#Blacklivesmat

[Faith No More]

I've looked at all the videos and news features about unarmed blacks being shot. I've seen the vids of police assaulting a pool party of black kids as if it was a high class drug raid, just because some white neighbour complained about the noise. It's anecdotal evidence of course, but blacks are treated differently because of the media culture.

It's the same in my country, on a lower scale, since we don't have that many blacks. But police beating up a black person is a far more frequent indicent than doing it to a white person. In fact, when Obama was elected president, one of our more reputable magazines published a cartoon about him visiting Vienna. Sadly I can't find it online, but it showed him admiring the views of many capitals until it finally got to Vienna. And then you only got to see a squad of policemen, batons drawn, swarming and beating someone lying on the ground. It pointed straight at the problem. The tabloids are painting people of color as drig offenders and possible suspects. That's creating a public opinion and from what I get from US news coverage it's not that different there.

Edit - found it.

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Oh, we have a huge issue in the media of the portrayal of people of color, like how Richard Sherman was called a thug after his on-air rant after his Super Bowl win. The guy's a Stanford graduate, which is an extremely acclaimed university, but because he's black and wears dreadlocks, many people in media painted him as some hood-rat.

The problem is obvious to anyone that looks just beneath the surface of what the media tells us. We have many, many examples of these officers telling us they shot black people with their hands in their pockets because they feared for their lives. But I posted a link to an incident in Min.'s "Fucking Cops" thread where California police were tracking a white man suspected of murder for 18 days, and when they closed in on him, he pulled out a weapon and was ordered to drop it before they shot him. So, on one hand we have an officers fearing for their lives in a traffic stop when a person puts their hand in their pocket or reaches for the glove compartment, and in another case we have a suspected murder brandishing an actual weapon and being ordered to put it away.

Now, one example does not make a case, of course, but I personally observe constant, daily reminders of the stark contrast of between the differences of how our media, police, and judicial systems treat people of color differently.