Racism And Police Brutality In America Essay Examples

Jane Doe

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In 2014 attention on racial profiling and police brutality became headline news. Several incidents with black youth killed at the hands of white law enforcement have come to light, creating a revival on the topic of racism still existing in the United States. The most recent story to cause an uproar was the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, killed at the hands of a white police officer. The use of smartphones and the Internet are allowing citizen to film incidents and to allow the public access to information that was not previously available. It is no mystery that racism and police brutality are unfortunate social problems that have gone on; but now too much evidence is available via the Internet to ignore the magnitude of the unjust behavior of law enforcement in America.
The subject of racism is controversial and many Americans, regardless of race, are not comfortable addressing the crisis. The assumption is all races in America have equal rights as legal citizens; hence, it is time to move on from the subject of racism. As nice as it would be to declare truly that racism no longer exists, it does, and, therefore, must be brought to the forefront of sociological problems that require attention and someday hopefully a resolution.
One cannot ignore the imbalance of the socio-economic status of a large percent of African-Americans in the United States. Crime and broken families are much more prevalent in the inner-cities of the country where a large number of black folks reside. In conjunction with this fact are the unfortunate statistics on the number of incarcerated individuals who are African-American. According to "Kaiser Family Foundation" (2015), in 2013 the population in the United States was 62% white and 12% black (other races were reported, but for the sake of the report are not listed) (Population Distribution by Race/Ethnicity). Take the prison population percentages in America of white inmates at 59.1%, and black inmates at 37.5%, and the imbalance becomes evident ("Federal Bureau of Prisons", 2014).
The conflict theory of sociology is what seems to be most suitable for assessing the challenge of racism and police brutality in the United States. There are two separate groups of people, in this case, divided by race, struggling for a position in society. White people are the dominant race not only in terms of population, but also in terms of who controls and runs the country. Naturally, as the race that has always been in a position of power, they remain consciously or subconsciously wanting to secure that position. However, the story is very different for black people in this country. The ancestors of black people in America forcibly brought by the white man, often torn apart from their families, and treated like animals living as slaves for over 400 years. Needless to say, a complete imbalance of power has and continues to exist.
Based on ideas of the conflict theory, one can see the use of police force against black citizens is a system used to keep the power where it has always been, under the control of white America. The programs to rehabilitate and bring uniformity to society among all races are ineffective because those in control are not willing to share dominion. It is not to assume that all white people are consciously working to establish themselves as superior; however, there is an underlying issue of a struggle for sovereignty that is still at work for white people. Sadly, initiatives to transform the system are not backed with enough provision and will keep this imbalance on course. Although this topic is extremely uncomfortable because it forces the people to face an ugly truth, at some point in the evolution of humanity, it must be tackled and made correct.

References

Federal bureau of prisons. (2014). Retrieved from
http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race.jsp
Kaiser family foundation. (2015). Retrieved from http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/distribution-