Police Race Research Paper

Words: 1682
Pages: 7

Current events quickly invade social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The most recent subject that has caused havoc amongst social media users is the controversy about whether police officers abuse their authority. Just last week a news header posted on Al Jazeera read, “Video shows police killing unarmed black man in Tulsa.” Police brutality towards black lives has caused an uproar in American society leading to protest and the renowned hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. The United States has been known to have a long history with issues of race. One could argue that the ideologies that date back, even before the birth of this great nation, could be the ultimate catalyst to this ongoing issue of race. Enlightenment thinkers, the orientalist period, medieval bestiary, colonialism, the Atlantic Slave trade and white men’s burden are just a few of many ideologies and events that correlate to today’s controversial issue of racial violence. The foundation for the construction of race was laid during the enlightenment period. The enlightenment period is a time in history during the 17th and 18th century when new …show more content…
The ideas that contributed to the justification of such wrong doings were orientalism, medieval bestiaries, and the enlightenment period. These ideas basically all stated that there was one superior race and everyone else was inferior, uncivilized, uneducated, exotic, erotic, and barbaric. Feeling that the white race was superior Europeans easily justified enslaving and dehumanizing human beings by stating that they were civilizing and educating a race who was in dire need of change. This need to civilize and educate other races is what became known as the white men’s burden. Thus the white race felt it was their responsibility to govern and infuse the white culture to an uncivilized society at any