Summary Of Beyond A Simple Solution By Joe Klein

Stories of the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin were seen and heard on nearly every news outlet and radio station beginning in February of 2012. On the night of February 26th, 2012 Trayvon Martin, an African-American teenager was walking home from a 7/11 convenience store carrying a small bag containing an Arizona iced tea beverage and a bag of skittles. On his way home, Martin was gunned downed in the streets of a gated community in the state of Florida by 28-year-old white resident George Zimmerman. While Martin was unarmed and had no criminal intent in mind, Zimmerman claimed to fear for his safety. This led to Zimmerman shooting Martin several times, which Martin shortly after died from.

‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’ Says Atticus Finch, one of the main characters in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. The messages in ‘To kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘The Help’ are presented differently but are still quite similar. In both books, importance is placed on being able to view things from other people’s perspectives in order to fully understand. The two leading characters in both books, Scout and Skeeter, make a journey which leads them to new perspectives and understandings.

Anderson claims that white people have more power in society and because of this, minorities are forced to take it upon the streets. Anderson wants the reader to understand that white people, especially white males, have more power than other races because in our society the reader sees powerful men everyday such as lawyers, policemen, judges, CEO's ,and etc. The reader doesn't see many minority's as high power people. When the author states that “...white rage carries an aura of respectability and has access to the courts, police, legislatures and governors,...” the reader can infers that white people are perceived as higher roles in our society and that the minority's rage carries a aura of disrespect and leads to violence. This allows white people to to be heard easily because of how they are seen in society by other white people, but for minority's they struggle to be heard because nobody pays attention to them because society feels that this is an ongoing issue.

With a surplus of information floating around on the internet and printed in books, it is important to recognize whether or not the information is credible or not. Being able to properly determine whether or not a source that you may want to use is not only, correct but, credible, is important in academic, professional, and personal settings. For example, Christopher Lebron’s article, titled “ Who First Showed Us That Black Lives Matter”, should be considered a practical source for several reasons. Christopher Lebron attended Hunter College for a year after highschool, then in 2002 continued his education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and majored in political philosophy and African American studies, and later received his

Brent Staples’s essay is still relevant today because of the fear that lives inside people who don’t understand or accept others, which often leads to authorities abusing their power so that they can feel safe while others live their lives cautiously. This relates to how both African Americans and the police live their lives in fear and with caution. The police fear African Americans due to their own prejudice reasons which causes them to abuse their authority by acting more aggressive which helps themselves feel safer and stronger. This forces African Americans to live their lives with caution and patience because if they don’t, they put themselves at a higher risk of endangering themselves. Brent Staples wrote the article “Black Men in Public

Weitzer and Tuch article focuses on the importance of racial profiling and how it has become a big issue in the police force. In the article, the main topic is about racial profiling and how the and how it has controversially affected the policing system in the United States of America. In the article, they talk about how former President Clinton has taken action on this matter and by asking for more information on racial profiling from police forces in America. A majority claims it is not a problem while a selective few believed it to be a minor problem. The race that’s gets racially profiled the most by police officers is African Americans and Hispanics.

Nclive, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10892-010-9091-x. Paul Bou-Habib of the Department of Government at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom, presents this paper as a discussion of what he terms “background injustice” and racial profiling. He basically defines “background injustices”as social injustices over which the individual has no control within his profiled group. Bou-Habib suggests two accounts of background injustice. First is “responsible injustice”wherein the group proposing racial profiling is responsible for the injustice.

Underhill, S. M. (2016). Urban jungle, Ferguson: Rhetorical homology and institutional critique. Quarterly Journal of Speech,102(4), 396-417. doi:10.1080/00335630.2016.1213413

The murder of Oscar Grant was another case of racial profiling. Oscar Grant had been celebrating the New Years with some of his close friends and girlfriend. At 2:00 officers had responded to a report that a fight had broken out on the train. Grant was snatched off a train because police “felt” he was a part of the riot on the train, but he had nothing to do with it. In fact the train conductor said “Grant wasn’t one of the men that had been involved in the fight”.

Conversely, under hate crime legislation it is clear to see that the prosecution of hate crimes further divides society by reinforcing the marginalisation of minority groups. Advocates with ideologies akin to this state that all violent crimes are the result of the offender’s absolute contempt for the victim of the hate crime. In such cases like this, all crimes are hate crimes and if no alternate rationale for prosecuting some people more harshly than others for the same crime based on who the victim is, a situation arises where different offenders charged with the same offence are treated unequally under the law which inadvertently creates discrimination, prejudices and unfairness in society.

Julia Angwin’s article, “Machine Bias”, focuses on racial bias in a “crime-predicting” software used by judges and courts. Angwin explains how these computer programs try predict the likelihood of an individual committing another crime in the future, and then assigning them a risk score based on the findings. Unfortunately, as Angwin explains, these programs are usually sent out into the market without first being tested; This means that court officials are using unverified statistics to determine the sentencing of defendants, which has lead to high controversy over such programs. In addition, a lack of transparency by the program creators have lead many to believe that the software was created with an internal racial bias. Angwin explains

Throughout history, disputes and tensions between law enforcement officials and communities of minorities have endured hostility and violence between each other. Racial profiling has become a “hot topic” for researchers as well as for politicians and by now it is likely that most citizens are at least aware of the common accusations of racial bias pitted against law enforcement (Cochran & Warren, 2013). Communities of color are being discriminated against and racially profiled by white police officers for any suspicion of criminal activities. It has been widely assumed by policy makers and citizens alike that allegations of racial profiling are mostly associated with the policing practices of white officers and their treatment of racial and ethnic minorities (Cochran & Warren, 2013). Also, individuals of minority descent will certainly recognize that they are being racially profiled during a stop that is being conducted by a white police officer.

The View from Black America by Kenneth Hardy, describes the struggles that the African American community still faces currently. The article outlines the lives lost by violence and shootings by police. The reading emphasizes the lack of resources the African American community has access to. The misconceptions about black people have also contributed the racial hostility. These attitudes affect an individual's mental health.

Synthesis Research Paper Everyday growing up as a young black male we have a target on our back. Society was set out for black males not to succeed in life. I would always hear my dad talk about how police in his younger days would roam around the town looking for people to arrest or get into an altercation with. As a young boy growing up I couldn’t believe some of the things he said was happening. However as I got older I would frequently hear about someone getting killed by the police force.

The Metropolitan Toronto Police Force defines bias crime or, hate crime as being a “criminal offence committed against a person or property that is based solely upon the victim's race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, gender or disability” (Canada.ca, 2015). Unfortunately, criminal activity motivated by bias, prejudice and ultimately, hatred has been perpetrated by mankind and the government throughout many critical instances of history. During the past, many courageous individuals engaged in numerous uprisings and demonstrations in protest of the discriminatory acts which violate one’s civil rights as a human being. These heroic figures of precedent eras desired to make changes which would benefit people who faced