Analyse af 'Walking while black' og 'Harlem'

Walking while black: Michael Brown, black men and white police officers

Do black men just have to live with the fact that they generally get treated as second-class citizens by politicians and police? Racism has and will probably be a primary topic for a long time yet. The past about racism is still near and many white people don’t want to change the hierarchy between the whites and the blacks. But does that mean the black people should accept the behavior from white people? Police are often more protective against the black men because of all the prejudice and racism. In the article “Walking while black: Michael Brown, black men and white police officers”, which is written by Ishmael Sistrunk and published in August 13, 2014, we hear about a St. Louis resident’s thoughts about experiences with the white police and ways to unify the world between whites and blacks and fight the racism. We also hear about limits for black people when it comes to their “American dream” in the poem, Harlem, which is written by Langston Hughes in 1951. The relationship between black men and the police are disconcerting and unjust. Blackness is considered as a threat for the police. Some police officers must have a lot of prejudice about black people because they assume things which isn’t true and they will make bogus stops against Ishmael Sistrunk just to ask the same questions like, “Where was he coming from? Where was he going? What was he doing in the area?” (p. 2, l. 30). At the same time, the police officers make the poorest reasons to stop Ishmael Sistrunk. They “pull him over for having a license plate partially obstructed by snow while it was snowing” (p. 2, l. 26). Some black mothers feel like they are compelled to teach their kid how to respond to police officers so the kid can avoid situations which end bad for the black one. That is probably because they have experienced a situation like that self or maybe they know someone who has.