I was shocked and horrified by the footage of the violence against the African American community that was shown in this documentary. That poor woman shot over an electric bill and the man *beep* taking his wife to the hospital when she was in labor. I'm 43 years old and never once had I heard those stories before. That's just sad. It's sickening that all these years later things like this are still happening.
share*the man shot
shareHow about the african american community violence against white people and even their own black on black crime?
Shall we play a game?
That's right Hay!
shareI am encouraged to read many different viewpoints here without a war of words breaking out.
I was struck in the documentary by the photos of cops "searching" houses supposedly looking for drugs in which the toilet and television, beds and dressers were destroyed. It seemed that the cops wanted to make these living spaces unlivable.
If there were a documentary about the troubles in Zimbabwe, not many people would watch it. The slaughter of white people in that country has been declared "Genocide Stage 5" (of 8) - we don't see much about that on our TVs, do we?
Any loss of life is sickening, and things like an electricity bill, a carton of orange juice, a routine police stop, can escalate and end in death. The job of this documentary was to frame the OJ case in the context of perceived wrongs against blacks in the US, and LA in particular. It made for a compelling documentary, but the focus was narrow. There are many dashcam videos of police officers being shot at point blank range or otherwise attacked before they had the chance even to start talking to a driver. That wasn't the theme of this documentary, but it would help to explain a paranoid, twitchy police force, who know that the most routine of calls can result in them never going home to their families.
While I appreciate this OPs comments - it extends to whites as well. I almost was killed by two different idiot white cops. I should add - I'm white. First time, I was simply reaching into my glove compartment to give the officer my insurance and registration (I had been stopped for speeding, which BTW, I wasnt even doing) . He cocked his gun as I was doing this and shouted at me like a maniac. Second time I was putting my dog out on his chain. Apparently someone had set off some firecrackers and this idiot policeman thought it was gunshots (It wasnt). He ran up to me screaming, with his gun cocked and ready to shoot. What an idiot. I have found in my life, probably the stupidest, most unnecessarily nervous, and most incredibly unqualified people to be policemen. There isnt any faction of society I think less of. So, to African Americans, dont think its just you whom have had bad experiences with cops. Their idiocy and incompetence extends to whites as well
shareGood post, and I think you bring up some excellent points on our society as a whole if one looks at the bigger picture. There seem to be more guns than ever (though statistically, violent crime is down), a rough 10 years of economic turmoil has hurt the working poor more than anyone, and poverty has hit the black community harder than anyone. The same can be said with a lack of education funding. It all starts to add up to more angry people being confronted by cops on nerve.
As an aside, I worked for an older white gentelman some years ago whose son was shot by a Texas sherriff in a confrontation in an off-road area. The son was a military vet legally carrying a weapon (though not in his hand), and no one ever got a full answer as to what happened. Just that in the end he was dead, and the sherriff felt provoked or intimidated enough to shoot him.
The fact that you would go all the way to Africa and focus on white Zimbabweans shows that most people just focus on their own group/tribe when it comes to this. No one is open to the big picture.
Jennifer you are a class act. I've long believed that whites as whole are taught to lack empathy for African American citizens and rationalize every instance of injustice, they didn't care abt us, our lives or our children yet they wanted us all to care abt Nicole??.
Anyway Its nice to see all whites are not hateful and evil, (assuming you are white of course)
I am white. And while I understand that the violence extends to whites people as well its not nearly the epidemic that it is with African Americans it seems like to me. But what do I know. I'm just a white girl from Kentucky. Most people don't seem to agree with me.
shareWhites as a whole are absolutely not taught to lack empathy for African Americans. There are exceptions where that is the case, but you get bad seeds in every race or type of people. We don't try to rationalize every instance of injustice, we just don't think there are as many injustices as you think there are. We get irritated that every time something bad happens to a black person, the black community assumes it was caused by racism and calls it an injustice.
Take the Michael Brown incident for example. Eye witnesses (and these were black eye witnesses) confirmed that he was charging at the cop and trying to take his gun. Yet the black community cries that the cop defending himself was a racial injustice. Somewhere along the line, people believed the lie that he had his hands up and was cooperating, even though that was proven to not be the case. Would the black community have preferred that the cop let Brown take his gun from him and shoot him? Sadly, I do believe that's what they would have preferred.
Well I will say this, if or when the day ever comes that there are more black police officers than white ones and suddenly it's open hunting season on underage unarmed white males shot by said black officers I'll be curious to see if a lot of my fellow whites opinions change dramatically. It's easy to judge when it's not your child laying dead for nothing. Or your mother dead over a stupid electric bill. Or your brother shot for taking his pregnant wife to the hospital. This shouldn't be a race issue but it is. It's not exclusive to blacks but it sure seems to happen a damn sight more to young black males than anybody else. And when over the course of ALL of American history two races (black and American Indian) are consistently across time repressed and abused by one race (white) I think at some point you have to admit we have a bit of a problem.
shareOppression against black people is VASTLY overstated, it's not even funny. In both history and the present.
The "electric bill" case that the episode showed was in reality, a woman getting pissed off, picking up a knife, and throwing it at the cops.
If you throw a knife at a police officer, expect to get shot
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You're right. But I can't help but ask why? Why do the cops feel the need to fatally shoot a civilian with a knife? Would a leg shot first not properly subdue a old woman with a knife? Why is it always straight to fatal as though there's no in between? I'm just a simple Kentucky woman. I work with dogs for a living. I only have a year and half of college. I'm nothing special and don't claim to be. But I wish someone could explain to me why all these police shootings black white or anything else are always fatal? Is there no other option? Especially in cases like the electric bill woman. She clearly only had a knife. Unless she was carnival or circus folk with a knack for fancy knife work how in the hell can anybody justify shooting her dead? What happened to the idea of a warning shot?
shareI'm sorry but I can't let this go until somebody explains it satisfactorily to me.
shareBecause they are trained to "Shoot and kill."
People wonder why reform is needed in the police force, but take one look at a twitchy 21 year old cop BEFORE he/she has a gun, then after its handed out, and that will tell you everything.
a) It's not always fatal, it's the fatal ones that get national 24/7 coverage.
b) Ever heard of the expression "Don't bring a knife to a gun fight"? That's the principle that applies here. This is not to say that person would deserve to die, just that they reaped what they sowed. Legitimate self-defense via gunfire, whether fatal or not, is entirely justifiable.
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Do a search for 'subdued by police". If you look deep enough you'll find hundreds if not thousands of stories that don't make the news front and center.
shareAccurately shooting a gun isn't as easy as it looks.
Throw in a dangerous situation with all the pressure that comes with it, and it gets even more difficult.
Trying to shoot a limb, any limb, under those circumstances is nuts.
That's why they aim for the body. It's the biggest, least moving part of the target.
Aim anywhere else and you risk missing your target, and who knows where the bullet might end up then.
I definitely think there's a problem with eager to shoot cops, but aiming for the body isn't part of that problem.
Oppression against black people is VASTLY overstated, it's not even funny. In both history and the present.
Great thread!
shareOJ is a psychopath and a murderer. He deserved to be executed or imprisoned for life. The treatment of black people, now or in the past, does not explain or excuse what he did, or justify the idiots in the jury for acquitting him.
shareI wondered what it actually had to do with OJ Simpson, since it's a documentary about him and not American racism...
share