Structural racism and police violence in America

“Searchin' my car, lookin' for the productThinkin' every n*gga is sellin' narcotics”

- F*uck tha police, N.W.A. (1988)

N.W.A. is for many people one of the first groups to put their perspective on racism, police violence and the everyday life in a BIPOC district. They had no filter and only spoke about reality. Martin Luther King, N.W.A., Black Panthers and Rosa Parks all spoke about their reality in different was. But one thing they all have in common, is that they are black. They have all experience structural racism and would not accept it. Even though they all fought many years ago, the American society are still not done yet. Demonstrations has occurred in America once again, after another black life was taken by the police. How can a little girl grow happily and safely up in a world el safe, when her fathers’ innocent life was taken by the people who were supposed to keep them safe?

Structural racism is a system of hierarchy and inequity, made by the white “supremacy”. It advantages white people and gives them privilege and power at the expense of Blacks, Indigenous and Other People of Color (BIPOC). Structural racism is often associated with police violence against BIPOC minorities. Even though the civil rights act that made equality between sex, race, religion and nationality was passed in 1964, researchers are still saying that the overpopulation of BIPOC in the crime statistics is a symbol of missing equality of races. The way the police are working in the bigger cities in America, also puts BIPOC’s in the spotlight. In 1996 an invention of CompStat was introduced, which is a strategical instrument that geographically can point out which areas where most crimes happen. Therefore, more police officers were sent to that place, to keep the crime rates down. Also called preventive policing. In the first 2,5 years the criminality fell with 39%, which was a success. With that instrument, the stop and frisk method were invented, where police officers stopped random people in the areas with high crime rates. These events often happened in poorer and African American districts. Between the years 2003 to 2011 686.000 stop and frisk happened in New York only, where the whites only made up for 9% of them.