If you were to go around major cities right now and ask what people thought the most pressing issue was in America today, a majority of people would probably tell you the relations between the police and African Americans. There has always been tension between these two groups, but recently the tension is growing with the recent killings of unarmed (and some armed) black men. As a result, many Americans of all races are gathering together and protesting for more police transparency and for better policing. Yet some African Americans are ignoring the killings of blacks by blacks in inner cities that occur during senseless violence.
Protests began Tuesday in Charlotte, N.C. after the killing of a man named Keith L. Scott. Members of the activist group “Black Lives Matter” were among the first to take to the streets and protest the killing. Among the activists were just normal everyday people who are fed up with the killings of African Americans by police. These protests have become common in the past few years, but what you don’t always see take place are the protests of African Americans killing other African Americans.
Being able to protest is a right that the Constitution gives us all but some of the protesters ruined the peaceful gatherings for others. People began looting stores and some even turned to violence. As a result one civilian lost his life due to more unnecessary violence by another civilian who was protesting too.
Dozens in Charlotte protested for more transparency in the police department and called for the release of the video of Keith L. Scott’s shooting. But even after police released the video protests continued to grow.
While any loss of life is a sad event and should be mourned, the problem with the Black Lives Matter movement is that people are focusing on the few men who have been murdered by police, but are ignoring the hundreds who are being killed in civilian on civilian violence in America’s inner cities. If Americans want to combat the killings of blacks by police officers then we need to look into what caused African Americans to be stereotyped as “dangerous” and what causes police officers to act more defensively against blacks than other racial groups.
Many African Americans have complained that they have long faced disproportionate use of force by some police departments, but the surge in smartphones and video recording devices has forced national attention on a string of recent episodes.
What’s preventing Americans from seeing the real problem today is the bias that many African Americans have against police officers and vice versa. Many believe that police officers are “against” African Americans or discriminative to them, but in the case of the Charlotte killing the police officer himself was African American so that narrative doesn’t apply here.
Dozens of protesters took their fight for racial equality in policing to the heart of Charlotte’s power structure on Monday, demanding the resignations of the mayor, police chief, and lawmakers in the wake of the police slaying of a black man. This is not a response that would benefit anybody in my opinion, since these people did not kill the man themselves and the death of Keith L. Scott happened only because of the police officer who shot him and his actions.
We have to find a way to battle inner city crime if we want to stop the killings of African Americans.