African American mug shots for target practice

Hello dear readers!

We’ve read an article that includes racial discrimination and the police target practice.  

The article is about the police department in Miami, who has been caught using African American mug shots for target practice. National guard Sgt. Valerie Deant showed up at the department, and among the pictures, she discovered her own brother being used as a target.  

North Miami Police Chief J. Scott Dennis denies any racial profiling, but concedes that his apartment ‘’could have used better judgement’’.

The article is to inform people about the problem with racial discrimination in the US and the people who think it’s interesting to read about the racism in a modern western country like the US.

This is a picture of the mug shots

Our opinion is that it couldn’t have happened with white mug shots, and that the Miami police department only claims that they use all colors of people as mug shots to protect themselves.  

Caroline, Cecilia, Katrine, Malthe and Jonatan

Years has passed but little has changed

Even though slavery ended many years ago, the residual effects still lingers. The black men is still portrayed negatively by the media, which in turn bias the way the rest of the population of USA views the black community and their behaviour. The media present the black men in the way they do because it is more interesting, than for example a black man taking care of his child.

But the facts are not as simple as that. Compared to the rest of the demographic groups, black men is more likely to take of their children everyday and more black men are going to college but yet the recent black graduates from college has a harder time finding a job than white graduates do, as is visible in the graph. This is a not uncommon as the unemployment rate for black men over 16 are 12.2 per cent, while the rest of the population’s unemployment rate over 16 is 6.2 per cent. Furthermore, the job market discriminates against people, who carry “black sounding” names, like for example Lakisha Washington, and workplaces are more likely to employ people with “white sounding” names like “Emily Walsh”.

The graph shows the unemployment rates for recent college graduates

Ditte-Marie, Maria and Emma

Kareem Abdul Jabbar

Living in fear. Every. Single. Day.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar has written an article about the black people never being able to have any sense of security, they live in fear every day.  When a police car pulls them over, they never know if they are going to get away, alive. He mentions the Ferguson case, where white people felt just a fragment of what black people go through every day. The white people shows grief and sorrow until the media stops mentioning it and the white people go back to their own lives of comfort and safety. Kareem Abdul Jabbar says that black people will never be able to have a feeling of protection and safety. With the cases we have seen in the last 5 years no black man can feel safe from police brutality. It's a pity that we keep statistics of how many people that were killed by sharks, but not how many that have fallen victim of police brutality.

ida, dani & sam.

Statistic inequality between black and white people.

Racism and inequality are subjects we have heard a lot about on a daily basis throughout time. But does these problems actually exist? - new statistics give us a very clear answer.

Tests show that black students on average only score 36% of their white peers in reading and math.
That is an average of all states!

The black-white index for 2015 shows on which areas the equality is most profound.
The factors with the highest inequality are economics (55,8%), social justice (60,6%) and education (76,1%). The black-white equality index for 2015 shows that the civic engagement for black people is 104%, which is 4% more than their white peers.

Article by Cecilie Kjøller, Ida Hother and Nanna Lindhardt.

Niggers in college

We’ve read an article about a black woman who explains her life in college. She was one of few black students at a small college in Kentucky in the early 2000s. She tells about how the white students made the few blacks feel very unwelcome. For example, there hung Confederate flags in the college windows. The whites kept saying it symbolized their “Southernes” and southern pride.

1.      The main purpose is to inform. To inform especially the whites about how there's still racism in the US the day today.

The target audience is mainly whites and to remind them that there's still racism even though they might not feel like they are treating the blacks differently than others.

Some black people may also read the article and relate to the text and feeling, but it’s not the audience that the author tried to catch when she wrote the text.

2.      The type of article is an opinion piece, since she’s the one who had written the article (a 1. person writer) and therefore it’s very biased. We hear a lot from her own experiences and get to know her opinions.

The flag in the article got removed but the feeling of it was still there. It’s exactly the same in the US. The racism laws might have changed but there’s still racial segregation.

Sophie, Nanna W., Linnea & Helene

The Baddest Dog in Harlem 

The people in Harlem are used to the police being there on and of all the time. When a police car pulls up, they don’t get nervous or scared. Instead, they are curious; everybody wants to see what’s happening. Most of the citizens of Harlem see it as a nice little change in the everyday life when a police car pulls up, and they get so excited about it, that they don’t listen to the police when they tell them to get back.  It is way too exciting mysterious what’s going on, to listen to the cops. “One of them got out a bullhorn and told all the kids to get off the street immediately. He must have meant that as a joke. The kids didn’t have anything to do and they weren’t going anyplace.”    

The story is told by one of the citizens in Harlem, whom isn’t described that much in the story. The narrator doesn’t have a name which makes the story more objective, and more about the issue than about him. The story is written in slang.

“I wanted them to say how bad they felt about it and what a shame it was the way life could slip away so easily in Harlem, in our community, on our street.” I think the point off this quote is to tell what a shame it is how often people actually die in Harlem.

“She snatched it away from him and said she wasn’t going anywhere with them unless she had a black man with her.” It shows that she doesn’t trust the police because they are white, so she needs a black man with her to feel secure.

“I did just like everybody else leaning in that rail did, said a quick prayer and put on my innocent face.” This quote tells that the police suspects everybody living in Harlem, whether they are involved or not. 

Linnea og Cecilia

The baddest dog in Harlem (Katrine og Maria)

1. Describe the environment in the short story with special focus on the relationship between the community and the police in Harlem. Use specific examples.

The environment is tough. There is poverty and crime. The white cops don’t have any respect for the black people who live in Harlem. “…and told all the kids to get off the street immediately. He must have meant that as a joke. The kids didn’t have anything to do and they weren’t going anyplace.” The cops don’t care if some black kid gets shot. The storyteller says “but then I wasn’t looking too hard. The one thing I don’t want to be is a witness”. The quote shows that the black people are afraid of the cops. They don’t want to get in trouble.   

2. Comment on the language in the short story. How is it told and by whom? What characterizes the tone of voice and word usage of the narrator? Use specific examples.

The storyteller is a young black guy. He uses slang “big-eyed kids”. The storyteller is young because he talks about a man in his thirties who he calls old. He describes himself implicitly through his short story.  

The language isn’t formal. There is a lot of spoken language example “I don’t want to see no dead people.”    

3. Select three quotes from the text that you believe are central to the story in terms of plot and/or themes. Explain the quotes – what do they mean? Is there any hidden meaning to them?

“That dog looks like a terrorist to me” a cop says that. The quote shows the relationship between them and the community. The policeman has just shot a dog and one of them makes a joke about it.

“…She wasn’t going anywhere with them unless she had a black man with her.” It shows the distrust between the black and white people.

“The cops made us go up first and they came behind” The cops don’t care about their protection. They are not important to the cops.  

  

Katrine og Maria