In Fuck Tha Police by N.W.A. The song was released in 1988 by Ice Cube, MC Ren, Eazy E, Yella, and Dr. Dre about police brutality. The opening verse Ice Cube raps, “Fuck the police! Comin’ straight from the underground / A young nigga got it bad ‘cause I’m brown / And not the other color, so police think / They have the authority to kill a minority…” The verses here relate directly to the topic brought in Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. In the song, they talk about the police having the power to kill them solely based on the color of their skin. Also, the verse raises questions. Why attack/target African Americans? Then, Ice Cube continues rapping in the verse singing, “Fuck that shit, ‘cause I ain't the one / For a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun / To be beating on, and thrown in jail / We can go toe-to-toe in the middle of a cell.” Here Ice Cube talks about the police hiding behind their position to abuse minorities because of the gun and badge. This relates to where Coates talks about the police having the power to destroy your (black) bodies. The song is highly relevant to the events occurring of police brutality and can be seen chanted in the street during protests against police brutality. Ice Cube even recently said, “Fuck Tha Police’ was 400 years in the making. And it’s still just as relevant as it was before it was made.”
Police Brutality + It’s Effects The first interview that I examined was an interview about police brutality with Alex
In the essay “ The Paranoid Style of American Policing” by Ta-Nahisi Coates, Coates argues against police brutality in Chicago and the way the government handles policing in the state. At the start of the essay,Coates compares how his father would resolve conflicts without violence to the way police these days solve conflicts with violence,for example killing or beating, most of the time when it is not necessary. Police, Coates explains, are given too much power by the government as they are able to resolve dilemmas brutally without any sort of punishment. With all the events that happen between police and citizens the author states it is very hard for the people in Chicago to trust their policing, which is seen in text when the brother of
This means that when the police see a suspicious black person walking down the street in the middle of the night, that person is an automatic dead man. Believe it or not, police officers have also killed white people as well. Police officers do not just shoot people for no reason. Actually, the last thing a police officer wants to do is kill someone and let their actions haunt them for the rest of their lives. The only time an officer should fire their weapon is when they know for sure that the person they are pursuing is putting others’ lives, including the arresting officer’s, in danger. The amount of respect citizens have for the police today is pitiful because civilians assume their only goal is to patrol and arrest instead of protect and
Cops are staring to be racist like cops back in the day. Back in the day cops were very racist and didn’t care about black or any other race. They treated them like if they were animals, very cruel. They didn’t care about hurting people of a different color. There has been many cases nowadays about racist cops, like the case I was talking about earlier. In the book If You Come Softly Miah dies because he was running and some cops were looking for a black guy, the cops thought that Miah was the guy they were looking for and shot him. Another case that I remember is the Michael Brown case. Michael was a black guy he was very young and he got killed by a cop. He was just walking down a street with a friend and a cop just came up to them
The Frontline documentary, Policing the police, makes the argument that there are many problems with police departments across the United States and uses his correspondence with the Newark, New Jersey Police Department to make that point.
In the picture above, we can recognize one of the many confrontations that have been taken place in the last few years between American police forces and the black community. These series of events have caused great outrage all around the world and multiple groups have risen up to speak up against this injustice.
Police Brutality is a problem that exists for years in the United States, it is known to be
The brutality of the police force has been a long worldwide problem, but especially between the years of 2012-2016. Black people are being unjustly beaten and shot in plain sight for doing nothing while being unarmed. Journal of African American Studies “Blacks are viewed as deserving of harsh treatment in the criminal justice system” (482). “Black males with more “Afrocentric” features may receive longer sentences than blacks with less Afrocentric features like lighter skin and straighter hair”(482). Nowadays it is important to know about the police force. It’s important to know our rights as citizens and be careful around cops. Not everybody is good, but not everybody is bad also. In The New York Amsterdam News 21 people were killed by Chicago police in 2008. Entire families were being attacked. They believe it’s because of their skin color and how they are different. The year of racism started off with the world seeing the police murder of Oscar Grant. “The media have pushed people away from hearing the issue of police brutality, and it has fallen off of the radar screen.”(2) “You can’t give in. They will try to make an example out of you, try to break your spirit!”(2) African Americans say do not trust the cops with anything. “They will ruin you.”(2)
It appears that a black theodicy is present in the song “F*** tha Police.” If a theodicy is described as a discussion of good and evil and a black theodicy is an attempt to explain why black suffering occurs in the world and particular in the United States, then I would suggest that it is very prevalent in this song. One of the first things Ice Cube says is “A young n**** got it bad ‘cause I’m brown and not the other color, so police think.” This would develop the idea that black people suffer simply because they are black and in the minority of the U.S. population. Based on some of Ice Cube’s other sayings it seems that if they “a little bit of gold and a pager,” then they were automatically stereotyped. Genius.com attributes the idea that if the cops arrested a black man with a gold chain then they could pocket it for themselves since they did not make a lot of money as compared to other professions. In addition, the site also made it evident that a pager was a method to get ahold of a “weed man” if you wanted some more weed. It seems that police officers would stereotype all young
What gives police the right to shoot an unarmed person? Why don’t they just give a second to search the person? More than a thousand times last year a person was shot and killed by the police. On top of that 40% of those who were shot, were unarmed African American men (Kindy). This is a shocking and frightening statistic, to think that the armed force who is suppose to protect us, is shooting people without consequence. Police brutality is a serious issue, that needs to reach a solution. The artist Lil Herb speaks on this issue in his song “Bottom of the Bottom”, when analyzed through a cultural lens, that unfair treatment by the police needs to stop.
Police are committing acts of violence against blacks because they have biases and stereotypes that make officers perceive blacks as a threat and feel that the only way to handle the situation is to resort to violence. The only way police know how to deal with blacks is to beat them or kill them,”The video shows Rosen stomping on the head of Demarco Anderson while Anderson is already handcuffed and under control. Anderson is visibly restrained and does not appear to be agitated or resisting when Rosen charges from the left side of the frame and pounds his foot into the back of the suspect’s head with a force reminiscent of the skinhead sidewalk scene in American History X, or the recurring dream I have about catching a certain orange-colored
Through these pointless murders, these officers get off with a warning like it is the norm for the police force. This was also the norm in society when blacks were forced to be slaves. The mistreatment that is shown in today’s society is also depicted in many literary works. Additionally, this disturbing truth is presented in the music video for the song “G.O.M.D”. This video takes the viewer back in time to the days of slavery. The video is a scenario from the early 1900’s, thus presenting the cruel hardships the Africans had to endure. In a scene in the video, white men on horses trudge across the field where a number of black men are working. One of the slaves stop and wipes his forehead from the sweat created by the exhausting heat. At that moment, one of the white men kick down the black slave while generating a wave of laughter from the slave owners. This music video reflects on how police officers are in today’s society and how the physical harm of blacks are seemed as the norm. Furthermore, even though blacks were “free”, many racists made sure black men didn’t feel
When examining the video the first thing that stood out to me was two statements by the officer. The first was when one officer said that if he’d seen 4-5 black guys in a white neighborhood he’d go up to them ask them what they were doing and even slow down and talk to them if he was in the patrol car. If the kids then gave him an attitude that would raise even more suspicion and escalate the situation. I think that this idea relates to some of the reading about police misconduct and even the personality of some of the officers. For white male officers, their motivation for becoming a police officer was linked to their “authoritarian personalities” (128). In this situation, these teenagers could be seen as disrespecting the police and having
Jerry Green, the Warren City police chief, selects officer Lou Galasso to gather information for the department. He wants to know how the citizens living and working in warren feel about their city’s police officers compared to previous years. Every few years the police department comes up with statistics to make sure the public is satisfied with the services provided. Departments do this about every ten years to make sure they are up to date with current events such as a recent incident with Darren Wilson, a white cop killing a black male in Ferguson, Missouri. Events such as that often lower the approval ratings of police presence. Knowing the citizens attitudes and feelings towards police presence can help put together plans on how to deal with citizens, and tell officers how to present themselves. Most importantly it can help the police department
In our society racism in our judicial system has not gone away because colored males are constantly targeted by authority because of their race. During the 1970s when racial tension was really high, Bob Dylan made the song “Hurricane” emphasizing how a colored male was targeted for his race. Dylan shows this by saying, “When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road just like the time before and the time before that in Patterson that’s just the way things go.”. Bob Dylan shows the listeners that cops were constantly picking on Rubin Carter because of his race. Again Bob Dylan says “If you’re black you might as well not show up on the street ‘less you wanna draw the heat”. This shows that blacks were commonly targeted by police because of the racial prejudice at the time. Three decades later, similarly in Jay-Z’s song
In the black community when you see police you really don’t get a safe feeling about it, it’s been numerous times that when a police officer is doing something towards a colored person even if they're just talking the outcome will more than likely be unpleasant. The black community doesn’t see the police force to be helpful in anyway because it seems like when they are in need or if a situation happens around them they are mostly blamed because of the way they look. Some situations they get treated like they don’t belong and are not important as any other race, police feel like people that aren’t rich and white or just white don’t belong here. People of color have been going through these type of situations for thousands of years, from slavery to taking a knee now in later years we have been standing together to fight these despicable nightmares and trying to change how people