Students at the University of Missouri have made complaints about race and discrimination on campus. The university president resigned amidst the chaos. Online threats were made and protests have ocurred on.
Other students and colleges have shown their support by using #InSolidarityWithMizzou on their social media pages.
Similarly, Yale University sent out an email about Halloween costumes and how students should avoid being culturally insensitive. According to an article in the Hartford Courant, this is a story about racial sensitivity.
Prior to these occurrences, a major shooting occurred in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014. Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African-American male, was shot by a white police officer. Brown was unarmed, but Officer Darren Wilson took many shots and Browns died shortly after.
According to The Police Violence Report by Mapping Police Violence, police violence is persisting at high levels. What the report doesn’t show is the history and development of racism used to understand it and eliminate it for good.
Eric Sevell, a graduate student and teacher in the department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, said that society has not done its part to move closer to social equality.
“There’s entangled issues going on at the same time,” Sevell said.
He said police violence is rooted in decades of ethnic and racial inequality seen by social, political and economic segregation.
“What we are seeing is not the product of bad individuals or bad police officers or bad people,” Sevell said. “This is about the institution that these individuals find themselves in.”
He deems racism a social construct, which means that we as a society have come up with the term and created its meaning and perception as a society.
Sevell thinks the Justice System has not necessarily gotten better.
To quote a Baltimore gang member, Sevell said, “We can only push people so far before they have to push back.”
In order to better the system, Sevell wants drug issues to be treated differently.
Other countries have been successful in treating mental health and drug use differently than the United States, he said.
“We should begin to start treating drug use as a public health issue and not necessarily a criminal justice issue,” he said.
Sevell indicated people must know that what they are seeing in the media is not the reality.
He thinks listening to people’s experiences is more important, but he said people are reluctant to understand one another.
“We have huge empathy deficit in this country,” Sevell said.
Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, assistant professor of Criminal Justice, researches black male experiences with the police.
“Our society is structured in a way in which certain groups have power and privilege and others are oppressed and subjugated,” Owusu-Bempah said.
Owusu-Bempah said that racism has become more implicit.
“Overt forms of racism are no longer socially acceptable,” he said.
However, Owusu-Bempah urges citizens to acknowledge that racism, in more implicit and institutional ways, is still a problem. He used President Obama as an example.
“Would he have been elected as a president if he looked the same as his black father? I’m not sure he would,” Owusu-Bempah said.
Social justice can be achieved, but Owusu-Bempah believes it will take generations. He said he knows individuals need to connect with others of different backgrounds before equality can be reached.
“We really need people to see one another as human beings,” Owusu-Bempah said.
He encourages that citizens address history to see how society got to where it is now.
“Without open and honest discussion, we’re going to continue to deny that we have a problem,” Owusu-Bempah said.
