Violence in America

Violence in America

Zuhaylee Marroquin

Bronx Community College

        English 11 Fall 2015        

Professor Mukherjee

For centuries now, racism was one of the main reason of violence in America. According to the documentary “Violence in America”, violent acts repeats itself constantly. This is known as the “cycle of violence” which means to repeat any dangerous acts due to retribution or revenge. White Americans looks at colored people as less than humans because whites do not accept blacks as intellectually equal. Does racism impact the violence in America? Racism is the key issue that has taken over America impacting violence in many ways.

Going back in history, white Americans had formed deep violent traditions of taking over land and cutting off noses and ears as punishment. Christopher Columbus had led other white Americans to take over the land of the Indians. In the documentary “Violence in America” stated by the year of 1542, about 250,000 Indians were exterminated. Over the years whites had continued the violent act of killing and taking over the Indian tribes. By 1890 the Indian population numbered down from 2 million to 300,000. Soon after this America became the first country to have gun power. Gun power was also known to the white Americans as the alliance of freedom because it was use to defend themselves, so that no one else is able to take control.

Over time the media had begun to play an important role. The media was obsessed with white criminals and portrayed them as heroes. The documentary “Violence in America” mentioned how the media had overstated the crimes these criminals did. This documentary also mentioned how they viewed the whites as celebrities and treated them as if they were. This may have given others a more reason to create the violence they’ve encountered.

Moving forward in time, slavery had come into play. Slavery was the white American’s ownership of African Americans. These African Americans had no rights and had to work or be beaten, raped, shot or killed by the white people. This was until Abraham Lincoln had made the Emancipation Proclamation, this declared that Africans Americans was free.

        According to “Mass, Media, and Racism” author Stephen Balkaran stated that media has continues to play a big role in the way white Americans identify African-Americans. Media have separated the working class and stereotyped young African-American as gangsters or drug dealers. As a result of such action, the media have crumpled youths' prospects for future employment and advancement. The media have focused on the negative aspects of the black community while continuing the progression of poverty that the elite wants. Based on further readings, in 1991 the defense put on by the four white Los Angeles police officers indicted of beating Rodney King is significant. The four officers claimed that they were terrified and felt they might have been attacked or injured by King himself. This has become a legitimate plea in the white society. Their "fear" is an expression of a deep-rooted media prejudice that everything black is bad. This media stereotype of bad guys wearing black or that anything that is black is evil has been fostered for decades, the fact that the bad guy always wore the black in Westerns, and the movie The Birth of a Nation.