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Tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new. The police system's foundation was a systematically racist one. Back during the times of slavery, something called 'slave patrols' were formed, meant to enforce slavery laws (vigilante style), punish runaway slaves and capture and return them to their owners. This article accurately demonstrates how racist ideals and cultural perspectives within the justice system have been so deeply rooted that they’ve actually carried on into modern day society. Understandings of cultural pasts influence personal values and the choices we make in the present by creating a ‘precedent’ of what to follow as a reference for future generations or it pushes them to do better and learn from past mistakes that have occurred.. However, today’s generation and their understanding of these past/presently featured instances of police brutality and racism have led to possibly the largest movement in the history of America to push for effective change.

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This article was updated on June 2, 2020.

But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new.

There are many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri protests that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement. Those protests erupted in 2014 after a police officer shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown; the officer was subsequently not indicted.

The precedents include the Los Angeles riots that broke out after the 1992 acquittal of police officers for beating Rodney King. Those riots happened nearly three decades after the 1965 Watts riots, which began with Marquette Frye, an African American, being pulled over for suspected drunk driving and roughed up by the police for resisting arrest.

I'm a criminal justice researcher who often focuses on issues of race, class and crime. Through my research and from teaching a course on diversity in criminal justice, I have come to see how the roots of racism in American policing - first planted centuries ago - have not yet been fully purged.

Slave patrols

There are two historical narratives about the origins of American law enforcement.

The first slave patrols arose in South Carolina in the early 1700s. As University of Georgia social work professor Michael A. Robinson has written, by the time John Adams became the second U.S. president, every state that had not yet abolished slavery had them.

Members of slave patrols could forcefully enter anyone's home, regardless of their race or ethnicity, based on suspicions that they were sheltering people who had escaped bondage.

The more commonly known precursors to modern law enforcement were centralized municipal police departments that began to form in the early 19th century, beginning in Boston and soon cropping up in New York City, Albany, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere.

Police corruption and violence - particularly against vulnerable people - were commonplace during the early 1900s. Additionally, the few African Americans who joined police forces were often assigned to black neighborhoods and faced discrimination on the job. In my opinion, these factors - controlling disorder, lack of adequate police training, lack of nonwhite officers and slave patrol origins - are among the forerunners of modern-day police brutality against African Americans.

Jim Crow laws

Slave patrols formally dissolved after the Civil War ended. But formerly enslaved people saw little relief from racist government policies as they promptly became subject to Black Codes.

For the next three years, these new laws specified how, when and where African Americans could work and how much they would be paid. They also restricted black voting rights, dictated how and where African Americans could travel and limited where they could live.

Reverberating today

For the past five decades, the federal government has forbidden the use of racist regulations at the state and local level. Yet people of color are still more likely to be killed by the police than whites.

The Washington Post tracks the number of Americans killed by the police by race, gender and other characteristics. The newspaper's database indicates that 229 out of 992 of those who died that way in 2018, 23% of the total, were black, even though only about 12% of the country is African American.

Policing's institutional racism of decades and centuries ago still matters because policing culture has not changed as much as it could. For many African Americans, law enforcement represents a legacy of reinforced inequality in the justice system and resistance to advancement - even under pressure from the civil rights movement and its legacy.

In addition, the police disproportionately target black drivers.

When a Stanford University research team analyzed data collected between 2011 and 2017 from nearly 100 million traffic stops to look for evidence of systemic racial profiling, they found that black drivers were more likely to be pulled over and to have their cars searched than white drivers. They also found that the percentage of black drivers being stopped by police dropped after dark when a driver's complexion is harder to see from outside the vehicle.

This persistent disparity in policing is disappointing because of progress in other regards.

There is greater understanding within the police that brutality, particularly lethal force, leads to public mistrust, and police forces are becoming more diverse.

What's more, college students majoring in criminal justice who plan to become future law enforcement officers now frequently take "diversity in criminal justice" courses. This relatively new curriculum is designed to, among other things, make future police professionals more aware of their own biases and those of others. In my view, what these students learn in these classes will make them more attuned to the communities they serve once they enter the workforce.

In addition, law enforcement officers and leaders are being trained to recognize and minimize their own biases in New York City and other places where people of color are disproportionately stopped by the authorities and arrested.

But the persistence of racially biased policing means that unless American policing reckons with its racist roots, it is likely to keep repeating mistakes of the past. This will hinder police from fully protecting and serving the entire public.

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The racist roots of American policing: From slave patrols to traffic stops

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Half a century after the federal government voided Jim Crow laws, the criminal justice system still discriminates against African Americans.

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This is an example of what news sites have been doing during this movement/crisis. The Washington Post provided resources for people to really educate themselves on racism in America and how to at least understand it better. (yes it's gray, for some reason it isn't showing the cover photo of the article, but if you click the gray area it'll still take you to the article)

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Racism is a very controversial topic here in the United States. The dictionary definition of racism is “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or race”. Basically, if one uses ethnicity to determine whether or not they are better than someone, they are racist. The act of “racism” also allows certain ethnic groups to discriminate against other ethnic groups through the act of institutional racism. Institutionalized racism can be put on other ethnic groups when an ethnic group is able to deny another group the bare minimum/standard human rights. Though America is now old enough to walk on it’s own and has the knowledge on how to keep peace, racism is still throwing us off. The issue is still prevailing. Racism is the reason we were fighting unnecessary wars and still are. I believe that racism is a deeply rooted problem within America and that damage control needs to be done. But we can only begin to make a change when change is ready to be accepted. When people are willing to open their minds and become educated on the history of America. When school systems begin to teach us about the *real* foundation that the United States was built on. When every American can unite and say "all and everyone are equal." not just on paper, but to actually believe and dispel the ideology of racial superiority and just superiority. It all starts with us.

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How is identity both personal and communal?

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How is identity both personal and communal?

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My official answer to this question: identity is both personal and communal because each one affects the other and they eventually coalesce. What makes up one individual's personal identity, can also make an impact on what identities make them feel a part of a broader community.

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As communal identities have been coming to light, they've greatly impacted peoples' personal identities. Especially, when it comes to younger generation and how their views are being influenced as they watch current events unfold. This article shows the perspective of a teenage girl and how she views this racism crisis that we're in.

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When 15-year-old Kennedy Green learned about the death of George Floyd this past May, she was outraged. Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The officer pressed his knee into Floyd's neck for more than 8 minutes, slowly suffocating him. Video of the killing sent shockwaves across the country-and prompted Kennedy, who is Black, to take action.

She and five other teenage girls organized a Black Lives Matter protest in Nashville, Tennessee, to call for an end to police violence and racism.
The rally, which attracted 10,000 people, was one of the largest against white supremacy ever held in the city, and people of all races joined in it.

"I'm happy a lot of people are realizing that there's a problem with the system," says Kennedy. "I don't want to see kids after us have to protest."

Kennedy is among the millions of people who've marched and rallied in the wake of Floyd's death. The protests, which have taken place all across America and spread around the globe, began as demonstrations against police violence toward Black people. But before long, they touched nearly all aspects of American life-prompting changes to everything from flags and monuments to food brands and sports.

"It looks, for all the world, like these protests are achieving what very few do: setting in motion a period of significant, sustained, and widespread social, political change," says Douglas McAdam, a professor at Stanford University who studies social movements.

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When 15-year-old Kennedy Green learned about the death of George Floyd this past May, she was outraged. Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The officer pressed his knee into Floyd's neck for more than 8 minutes, slowly suffocating him.

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In this photo, a business was on fire during protests in Minneapolis. Protests continued following the death of George Floyd, who died after being restrained for eight minutes by Minneapolis police officers on Memorial Day. This is just one example of the happenings during protests.

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During this time of demonstration, conversations and protests, communal identities have been coming to light. Members of all different types of communities have been affected by recent events, some of which Vice President Joe Biden got the opportunity to speak with. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, so to name a few deaths from instances of police brutality have caused an uprising of realizations across the globe that it's time for unity and strength among people.

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Black Community Leaders Discuss Racism and Police Brutality with Joe Biden | NowThis