This week, I was browsing Buzzfeed instead of doing homework (as per usual), and I stumbled across an article/video about a “social experiment” done by two men: one black, one white. They parked their car on a public street and proceeded to fake break into the car and watch what happened. The white prankster tried for 30 minutes to break into the car, horn blaring, and nothing happened. A cop car even drove by and didn’t do anything. However, when …
While what would have been Trayvon Martin’s birthday recently passed, a similar trial was finished in court – the trial of the murder of Jordan Davis. On November 23, 2012, Michael Dunn pulled into a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida. He saw a red SUV full of black teenagers playing loud music and walked up to them to complain. He thought he saw a gun being taken out, so he shot at the teenagers, killing Jordan Davis. Recently, Dunn was …
Many Americans have been following the Jacksonville, Florida case of Michael Dunn and Jordan Davis for the past few weeks. Dunn, a middle aged white man, fired ten shots into an SUV occupied with black teenage boys because of his frustration with their refusal to turn down the loud music they were playing. One of the boys, 17-year old Jordan Davis, was hit by three of those shots, and killed. Yes, you read that synopsis correctly. Frustration is enough grounds …
For our contemporary racism class, we read an essay by social psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt. The essay summarized her and her colleagues’ work on the cognitive associations we make about Black people and crime. For me, the findings were like a knife in the gut: we have unconscious prejudices that we often aren’t aware of, that can have dire consequences. In one study, participants were either unconsciously primed to think about crime or received no such prime. Then, two faces, …
After reading the articles that were assigned this week I found myself becoming increasingly mad. I know it is our second amendment right to bare arms, and that it is the person behind the gun that has ill intent not the inanimate object itself. I still tend to find myself in utter disbelief at the sheer ignorance of certain individuals in this country, and their definition of “self defense” against people of color. Certain laws like the stand your ground …
After reading the Eberhardt article, I was left thinking about how her studies can be seen in the media. There are plenty of TV shows, movies, and books about the criminal justice system, and I started thinking about how her findings show up in these media outlets. The first thing I thought of was an episode of Law and Order Special Victims Unit, where a rich white celebrity shoots and kills and unarmed black teen. After remembering the episode, I …
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio recently followed through on his campaign promise to reform the city’s “Stop and Frisk” policy. “Stop and Frisk” is an NYPD program in which police stop a person and search him or her for weapons and drugs if they appear suspicious. In practice, people of color are stopped at a much higher rate than white people. Last year, a judge ruled that this policy was unconstitutional and that an independent monitor should oversee …