Beyond Ferguson: Hands Up Don't Shoot!

The recent non-indictments of police officers accused of using excessive force leading to the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and the case of Eric Garner in New York City, have caused a national outcry with thousands taking to the streets demanding justice. Indeed, I too marched with the masses in solidarity upon hearing the news that policeman who killed Michael Brown would not be indicted. 

Hands Up Don't Shoot! New York City, November 25 2014

If the Michael Brown case was not enough, then we quickly were dealt the Eric Garner case, which confirmed many of our suspicions that had the two victims been white, they most likely they would have been alive today. Adding salt to the wounds, we learned also that a 12-year old African-American, Tamir Rice, was shot by a policeman in Cleveland. He was playing with a toy gun.

 

As a professor teaching in a public institution in New York City, I have come across students who know very well that they were targeted by the NYPD's "Stop and Frisk" policy simply due to their skin color. I too have witnessed innocent black people harassed (and humiliated) on the subways late at night, when the NYPD started randomly questioning black people for their IDs, leaving the white people free to move on.  

While we should not ignore the injustices done by the nation's police departments, we also need to place the recent events into the greater context of overall racism in the United States. From slavery to the Jim Crow laws, the history of racism against the African-American population runs deep and did not end with civil rights movement or the election of President Obama. 

In other words, the discussion should not be simply about police violence disproportionately affecting people of color (with the understanding that police violence on its own deserves a discussion), rather about how the United States can move forward doing away with its institutionalized racism in its prison system, and closing the huge gaps in equity between America's white population and persons of color.

Here are just a few statistics to show the rampant injustice and why police violence is only one small part of a much greater problem:

The High Incarceration rate is even more shocking when we learn that the
African-American population makes up is only about 13%. 

For more statistics see following link

To catch a terrorist within the American Dream

Here is an excerpt of my latest in Today's Zaman (25 April 2013):

The Boston Marathon bombing, killing three people and injuring over a hundred others, shocked the world as it played out on live television. The story picked up on Thursday night after the release of photos of two possible suspects, who within hours were spotted at the scene of a robbery. Following this, the two suspects hijacked a car, temporarily holding its owner hostage; from there, they wreaked havoc, killing a university security officer, engaging police in a car chase, and a subsequent gun battle, which left one of the suspects dead. Following this incident, a whole neighborhood was placed under lockdown, and a search began for the second suspect, who was apprehended in serious condition within a little over 24 hours.

Within hours of the suspects' photos being released, they were identified; it was two brothers of Chechen origin, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed during the gun battle, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, arrested at the end of the saga. The release of the identities of the suspect led to a media frenzy, much to the likes of reality television, which aired as a non-stop 24-hour episode. Both on the airwaves and social media, everyone questioned who these two men from the far off lands of Chechnya and Dagestan were, and what ills they held for the American way of life.

To continue reading, here is the link