Barriers to Rebuilding the African American Community. Tywan Ajani
ancient world to love, serve, and validate the equality of women and to care for the civil liberties of the poor. Jesus cared about the Samaritan people who were both considered and mistreated as the African Americans of his day. His leadership and selfless service was countercultural and is worth further examination.
PETER LANG
New York • Bern • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw
“The United States is a country with systemic oppression-centuries of genocide, 336 years of slavery and legal segregation, in about 85 percent of U.S. History (1).”
—Drs. Joe Feagin and Zinobia Bennefield (sociologists)
On August 9, 2014, African American teenager Michael Brown was fatally shot during a scuffle with police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. This was not an isolated or unusual incident as dozens of unarmed black people have been shot and killed by police officers throughout American history. However, this particular event lit a fire of outrage that has perpetuated increased distrust between African Americans and police across the nation. The primary reason is because Michael Brown was an unarmed eighteen-year-old boy when he was shot and killed.
African Americans have long been targeted by police officers for two primary reasons. The first reason is due to the continual animosity between African Americans and Caucasian (White) Americans, that has lingered since the colonial slavery period. The second reason relates to the negative stereotype attributed to black culture in general, and more specifically to African Americans (men in particular) being linked to prevalent violence and criminal behaviors. Unfortunately, this stereotype has led to racial targeting by local police officers often resulting in more frequent traffic stops of African Americans, compared to other racial groups, ←1 | 2→and has led to an onslaught of recent killings of unarmed black male and females. Due to this particular wave of unarmed African American civilians being killed by police offers, a new civil rights movement called the Black Lives Matter has emerged. This social justice movement has become the face of the new American civil rights movement.
Similar to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s efforts of spotlighting unequal treatment of African Americans, the Black Lives Matter movement is attempting to bring attention to the ever-increasing unarmed police killings of African Americans, along with racial mistreatments, inequality, and oppression. This movement claims to provide a voice for the unfairly treated black community well as discriminatory practices of law enforcement agencies and the American criminal justice system.
The Black Lives Matter movement has been accused by partisan groups as inciting a recent wave of civil unrest and protest in multiple U.S. cities. However, the opposing argument is that this movement did not incite racial tension but was rather born out of it. Historically, oppressed people groups have revolted against governments, monarchies, religious leadership, and democracies. The history of the United States is no exception. It is human nature for people to rebel against injustice no matter how formidable, powerful, or self-righteous the oppressors might be. What better example is there in history than the colonial patriots’ uprising against the British monarchy regarding the right for self-governance, sovereignty, and for religious freedom. The Unites States of America was birthed out of this very revolt.
By and large, the African American community accuses Caucasian American leaders of failing to acknowledge and understand that the very ideals and freedoms that they were and are willing to lay down their lives for are exactly what black people and (all people of color) desire for their communities. The reluctance of African Americans to submit to systemic oppression and inequality by various entities of government, particularly law enforcement, with patience and compliance, confounds many Caucasian American leaders. Ironically, colonial Caucasians Americans rose up against their oppressors of the British Empire for similar issues of freedom.
Approximately sixty years after the civil rights movement, the dominant majority group continue to expect African Americans to wait idly for justice to prevail while in the meantime, experience colossal oppression, police brutality, and unprecedented racial mistreatment. Psychologists Dr. Alicia Fedewa and Dr. Thompson Prout said, “in the United States, White Americans are considered the ‘dominant’ reference group, so in the conformity stage, an identification with White American values is preferred to the minority racial/cultural heritage (3).”
←2 | 3→
The Black Lives Matter movement matters because the world is watching how the dominate majority race in the United States addresses well-documented racial tyranny and social injustice issues. Despite centuries of torture, systemic oppression, and discrimination of every type, African Americans will remain an inevitable part of the United States’ economy and culture. In the face of unfathomable cruelty handed down to African Americans in the name of religion, capitalism, and imperialism, they have continued to rise over oppression to reach astonishing feats in politics, education, science, religion, sports, the arts, and more. Examples of these contributions are delineated in Chapter Ten. The American public will forget which senators were in office during the birth of this movement in the state of Wyoming. They will forget who won an Oscar or who won the World Series in 2013. Most Americans will not recall what legislation was passed or what epic films were produced in 2009. However, most Americans will remember the Black Lives Matter movement and what it stood for. It is now a permanent part of American history.
Two Primary Viewpoints
Before jumping deeper into the barriers to rebuilding the African American community, this book acknowledges and attempts to address the two chief political viewpoints in the United States: the conservative perspective and the liberal position. This issue of racial tension between the African American and the Caucasian communities in the United States is controversial and sensitive and stems chiefly from a long history of racial tension originating during the period of colonial slavery. From that point in history, the relationship strain has not only persisted but has also escalated. Uprisings due to intense oppression through discriminatory practices such as the Jim Crow laws and others have birthed civil rights movements. Differences in values, cultures, languages, and norms along with a subtle reluctance of the black community to fully assimilate to Caucasian American culture have also contributed to the upheaval. Consequently, the two primary viewpoints that surfaced when Michael Brown was killed on that August 2014 morning vary significantly.
Many within the Caucasian community paint the incident as a justified and appropriate decision by officer Darren Wilson to respond with lethal force to a situation in which he determined Michael Brown to be in the commission of an act of defiance to law enforcement. The African American viewpoint, on the other hand, focuses on the history of racial bias and racial profiling of blacks, ←3 | 4→particularly of young black males, by law enforcement that often result in their frequent incarcerations and deaths.
On May 4, 2015, the United States Department of Justice issued a report in regard to predatory police practices. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is a high-ranking, government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws and the administration of justice in the United States. The DOJ has significant investigative resources, and executive authority, and is one of the most powerful agencies within the American federal government. The DOJ’s investigation into the Michael Brown case resulted in the agency’s release of the following statements: “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. The result is a pattern of stops without reasonable suspicion and arrests without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment; infringement on free expression, as well as retaliation for protected expression, in violation of the First