Oppression

Oppression

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Bearing the Brunt of Police Brutality

Northeast Columbia, sunny and warm year round. Many parks and pools for people to enjoy. The perfect suburban area for you and your family to grow in. That is, if you and your family are white. At first glance this district is beautiful and well groomed. But interact with the people, and you can smell the rotten core. Racism runs through the south, everyone knows that. But no one was expecting the public display of brutality (PDB), videotaped and documented for the world to see, the assault on a peaceful, black student at Spring Valley High school. An unnamed student was flung across her classroom by deputy Ben Fields.
I don't know about you, but I've seen kids get caught on their phones in class that have NOT been thrown and dragged across a classroom, resulting in a broken arm, head bruises and cuts. The force this officer used was completely unnecessary. The girl in this video was arrested and arrested and charged. Later on Niya Kenny, a student who also goes to spring valley was protesting the arrest, she too got arrested, just for standing up for what she believes in, just for having a voice. Many black (and Hispanic) children and adults do not have a voice in America. 40% of students who were expelled each year are black. 70% of in school arrests were of black and Latino students. Black girls are arrested six times more than white girls and Black boys are suspended three times more. (source)  Black students are being sent to prison and jail from school in waves. In most of these cases the 16-17 year old will be charged as an adult. This is what many are called a school-to-prison-pipeline. The term was first coined because of the alarming rate at which young black men are being incarcerated. White kids have more options when they are being sentenced, courts rule in favor of taking a more "medicine" based approach  with them. When white kids bring guns to school and shoot people they get offered psychiatric treatment, individualized education plans and even counselling. Now it's not bad that they are getting the help they so obviously need, but wouldn't it be correct to give black and Latino students the same opportunities? Wouldn't it be nice to not base disciplinarian actions on race? In TKAM Tom Robinson was put in jail not because he was guilty, but because he was black, the highest crime of all. A crime every black person in this world has to pay. We payed it back in the time of Tom Robinson, and we still pay it today. Lets not forget about Stephen Perry, arrested and charged with weapons possession while trying to avoive a school water balloon fight. (source) . Or Rashe France, 12 years and in 7th grade, the only child arrested in a minor hallway altercation. (source) . Or in Wisconsin when a teenage girl was charged with theft after sharing the chicken nuggets from a classmates meal. (source) . All we see when we look at arrests made in the US is color, looking at someones race is not a bad thing at all, but judgement based of of their race and and racial profiling is. Lets add this kids names to dictionary, lets end police brutality and fix the racist and messed up courtrooms in America. Here is the full article on the Spring Valley brutality 
and a link to the full video. Please beware that this video is disturbing to watch.

Here is the deputy, smiling in front of an American flag, like an American hero
                                                               

1 comment:

  1. I think your statements about how the events in the news article you said were unjust were completely correct. It's sad how much our country promises some things like equality but then doesn't deliver. The Family Guy meme definitely showed that

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