazine, the magazine in which his piece “Just Walk on By” first appeared, through the use of ethos, pathos, and logos. He uses the combination of these three persuasive tools to juxtapose his feelings of discrimination and helplessness with the same feelings the reader would experience in the same situation, gently framing them as the perpetrator and himself the victim. From this common viewpoint, Staples is able to evoke emotions to strengthen the connection with his readers while employing logos to show that he understands why the reader acts the way they do. Throughout all of this he is also weaving in his feelings, enabling the reader to take his perspective as he explains to them the way their actions impact himself and his entire race and gender as people repeatedly discriminate against him. Though his goal of getting people to change their behavior is not explicitly stated, through the way he structured his article and the ability to display his emotions and connect with his reader, Staples has constructed a strong article that is able to convince people to reevaluate their decisions by having them experience the situations for
The factor of racial profiling comes into play as federal grant programs award police for rounding up as many people as possible. This very tactic was demonstrated by the CompStat system in New York City and further expounded by Victor M. Rios’s analysis of the themes over-policing and under-policing. These themes focus on how officers, police certain kinds of deviance and crime such as, loitering, or disturbing the peace, while neglecting other instances when their help is needed . Rios also stresses how the accumulation of minor citations like the ones previously mentioned, play a crucial role in pipelining Black and Latino young males deeper into the criminal justice system. Rios implies that in order to decrease the chances with police interaction one must not physically appear in a way that catches the attention of a police or do anything behavior wise that would lead to someone labeling you as deviant . Unfortunately, over-policing has made it difficult even for those who actually do abide by social norms because even then, they have been victims of criminalization . However, since structural incentives like those that mimic CompStat are in place, police simply ignore constitutional rules and are able to get away with racial profiling, and thus interrogate, and search whomever they please. Since these targeted minorities acknowledge the fact that the police are not always present to enforce the law, they in turn learn strategies in order to protect themselves from violence that surrounds them. Young African American Americans and Latino youth thus become socialized in the “code of the street”, as the criminal justice system possesses no value in their
“See these fists? They’re getting ready to fuck you up,” said Officer Ramos, before he and two other officers began to mercilessly beat a mentally-ill man at a transit station (“Full Un-edited”). Kelly Thomas was a schizophrenic homeless-man who was beaten by 3 police officers in Fullerton, Calif. He died in the hospital 5 days later due to the inflicted injuries (Salazar). None of the officers involved were found guilty of any wrong doing. In America today, use of force, police brutality, and night-time home raids are on the rise. Many of these incidents involve people who have committed no crime, who are violently beaten by law enforcement officers. These officers often suffer no consequences for their actions. It is time
“Sociologist Elijah Anderson finds that appearing aggressive and willing to commit violence is a self-defense process for some inner-city residents, part of what he calls ‘the code of the street.’ This code offers individuals a way to protect themselves from victimization in violent communities and to build respect from others.” (Rios; pg. 55) Police officers would assume kids walking on the street are involved with criminal activity. The officers don’t have any respect for the individuals
The New York Police Department has a mission to "preserve peace, reduce fear, maintain order," and protect its civilians in their communities (NYPD, 2016). On the contrary, civilians do not see the police officers as individuals who are there to protect them because they do not trust the police officers or the justice system. In the past few decades, police officers have not been held accountable for their actions in a few incidents where a few unarmed young black males were killed by the police. Communities responded to this issue with the Black Lives Matter movement with protests nationwide to show support for the unarmed young black men who were killed by police. In response to the aggressive policing, methods of using body cameras and detailed incident reporting ...
Police officers must rely on instinct and quick decision making to keep a potential situation calm. These instincts have been seen to cause more harm than good when racial profiling is involved. These biases against a race could have been implanted from childhood, personal experience, or learned behaviors. These events involving racial profiling, and police brutality, have become more common and have gained national recognition. The national stage creates a following for the wrongful misjudgment and most often over use of power by the police officer. The wrongful death of people by an ardent officer due to his lack of judgment of the situation is unacceptable and must be fixed. I believe police officers need to complete a series of simulations, need to be trained to enter potentially racial profiling situations not without intent but as a precautionary measure, and lastly I believe police officer partners must monitor each other for over use of power of mistreatment of the suspect. All of the measures in combination could prevent riots, deaths, and national distrust of our police
According to the Interaction Effects of Suspects Characteristics and Demeanor on Police Behavior, “Police attitudes are shaped by the perception of threats in their environment regardless of the actual risk.” This means that despite an officer’s training and experience, when placed in a situation where the environment is perceived dangerous by the officer; their adrenaline can cause them to believe a risk is present when in reality the encounter is low risk. The perception resulting from this adrenaline additionally clouds the judgment of decision making which influences the outcome of the trigger pull
The negative views of everyday people often make work hard for officers, adding more stress to their careers. The general public regularly criticizes officers for using excessive force and brutality, especially when a police officer ends up killing a suspect or criminal. Oftentimes, especially when a white police officer shoots a citizen of a minority race, the general public is quick to find faults in the officer, blaming the officer for being racist. However, cold, hard statistics show that the majority of police officers are, in fact, white, and the neighborhoods in which these officers are placed in tend to be high-crime areas with many minority citizens living there (Miller “When Cops Kill”). In addition, people might say that a citizen who was shot was not armed; however, almost anything close to the shot individual could have been turned into a deadly weapon that he or she could have used to wound or kill the officer involved. Whenever officers are in this position, the natural reaction is to defend themselves. Everyday, police officers confront the most aggressive, immoral, and sick-minded individuals of society. Officers jeopardize their own lives every time they report for work. Officers witness things that no person should ever have to encounter. They see the most horrific and gruesome scenes that the general public turns away from and
It is a myth to believe that an officers job is spend fighting dangerous crimes, in reality officers spend more time handing smaller cases. For example, police officers spend a lot of time doing daily tasks such as giving speeding tickets and being mediators in disputes (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Handing out speeding tickers and handling minor disputes are far from fighting crime. Police officers spend more time doing preventive measures (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Preventive measures involve officers intervening to prevent further altercations. Victor Kappeler and Gary Potter discussed the myth of crime fighting as invalid and misleading notions of an officer’s employment.
Racial Profiling or stop and frisking highly occur in the state of New York. The New York City’s Police Department stop and frisk practices raise serious concerns over racial profiling, privacy rights, and illegal stops. The police are stopping hundreds of thousands of law abiding New Yorkers every year, and the vast 84 percent of the stops are black and Latino. People say that stop and frisks are reasonable because they help reduce crime and protect citizens, but stop and frisks do not reduce crime rates and do not keep people safer. There has never been a research that has proven the effectiveness of New York City’s stop and frisk tactic, and the small number of arrests, summonses, and guns recovered demonstrates that the practice is ineffective. Crime Statistics also do not support the claim that New York City is safer because of...
Staples successfully begins by not only admitting the possible faults in his practiced race but also by understanding the perspective of the one who fear them. Black males being opened to more violence because of the environment they're raised in are labeled to be more likely to cause harm or committing crime towards women but Staples asks why that issue changes the outlook of everyday face to face contact and questions the simple actions of a black man? Staples admits, "women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of that violence," (Staples 384) however...
Not every citizen willingly accepts an officer’s definition of a situation: instead, he or she may choose to rebel against or challenge the authority of the police officer. Van Maanen (1978) noted this type of citizen, termed “asshole” by police, was likely to receive street justice in the form of “thumping.” Though Van Maanen’s fieldwork took place three decades ago, police continue to confront citizens they label as “assholes” who challenge their authority (Mastrofski, Reisig, and McCluuskey, 1991). More precisely, “thumping” an “asshole” has garnered an increasing amount of both departmental and public attention (Skolnick and Fyfe, 1993). At least three different perspectives on the meaning of citizen complaints are possible. First, it may be that citizen complaints tell us little to nothing because they are unreliable or invalid indicators of officer’s behavior. Two arguments can be made in this respect.
Stetser, Merle (2001). The Use of Force in Police Control of Violence: Incidents Resulting in Assaults on Officers. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing L.L.C.
Walker, S., & Katz, C. (2012). Police in America: An Introduction (8th Edition ed.). New York:
Since the police officers have a lot of say in dealing with calls and crimes, they all vary in their approaches to doing so. For instance, one officer may think a call is not as important as another, while a separate officer may decide the first call was more serious and he/she may respond to that one first. This is the same problem with whether or not to use force. There are many factors that affect not only the officer’s decision to use force, but also the criminal’s choice of actions. If an officer is being rude or discriminating against a suspect, then that suspect may act in a more vicious manner. This could result in the officer deciding to use force. All officers may see a threat differently, resulting in different disciplinary actions. The use of force rules vary in different police departments. This is concerning to some because the citizens may feel that they are not being treated as equal as others. Other issues include illegitimate investigations, spying, which could result in an unfair judgement of individuals that result in the officer’s use of force (Walker 1993, 24). Some officers will report an unfounding crime, which affects the true data of lowering the official crime rate (Walker 1993, 24). These issues are occurring in society today and are common topics in the news. Citizens want to know how we can better our systems to create a safer environment for