Say His Name: Police Brutality, Extra-Judicial Killings and Achieving Racial Justice in the American Legal System
With the Black Lives Matter Movement in full swing, I wanted to write an essay about police brutality and the gravity of what we are fighting for. We are not fighting against one incident, we are fighting against centuries of injustice. While there has been an acceptance of responsibly for the slave trade and Jim Crow laws by governments, a minimum acceptance is all there is. I do not focus heavily on the positives of the Civil Rights Movement, most school textbooks have a very poor teaching of racism after the movement. I try to discuss ways in which the governments could take action and how we ourselves can change things (protesting, educating and harnessing white privilege). They did it in the Civil Rights Movement, we can do it now. Note: I am not a scholar, I am just an angry law student; forgive any errors. I also know this is shoddy referencing work but everything has been cited - just not beautifully.
With the Black Lives Matter Movement in full swing, I wanted to write an essay about police brutality and the gravity of what we are fighting for. We are not fighting against one incident, we are fighting against centuries of injustice. While there has been an acceptance of responsibly for the slave trade and Jim Crow laws by governments, a minimum acceptance is all there is. I do not focus heavily on the positives of the Civil Rights Movement, most school textbooks have a very poor teaching of racism after the movement. I try to discuss ways in which the governments could take action and how we ourselves can change things (protesting, educating and harnessing white privilege). They did it in the Civil Rights Movement, we can do it now.
Note: I am not a scholar, I am just an angry law student; forgive any errors. I also know this is shoddy referencing work but everything has been cited - just not beautifully.
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themselves as superior, leading figures in every narrative. 88 Personally, as a young Harry Potter fan, my favourite
character was Hermione, but I accepted that I would never be like her. The characters I was left to see myself, as an
Indian girl, were the Patil sisters, depicted as particularly annoying and unattractive. Harry Potter being one of the
most prominent influences in my life, I accepted that view of Indian women and saw myself in the same way.
Recently, there has been a lot of activism in the modelling industry about photoshopping imperfections such as stretch
marks from models and the lack of plus-size models. The detrimental effects of this were recognised and instantly
rectified. Now we see a flood of commercial models showing these imperfections and several plus-size models have
been pushed into the spotlight. With 78% of models in fashion adverts being white 89 if even half the effort put into
this movement was put into getting people of colour on billboards, magazines and advertisements, we would be in a
better position. Supermodel Naomi Campbell reflected on her experiences as a black woman in the modelling industry:
‘When I started out, I wasn’t being booked for certain shows because of the colour of my skin. I didn’t let it rattle me.
From attending auditions and performing at an early age, I understood what it meant to be black. You had to put in
the extra effort. You had to be twice as good.’ 90 Not only is it hard to get in the industry, with the lack of
representation, coloured women who are interested in the career will never even try.
The lack of racial diversity is much more damaging than it seems on face value. It passes on the message that to be
white is to be beautiful. I have always been under the impression that my brown skin is not beautiful, accepting it as a
part of life. I still struggle with it as an adult who understands that this is far from the case, it is hard to ignore when
all you see is white skin being celebrated. These racist messages are powerful, changing your thoughts and feelings in a
way that is hard to detect, especially when young. The lack of representation is a considerable problem and works to
maintain systems of racism in the world; large corporations can make differences and governments must ensure this
happens. While it will appear forced to adults, as current efforts to improve racial diversity have been, children will at
least accept the new representations of people of colour. With time it will become more natural to see a person of
colour when you turn on the television.
Legal and Political Policies for Change
W
hen looking at ways in which we can reform the system, we have to first accept that racism does exist,
police do have biases and will racially profile citizens. This is a fact, and we have seen it time and time
again. Changing these biases is a question of creating social change and dedicating ourselves to activism
but there are things to be done on a legal level.
Concerning the criminal justice system there firstly needs to be tighter regulations on the use of force. The Use of
Force Project looks at the effectiveness of use of force policies on reducing police brutality. They found that police
departments with four or more restrictive use of force policies had the fewest killings per population; each additional
use of force policy was associated with a 15% reduction in killings by police. 91 Compared to police departments with
no policies, those who used every single restriction on the use of force had 72% less killings. Police organisations have
opposed these measures claiming that it puts communities at risk, however, the Project also found that department
88
Sade Popoola, ‘A Critical Reading of the Impact of Racial Representation within Children’s Books’ (24 March 2019)
<https://medium.com/@sadep79/a-critical-reading-of-the-impact-of-racial-representation-within-childrens-books-c4cc08e502e5> accessed 3 June
2020.
89
Priya Elan, ‘Survey finds that 78% of models in fashion adverts are white’ (10 May 2016, The Guardian)
<https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/may/10/survey-finds-that-78-of-models-in-fashion-adverts-are-white> accessed 3 June 2020.
90
Naomi Campbell, ‘Naomi Campbell: ‘At an early age, I understood what it meant to be black. You had to be twice as good’ (19 March 2016, The
Guardian) < https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/mar/19/naomi-campbell-modelling-bob-marley-putin-autobiography-extract> accessed 3
June 2020.
91
<http://useofforceproject.org/#analysis> accessed 3 June 2020.
11
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