Racial Un-Equality in America: What is it?

.

The factor of race continues to build to be a variant of what equality means. While I can say that I have noticed a larger amount of people who are offset by their race into a lower income, I myself am living in as a low income person, and I am white. Race and ethnicity in America are viewed into different terms. While the meaning of what is culturally accepted by media is limited to certain ethnicities, such as Muslim Americans, black culture has been on the rise in the mainstream media. Back in the 1990's a TV show called: In Living Color, would be one of the first to air to show black American comedians outside of Saturday Night Live in the 1970's. Today, there are a few more TV shows on the air, with the show: Blackish, being one of them. However,one of the only American cultural acceptance to be in the mainstream about Muslim Americans since the Disney animated: Arabian Nights, has been the movie: The American Hustle. Which had a character of a wealthy Arabian Sheik intended to influence political factors towards Congressmen in a business deal. It's a great movie, but I find it interesting funny or not, racial inequality has little representation in the mainstream media. So, the well-known "white privilege" extends all the way to TV, film, and other popular exposure areas in the media.

I am sure Damon Wayons, who was one of the stars on In Living Color, became a millionaire. Just as did Shaquille O’Neal, a basketball star. Yet beyond the most famous celebrity here or there, African Americans have little equality in America. When I lived in D.C., on the southwest side, most of the neighborhood was represented by African Americans. All of the stores were employed with black workers, I would have been one of the only white people in the neighborhood, or in the store. I found it was interesting that the norm had been reversed. Where I grew up: in the middle of Texas: it would have been the other way around. In school, there was only 1 child who would have been black in 80s. Now, it was my son's turn to be the only white child, in his school. Yet my son is not white, his father is from Iraq, so that makes him half Persian or Middle Eastern, or however it would be said to be Politically Correct. So for this comparison, I would say in certain populations, every job or position is kept by that population. I am sure that part of the neighborhood in D.C. there is populated by black doctors, black business owners, black lawyers, and black journalists. Just like is white America.

President Barrack Obama addressed a group of NAACP in July of 2015 in the press. On the White House's YouTube collection comes the speech in which the president stares this about racial inequality:

"In too many places, black boys and black men, Latino boys and Latino men, experience being treated differently under the law."- President Obama

I think that many black Americans see the violence issue with police after the events that set Black Lives Matters protests into swing. Issues involving the deaths of black men while in police parameters is not a shock. I too have been a victim of police brutality. I became a victim of the police assuming that the person of my family who held their "white privilege" against me. This happened before 911 did, in the year 2001. I was hurt, by 2 male officers beating me, while I was in hand cuffs. I was labeled as a person who needed to be on Prozac, and my wealthy family had decided to tell the police to arrest me, so that I would be held illegally in an institution for my mental illness. This how the privilege of my family had been used against me: I am the crazy one, and they are the pathological liars, and the violent ones.

This is a disparity to me. I see it that violence is wrong. I do not need to be violent against anyone here where I live in my country, unless it is to save someone else's life. I don't go on a crazy rage, or appear to doing anything wrong having had been diagnosed for over 20 years with Bi Polar Disorder. Yet, when this reality was the cause for police to hurt me physically, and for other illegal acts to be used against me: I think the disparity is just for me being a minority. I am the minority. I no longer have a "white privilege". Being a female with a mental illness is worse than being black or being poor. It is just as serious as being falsely accused of doing anything to deserve to be injured by police. There was never an explanation to me why my bones were broken. I never knew why I received hate for being a minority person.

Here is what I believe: People commit crimes all day long all over America. To say that when it is the police they deserve some type of formulated excuse from other police is wrong. No one is included in the "Nobility Clause", except the Queen of England. Yet, I do not see it that the Queen of England has any reason to be a violent person. There is no excuse for the violence that has occurred to the African Americans that was filmed and aired on TV in the last year or so. When it happened to me, technology was not there. Cell phones did not have cameras in them, no one else would speak up to say they had seen what had happened. No one cared. I was told it was my fault for having been the victim, just as everything else in my life.

To me race is not the reason why the violence has happened. It just happens to be so that that violence happened to someone who was outside of the white race, by someone who was white. I was white when it happened to me. I am a women. The 2 male officers that used brute force against me when I was in handcuffs were also white. It was not about race, in my situation. It was about money. The money my family owns, and the lies they told against me, were all about me being seen as different for having had been diagnosed with a mental illness.

However, I know the point the media is making to the public is to make an awareness of what happened several years ago, when young black males died in police custody. I see it as an issue for racial inequality to be talked about. It was not fair for the thinking pattern of white officers to be centered on using a weapon, or using excessive force against a male in custody because he is black. Being different can cause injustice. That's it. That is how it is.

Sources cited:

Obama, Barrack. <www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse/videos> 24 July 2015. Web. <http://go.wh.gov/ULpLhX>