The Neglect of American Society
On August 9, Darren Wilson, a white police officer of the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department, shot and killed an unarmed black teen named Michael Brown. While Brown’s death has ignited protests in the hitherto quiet suburban town, its significance is still largely uncomprehended and many seem to condone that lack of understanding.
From August 14 to August 17, the Pew Research Center conducted a national survey of 1000 adults. Its data indicated that 80 percent of the black adults surveyed said Brown’s death raises important issues about race, while only 37 percent of the white adults surveyed said that Brown’s death reflects the racial injustices in the country, which is a stark contrast.
One thousand adults is not enough to accurately portray the entire American population’s perception of Brown’s death. Pew’s data, however, is still an important revelation about an issue America needs to confront: the majority of the non-black population is unaware of or indifferent to the fact that countless innocent black Americans, especially young black males, are killed or harshly mistreated by white police officers.
Of course, not all victims of police brutality are black males. On August 11, a 20-year-old white man, Dillon Taylor, was shot to death by a black officer. Some publications, like Fox13now, have been criticizing the popular national media sources and the government for their lack of attention to Taylor’s death and full coverage on Brown. While Taylor’s death is also a tragedy, there is a blatant reason why Brown’s death is receiving more attention.
According to the most recent accounts of justifiable homicides reported to the FBI, on average two black people are killed by white officers every week in the United States. The troubling fact is that this is just data collected from 750 out of the 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S., indicating that these numbers are on the low side.
To illuminate, on February 4, 1999, four NYPD officers fired 41 bullets at the unarmed 23-year-old Amadou Diallo, 19 of which struck Diallo and killed him. On April 7, 2001, unarmed 19-year-old Timothy Thomas was shot in the heart by a white officer in Cincinnati, Ohio. On February 26, 2012, unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot to death by a neighborhood watch coordinator in Sanford, Florida. On March 9, 2013, Kimani Gray was shot seven times by white NYPD officers; three of the bullets pierced the teen from his back. Gray was 16 years old.
The deaths of Gray, Martin, Thomas, Diallo and countless other young black males are not justifiable.Unarmed, innocent black people die because of racial profiling and, at times, clear prejudices. Yet every time a black person is killed by white cops, the incident receives only brief attention, and it doesn’t take long for silence to return. Then another hapless death occurs, and the process repeats itself.
Racism is not dead. It is alive and well. Racial profiling is pervasive in this country, and racism is still deeply entrenched in the culture of our society. The deaths of individuals like Brown are pertinent to every U.S. citizen no matter his or her race, gender or culture; no American should feel unsafe because of the people who swear to protect them. What Brown’s death signifies is the neglect of the American society: the silence that needs to be eliminated, the injustices that need to be uprooted and the future losses of precious lives that need to be prevented. ♥