Journal Entry
“This culture within FPD [Ferguson Police Department] influences officer activities in all areas of policing, beyond just ticketing. Officers expect and demand compliance even when they lack legal authority. They are inclined to interpret the exercise of free-speech rights as unlawful disobedience, innocent movements as physical threats, indications of mental or physical illness as belligerence. Police supervisors and leadership do too little to ensure that officers act in accordance with law and policy, and rarely respond meaningfully to civilian complaints of officer misconduct” (Hesse, 2017).
For the past years, racial discrimination has resulted in police brutality toward blacks living in America. Some actors feel oppressed due to the roles they are given to take during the process of acting. Generally, blacks are linked to violence, thus leading to racial policing. To some extent, the actor ends up rejecting the role they take in a movie or a film. For instance, Denzel Washington, at some point, explained how he rejected taking the role of a black man who had been convicted of raping a white woman. From his explanation, various methods were used to execute the black man (Hesse, 2017). The film uses a concept that indicates the resistant feature of a black man.
Racial policing has resulted in the death of many black people in America. The concept of western democracy is believed to help citizens to kill their citizens. However, racial policing has become a police culture used to regulate and discipline black people. The texts and stories used in the explain more about the origin of racial policing. The origin of modern policing was introduced mainly to restrain the urban slave populations rather than maintaining the general peace in the London model. The state law argued that the mobility and conduct of slaves are only enforceable by the police (Hesse, 2017).
Race should not only be thought of scientifically ideological ideas, ethnicity, and socially constructed relations but also in a more materially and historical way. The concept of liberal-colonial assists people in thinking in a way that does not dismiss the consideration of how the urban formation of racial resembles the formation of racial policing by the colonial settlers. Richard Pryor expressed how the lives of black people are oppressed in concerts in 1979. His words suggest the regular policing routine associated with black people living in America (Hesse, 2017).
According to DuBois, the institutional levels of racial policing is explained in a way that the liberal rule of law lies below the whiteness (Hesse, 2014). It is a clear indication of the violation of protection rights by the social community and the political orders toward the black citizens. The accumulation of repetitive colonial racial violence is associated with white sovereignty. Mbembe’s argument gives a broader understanding of colonial-racial violence by grouping the sovereign into three parts. The first includes the settlers who are explained as the founding violence. The second part is legitimate violence that involves the conversion of the founding violence into an authorizing authority. The interactive violence that deals with authentication are the third whiteness (Hesse, 2017).
The black lives matter serves as an intervention ideology to the black people who are intentionally a systematically oppressed in western society. The resilience and humanity are meant to recover from the oppressive society. The ideology uses various visual arts, songs, and movies to express that the lives of a black person are worth just like that of a white person. Recently the interventions have helped the black man to thrive in achieving their goals despite the oppression. It has enabled them to sustain their lives beyond the violations of citizenship hence achieving significant success in various leadership roles (Hesse, 2017). Therefore, police should improvise ways of handling citizens to avoid causing inequalities and oppression to specific races. It will promote unity and minimize racism cases in a nation. The American government should ensure that human rights are not violated to minimize commotions and protests that can result in an unhealthy economy.
References
Hesse, B. (2014). Escaping Liberty. Political Theory, 42(3), 288–313. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591714526208
Hesse, B. (2017). White Sovereignty (…), Black Life Politics: “The N****r They Couldn’t Kill.” South Atlantic Quarterly, 116(3), 581–604. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3961494