(I’m posting this ASAP, so please excuse the random timing, any grammar issues and the lack of pictures. The reason I’m posting this so soon is because I’d like to get this message out there before the protests grow into riots).
Only a few weeks ago Orlando had several tragedies in a row and now it seems like the whole nation is going insane. I’m going to be completely truthful, I haven’t looked too much into the recent police-involved shootings. Every time there’s riots starting or something about police shooting someone I wait for a few days until people start thinking rationally. It’s a tragedy that someone is dead no matter what, but I can’t come to a conclusion while everyone’s yelling at each other about what really happened. Originally when I heard about these shootings it usually involved someone resisting arrest or confusion between what actually was going down, however recently things are different. There’s two sides going to dangerous extremes. If we try to justify every act police make without reason, then we risk allowing the police to have extreme amount of power over the people. This is a free nation, and more than likely if the government wants to take over it will be by militarizing the police against the people. Also allowing police brutality is never a good thing. I’ve briefly touched on this before, but nightly raids and shooting unarmed people shouldn’t be taught as a basic response to none violent crimes. I believe the problem facing our country may not be individual racism, but an over powerful police department. Though I’m no longer closed to the idea of individual racism fueling these shootings. For years I thought that these shootings were either justified or only happened more predominately to black people because they always seem to resist arrest more strongly than white people. What we’ve seen recently though blows my mind. I don’t know if it’s how officers are trained or something else going through their mind, but we have to get to the bottom of why videos continue to surface of officers shooting unarmed black people.
When I was younger racism didn’t seem to be a problem, I thought we all were equal, but during the Obama administration people seem to be getting more polarizing. Terms like “black community” started to be thrown around more often, which made no sense to me because fitting every black person into the same community seemed to promote the stereotype they once called racist. Since this new uniting of the black community people started to complain about white people. Somehow after years of thinking we were equal I started hearing the media tell me I’m oppressing black people simply because I’m white and am supposably better off than the “ghetto” stereotype they’ve given the black community. Well that took things back to where I never thought America would go back to. Whites in defense of themselves would try to justify every problem the black community faced, and in return the black community seemed to blame every problem they faced on whites. Well both these are horribly wrong. We should help each other, and that’s never going to work by tearing each other down. We somehow got stuck in this mentality of “all whites are oppressive who don’t agree with me” and “all blacks are lazy folk looking for a handout”. This is such a dated way of thinking and something I thought we were on recovery from forty years ago. Somewhere along the lines the black community became accepting of living in this “ghetto community” standard, that now people who make fun of the “ghetto community” are called racist. That seems kinda counter productive to permanently connect the black community and the ghetto community. I mean if you want to live in the ghetto I guess I have no problem with that, but then you can’t really complain about being financially below everyone else. If you still believe in the American dream and don’t want to fit some stereotype that tells you, “you live in the ghetto cuz you’re black”, then cool, I’m not going to judge anyone until I get to know them. What really needs to happen instead of blaming large groups of people for our problems is that we work on policies that allow the poor to become richer without tearing down other people, and only allowing police to use the reasonable amount of force that is required to uphold the law. I’d oppose any kind of law that would restrict police so heavily it endangers them, but we have to admit shooting unarmed people in the back when you have a taser is a bit overkill for someone who was suppose to be trained to handle these situations. Either the training is too authoritarian or the officers are overstepping authority due to lack of control or personal hatred.
Now on the other side of things we have another social problem. Since Obama and his job killing policies and ignorance on terrorism has upsetter America, people are done. They’re done with thinking logically and want to do everything they can to take the piss out on Obama. Problem is many people are going way to far. For the first time in my life I just saw a man say he was openly racist on twitter. Yes it was a single person on twitter, but I never thought in today’s society someone would actually call themselves racist (without it being satirical). We have people who are so fed up they’re blaming other races again. What really set this off for me is right after I saw that post, I saw a trending hashtag called “#PiedmontParkHanging”. Apparently a black teen was found hanging in a park that the previous night KKK members were seen handing out flyers. Again I cannot claim this is completely true since people are willing to do anything to destroy race reaction in the media, but if it is true that a section of the Klan hung a black teen, America is truly going backwards. Killing each other isn’t the solution to the problem and unless we have some kind of reform on police training and the Black Lives Matter movement starts focusing on defending each other instead of burning down their own stores, the United States of America is killing itself. Riots and blaming all officers isn’t going to fix the problem, it will only deepen people’s anger towards the stereotypical “black community”. All that needs to be done is creating a less violent and/or sympathetic image of the black community and a clarification on what an officer can get away with. If officers are truly guilty of excessive use of force, no matter who their using it against, it is wrong. This does not go for all officers however so please do not attack cops as if all cops are the enemy. The only logical argument to do away with police departments is if all citizens were armed and had the virtues to uphold the law, however at the moment the people usually attacking cops are also the ones who want more gun control. Real officers keep their oath and that makes up the vast majority of police officers. It’s sad that some break that oath and even more sad if they are trained to use excessive amounts of force. If you’re a cop or know of what it takes to become a police officer, please let me know what you think causes these kinds of shootings. Are the cops seen shooting unarmed people crooked, panicking or just following what they’ve been taught?
While I finish up writing this at 10:20pm I just noticed that apparently 2 officers have been shot in Dallas. God people are crazy. Stay safe out there and defend each other.