Black History, By Sandra Bland

The Black Panthers is a group or a party of Aafrican Aamericans that was formed to protect blacks from the white law enforcements. The group was established in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The two leading revolutionary men created the national organization as a way to collectively combat white oppression. Dr Huey Percy Newton Born ( February 17 1942- August 22, 1989), Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana. He was the youngest of seven children of Armelia Johnson and Walter Newton, a sharecropper and Baptist lay preacher. His parents named him after former Governor of Louisiana Huey Long. In 1945, the family migrated to oakland, california as part of the second wave of the

While Kathryn Engel’s humiliation was only witnessed by her oppressors, another man was less fortunate. Michael Scipio, a mentally impaired african american man, was forced to sing and dance while videotaped by a local police officer, “A middle aged black man signs and makes strange noises, apparently at the direction of a police officer…. “Go ahead, do your song,” the person behind the camera says on video”(Murphy 3). Scipio reports that the officer took advantage of his mental illness by ordering him to sing and dance and “made him feel like a fool”( Murphy 1) before sending the video to several family members, friends and coworkers. The same police officer posted another photo, this one included a racist caption and featured a black man riding in the back of a truck. Thankfully, all officers involved in this awful event were fired and Michael Scipio was issued a formal apology. Police officers should not be allowed to humiliate and dehumanise others just because their victims are powerless.

What are some ways that we welcome back ex cons into society if we do at all? What help determined our attitude towards these incrassated victims whether they are guilty or not? These are questions and situations that sociologist take time to research in society. This is mainly done because it affects society in some sort of way and it’s their job to find out why things happen and how can we help better the problems. Most offenders are from a lower income society or belong to an oppress group. The victims of coarse are the people who the harm is being done to, which by law there are consequences for their action. The problem, that leave one thinking is the kind of crimes people committed, or some may not commit any at all, probably just at the wrong place at the wrong time and they still happen to receive harsh penalty, being stigmatize as a criminal on record causing them to struggle in society.

One night in April 1998, two New Jersey state troopers pulled over a van containing three black men and one Hispanic man, all in their early twenties and all unarmed. During the stop, the van began to roll backwards. Although the van's driver would later claim that he put the vehicle into reverse by accident, the troopers believed he was attempting to intentionally back over one of them. In response, the troopers—both white males—fired 11 shots at the van, hitting three of the men inside, one of whom was severely wounded. Many African Americans and Latino face racist police officers. Not much they can do about it either besides sit there and take it. The topic of racism in police officers has deep history to consider, and there will always be both supporters and critics who continue to debate this topic.

"Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom," declared George W. Carver. This quote to me means that without an education you have freedom but it is limited freedom only because without knowledge you miss out on half of what the world has to offer. In the book Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington, Washington is born into slavery in Malden, Virginia and then freed at the age of nine. He struggles through poverty, racism, and many other obstacles to obtain an education but never loses his determination . An education is beneficial considering all the opportunities it has to offer.

On August 9, 2014 Officer Darren Wilson with the Ferguson Missouri Police Department was on his way to a reported strong-arm robbery at a local convenience store in the city. While on his way, he observed two African-American males walking in the middle of the roadway (#1). Officer Wilson realized the pair matched the description given of the suspects from the robbery call in which he had been dispatched. While still in his patrol vehicle, Officer Wilson drove up to the males, and began speaking with Michael Brown. Officer Wilson told Brown to not walk in the lanes of traffic (#1).

In Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts describes the history of African-American women and the dehumanizing attempts to control their reproductive lives. Beginning with slavery, to the early beginning of birth control policy, to the sterilization abuse of Black women during the 1960s and 1970s, continuing with the current campaign to inject Norplant and Depo-Provera along with welfare mothers, Roberts argues that the systematic, institutionalized denial of reproductive freedom has uniquely marked Black women’s history in America.

bell hooks, renowned black feminist and cultural critic criticizes the lack of racial awareness in her essay, Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination (1992). ‘bell hooks’ is written in lower case to convey that the substance of her work reigns more important than the writer. From a marginalized perspective, hooks argues that sites of dominance, not otherness is problematic and critiques the lack of attention that white scholars pay to the representation of whiteness in the black imagination. Critical feminist scholars Peggy McIntosh and Ruth Frankenberg identify their own whiteness as a dominant discourse, but share a critical departure from hooks with the notion of whiteness as terror. hooks aim is not to reverse racism, but discuss her position to authentically inform readers about how she experiences racism. Furthermore, systems of oppression are manufactured by human thought and thus the site of the Other is always produced as a site of difference. Gender, race, sex, class, disability, and geography are situated differently in social structure, but dominant groups assume they share the same reality though they cannot experience it. In consequence, the Other cannot hold a singularized identity of their own and the binary structure succeeds in containing racialized bodies in place. What happens to those bodies when they cross boundaries of the binary? hooks recounts being routinely disciplined back into place when crossing the border; however, dominant white

How does it feel like to be a problem? Many would answer this question in different ways. Everyone has experienced “being the problem” in different ways. However, in terms of race, the answer to this question was similar among most African Americans. Living like they are a problem, consists of a majority of their lives. Different documents ranging from 1903 to our present day in 2015 mirror this same ideology. People such as W.E.B DuBois, Anne Moody, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barack Obama, expressed the same concern. Many people in our society, past and present, see being African American as a sign of inferiority. Race shouldn’t be the distinguishing factor between people. Moody, King, Obama, and DuBois all show that the fixation on race was a debilitating problem and appealed to their audiences for action to break free of these prejudices by trying to identify the problems and recommending courses of action.

Furthermore, " The problem of police misconduct was not an exception or an aberration; it was systematic, an old 'family secret' in the LAPD. (Gibbs 1996). To add insult to injury, the federal government still not introduce the issue of race when it stepped in after the riots and charged the four police officers with violating King's civil rights. It is also critically pointed out that two of the officers were acquitted in federal court, and the two that were convicted, only received very minimal sentences of 30 months imprisonment and a waiver of any fines. As well, In comparing these sentences to four Black men involved in the attack on white motorist Reginald Denny, we are able to see several startling differences.

On March 5, 2016 Earledreka White, a black 28-year old social worker, was pulled over by a Metro Police officer in Huston, Texas for crossing the double white line. During this incident White was placed in handcuffs and charged with resisting arrest and search, a misdemeanor that carries a potential six-month sentence, and jailed for two days on $1,000 bond. Later on in the case White’s attorney released the surveillance video that shows the arrest with the 911 call playing as it unfolds. While watching the surveillance video I was shocked to see the treatment White was receiving for a traffic stop and the way the metro police officer handled the situation. Before this incident White had no criminal record, but the police officer treated her

Turns out, a number of black New York Police Department officers say that while off duty they have experienced the same pernicious racial profiling that cost unarmed 43 year old Eric Garner his life (NewsOne Staff, 2015) White Police officers profiling blacks as well as fellow officers while off duty.The conformity in the police department intends that you,the police officer, have to agree with all of our decisions, even if you disagree with it.For example, a retired police officer named Desmond Blaize told reuters that he once got stopped while taking a jog through Brooklyn’s upmarket Prospect Park. He said, “ I had my ID on me so it didn’t escalate.” White police officers have intentions of who to blame for the crime even if they didn’t have nothing to do with it. Police officers prejudge blacks as the ones who do the most wrong in the society.The more police officers felt socially isolated from the community they served, the more they withdrew and the more negative they felt towards its citizens

Whiteness is an integrative ideology that has transpired in North America throughout the late 20th century to contemporary society. It is a social construction that sustains itself as a dogma to social class and vindicates discrimination against non-whites. The power of whiteness is illustrated in social, cultural and political practices. These measures are recognized as the intent standard in which other cultures are persuaded to live by. Bell hooks discusses the evolution of whiteness in an innovative article in which she theorizes this conviction as normative, a structural advantage, an inclusive standpoint, and an unmarked name by those who are manipulating this interdisciplinary. Most intellects, including hooks, would argue that whiteness is a continuation of history; a dominant cultural location that has been unconsciously disclosing its normativity of cultural practice, advocating fear, destruction, and terror for those who are being affected by this designation.

Race-based hostility and bias is a major national issue affecting our democracy, and racial hostility between minorities and the police is a significant societal problem (Police Traffic Stops and Racial Profiling: Resolving Management, Labor, and Civil Rights Conflicts). These encounters are becoming far too frequent. Eric Gardner is amongst one of the countless African Americans who have been racially profiled and murdered by law enforcement. Allegations of excessive force by police departments across the country continue to populate headlines more than twenty years after the 1992 Rodney King incident (The Painful Legacy of Rodney King).

Black Feminism argues that sexism, class oppression and racism are linked together. Mainstream feminism that more than often benefits white women, strives to overcome class and gender oppression, however they do not recognise that race can discriminate against women also. Activist, Alice Walker states that black women experience a different kind of oppression when compared to their white counterparts. Professor of Sociology and social activist, Patricia Hill Collins summarises that Black feminism is ‘a process of self-conscious struggle that empowers women and men to actualise a humanist vision of community.’ Her quote welcomes individuals of any gender, whom understands black women’s struggle to fight with them. [Collins, 1991:39]