Authoritarian Racial Injustice - has it dissipated or just discretely multiplied?

There is injustice in almost every authoritarian institution among us, the police currently being the most active in reinforcing racial and class differences in the way they treat the public distinctively based on whether or not they fit the standards of their ideal person. As a society, we tend to believe we've moved past the corrupt, discriminatory and insensitive actions of those in power, however this is far from the truth. The blatant racism from the 17th century hasn't disappeared –it's just now been transferred in micro-aggressions the police enforce and the public ignore.

The Black Lives Matter Movement which was originally founded and formed on the 13th of July in 2013, only really struck importance and significance after the heinous murder of George Floyd. There's no doubt after the world was revealed to a video of a 44-year-old, white American man digging his knee on an unarmed 45-year-old African American's neck in Minneapolis on the 25th of May, that we really opened our eyes. It took a video for the world to recognise and realise that we are in fact going backwards. It took global protests and for millions of people around the world to show their anger and despair through their voices and actions for any sort of measures to be transpired. The corruption is still however in place because despite all the deserved and understandable outcry, Derek Chauvin was charged with second degree murder, after his charge for third-degree murder was dropped. Despite the 'Justice for George Floyd' being the most signed petition in the world at well over 19,000,000 – the charge was still not raised to first-degree. The statutory definition of second-degree murder is ''someone causing the death of another human being without intent to do so while committing or attempting to commit a felony offence…'' Anyone who's seen the video knows that Chauvin very much had intent to kill him. You simply can't "accidentally" kneel on someone's neck for 8 minutes while they scream that they can't breathe. Chauvin had an end goal; to end Floyd's life - not because unarmed Floyd was committed or attempted to commit a felony offence, yet rather because of his skin colour. Yet still, even with the wrong offence being charged, Chauvin still managed to be released just on Wednesday 7th of October through the $1,000,000 bail. This is quite clearly evidence showing that systematic racism is apparent and that the prejudice structure authorities have created by abusing their powers won't be dismantled any time soon. It's happened countless times before and will continue happening if we don't do anything. Just back in 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland authorities reacted to the riots over the death of Freddie Gray by rushing to charge six officers involved in the arrest of the African American man. They failed to prove second-degree murder, and all six officers were either acquitted or had charges against them dropped over the course of the next year. It's happened too many times before and each time they've gotten away with it.

You'd think 155 years after the US abolished slavery with the 13th Amendment to the US constitution, and 187 years after Britain abolished slavery throughout its empire by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, that there wouldn't be a need for movements for racial minorities such as BLM to exist. We shouldn't still be fighting for the freedom, liberation and justice of those who should be given that regardless. You'd think the authority put in place to protect the public and human lives would be the reason for this movement to no longer required to be in place - not the reason for its popularity increasing. In the United States, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans has been much higher than that for any other ethnicity, with 32 shootings per million of the population as of September 2020. Despite the fact that nearly half of the people fatally shot by the police in the US have been white, black Americans still are shot at a disproportionate rate. Meaning, they accounts for less than 13% of the US population but are killed by the police at more than twice the rate than of White Americans. This issue is far from solely occurring in America - it's sadly a global problem. Just in March of 2019, out of the 125,286 police officers employed by the police forces in England and Wales, only 1.3% of them are black, whilst 93.0% of them being white. If the workforce we have to protect us isn't full of people like us, we're bound to feel unsafe. Stop and search is also an increasing concern currently. From the searches taken place in 2018 and 2019, black people were eight times more likely than whites to be stopped and searched. Only 37 white people were stopped and searched for every 10,000 white residents whereas there was 315 stops for every 10,000 black people.

As a British Pakistani teenager, I feel strongly about this issue and it's something I fight for hard. Even though I'm not a black person myself, I am still a person of colour and my Islamic religion is made very clear to others by my hijab. My brother and uncle have both been victims of crimes during my lifetime. I'm constantly questioning whether it was because of their skin colour that they didn't receive much attention by the police. I want to know that if I ever feel unsafe or am in danger that I can call the police and feel like I would either receive justice or the feeling of safety – not be anxious or scared that it'll result in something worse. Police brutality and racism is something that happens a lot to all people of colour, but specifically black people, which is why my essay centres on them specifically.

Looking at what we have achieved recently surrounding this matter restores some faith on my behalf. I'm so proud of everyone attending protests to fight for the movement, our voices is what we need more of. We are the change in our world. I'm proud that we protest even amidst these wrongdoers in uniforms who are the ones initiating the violence. They ruin the cause of the peaceful protests by their inhumane savagery, cruelty and brutality. ACAB; they use their undeserved authority to scare, hurt, wound and kill - but we will continue using our voices and end this fascism they spread onto our streets.

This ideology that one skin colour is superior and that a group of humans deserve any less rights than the other simply because of the skin they wear is something so vile and disgusting and something that should never be thought of, let alone be said. We've been fighting this racist notion for centuries, centuries. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the 14th Amendment's mandate of equal protection of the laws of the U.S. Constitution to any person within its jurisdiction. The 15th Amendment (1870) guaranteed voting rights to all male U.S. citizens, including African Americans. This racist and bigoted discrimination should've never been a thing, but unfortunately it was and it still is. You'd think as a society, we'd learn to look past someone's skin colour, if you even have to look at all, but no - not when this world is full of prejudiced and antiblack authoritarians. I'm appalled we still have to fight this battle, and this movement still needs to be pushed. We shouldn't be at this stage, we shouldn't. We have to unite. Unity and strength is all we can give right now. Be an ally.