An evening with Angela Davis

这篇essay讲述的是，作为一个71岁的奶奶,安吉拉·戴维斯依然硬朗,坚定而强大的声音说出来她意见作为性别平等的热情积极,监狱改革,不同肤色的联盟。她的评论之间的一系列冲突的黑人和美国警察对我来说特别鼓舞人心,帮助我检查和反映所有这些悲剧在平静和深度。

Being a 71-year-old granny, Angela Davis is still hale and hearty, with a firm and powerful sound stating out her opinions as an enthusiastic activist for gender equity, prison reform, and alliances across color lines. Her comments on the series of conflicts between the black people and the American police is especially inspiring to me, helping me review and reflect all these tragedies in calm and depth.
  The tension began even before the shooting of Michael Brown. In 17th of July 2014, 43-year-old Eric Garner was choked to death by an NYPD officer using chokehold. Despite his repeating "I can't breathe" eleven times while lying facedown on the sidewalk, Eric Garner, the 350-pound 6'3" "big man", was still tightly controlled by five police officers and had no chance to move at all until he lost his consciousness. No more than half month later, in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Michael Brown, an 18-year-old young man, was killed by a white police officer, who fired a total of twelve bullets, some after unarmed Brown had already laid on the ground.
  These conflicts remind me of Crash, the film we have recently seen. Peter, the black young man was shot by police officer Hansen, who thought Peter was a racist and going to pull out a gun from his pocket. But actually, what in his hand was a small statuette of Saint Christopher like the one in Hansen's car. Like the two cases happened in real world, it is exactly the high degree of un-trustiness even vigilance of the American officers towards the black citizen that resulted in this tragedy.
  The longstanding racial tensions lurking in the American society sparked by these events had quickly transformed into a series of nationwide protests. Indeed, it is high time that we should contemplate the deep-rooted cause behind racism. As Dr. Angela Davis has said: "The global response to the police killing of a black teenager in a small midwestern town suggests a growing consciousness regarding the persistence of US racism at a time when it is supposed to be on the decline."
  The majority of black people have always been in an inferior position in American society throughout its history. Started as slaves once they landed on the continent, the black people saw their new life on the new continent was characterized by distress, misery, and extreme poverty. Even the abolition of slavery failed to provide them a promising future. Although the tangible system was nullified by the officially proved Emancipation Proclamation, the intangible despise and superiority towards the black people was still anchored in most white people's heart. The black people have never received their own share of resources and opportunity to fulfill their own American dream. Thus, being socioeocnomic inferior for hundreds of years, the black people's bitterness and hatred in the heart can be easily fermented by conflicts like these. And usually due to the poor education, the bad environment and harsh living situations, they tend to have more bad records of crimes, thus it is reasonable for American police officers be more cautious and even more tend to use violence toward the black people.
  However, things get worse. The grand jury in New York and Ferguson both decided not to indict the involved police officers in the case of Garner's and Brown's. These judiciary decisions have enflamed a series of protests, looting and violent unrest nationwide. A black extremist, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, from Baltimore even drive for hundreds of miles to New York and killed two patrolling police officers, Liu Wen Jian and Rafael Ramos, declaring to take Eric Garner's revenge on the NYPD officer. This continuous hurting of each other from the white people and the black people not only complicate and current situation with more difficulties to resolve the issue, but also embroil other ethnicities such as Asian and Latino Americans.
  In the throes of achieving mutual-understanding and real equality between ethnicities, everyone needs to clam down instead of finding fault on the other side or simply revenge, causing more casualties. The police system needs to self-check its over-reacting or misconduct toward the black citizens; the judiciary system needs to self-examine the tendency of tilting to the law-enforcement group or being discriminating instead of judging the case based on evidence and justice. What's more important is everyone in the society not to judge people based on our stereotypes and their socioeconomic status. Only through the long-term and joint effort of every people in the society, can we expect a harmonious and diverse society in the years to come.
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