Racial tensions in the United States

What are some of the similarities and differences between the recent Cases
of deaths at the hands of police?
Similarities:
Exposure given to black people deaths
Coverage Protests over power of police
Outrage over black deaths

Differences:
Lack of exposure given to black police shooting blacks such as Crawford
Some people protesting for police (the ferguson shooter)
Lack of exposure on black police shootings

The first question asks us to look at the recent cases of deaths at the
hands of the police, and when I think about this a couple of similarities and
differences pop up. To help us with the analysis, we will look at three highprofile cases. The victims in these cases are in order of their deaths, Eric

Garner, choked to death July 17; John Crawford III, shot and killed Aug. 5; and
Michael Brown, shot and killed Aug. 9.
Similarities in this case include the exposure given in media coverage
to these deaths, coverage of the protests over the power given to police and
the unified outrage over the deaths of the black. Differences on the other
hand, include the lack of exposure given to deaths of black people by officers
of the same race, and zero coverage of the protests for police.
The biggest similarity I think is the exposure on the deaths of John
Crawford III, Michael Brown and Eric Garner. I remember when each of these
deaths happened I was back home in Ghana to see my family for vacation,
and CNNs (the only American news channel we got) coverage of these
deaths were comprehensive. The whole time, they only showed interviews
and analysis of these deaths - from interviewing the family of the victims
right after the deaths to getting legal experts into the newsroom as soon as
possible, the coverage was intense.
Another aspect of the whole situation that was similar was the protests
on how the police abuse their power, they claim to act in self-defense but the
citizens dont believe it and expect juries to indict the cops.
Now the above analysis begs the question who is killing all those
black men and boys?
To answer this question we cant limit ourselves to only 3 black deaths, in
fact an analysis by ProPublica, which combed through the FBIs Homicide

report noted that in 2012, 123 African-Americans were shot dead by police
while in the same year, 326 whites were killed by police bullets. Therefore
when it comes to answering who is killing all these black men and boys, the
answer is mostly white officers. But the report also notes that in hundreds of
instances, black officers, too. The explanation for mostly white officers can
be attributed to how well represented they are represented in so many of the
police departments in the country.
In analyzing the differences, the media fails to give coverage to
instances where police truly feared for their lives. In the case of John
Crawford III, he had a gun at the store and the police feared for their lives.
This wasnt given much coverage when I saw it on the news. However, the
1985 Supreme Courts decision said that police could only justify using
deadly force if the suspects pose a threat to the officer or others.
A couple of relationships pop up in regards to the readings and the
cases mentioned above, one of the articles is America wiped out years of
progress. Lets have the race conversation for real this time in this article,
there is a sentence For the next two decades, the United States mustered the will
to continue the process of desegregation and moved toward closing racial gaps in
wealth, income and education. Predictably, the gaps got worse, and since the late
1980s, we have seen an attendant rise in resegregation. This tells us how the race
issues are in the United States. Ive seen this first hand, when I first came to the US
in 2011, it was surprising to see South Side and North Side and the differences
between them, that is an example of resegregation. It shows how society here in

the US treats the minority by putting them to one side, whereas back home in
Ghana, my neighbors are poor, while my family is wealthy we all sort of treat each
other equally. In contrast to America, where there are two societies, one black, one
white separate and unequal.
Furthermore, anothr relationship between these cases and race is how how
racial injustice go unpunished, and this ties into what I said above with the phrase
separate and unequal. In all three kills, the cops have not been indicted.