7. Stop And Frisk
We got recent wind of a “stop and frisk” during Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. Some people might think it’s a good idea; if you look suspicious, police can stop and search you. If you’ve got nothing to hide, what’s the problem, right? But the truth is that stop and frisk has a horrible racist history. The majority of people who were chosen for this procedure were those of African American or Latino ethnicity. The procedure is meant to protect citizens, but in reality, weapons were found on less than 1% of those stopped. They still resulted in many arrests, many of which were on very little criminal basis. Women were also often stopped and subjected to sexual harassment from police officers they were supposed to submit to and respect. The practice is invasive, humiliating, and unconstitutional. It has no correlation with a lower crime rate and only exposes police officers abusing their powers.
6. Sterilizing Minorities
All great medicine started with a trial period in which it had to be tested on humans before being sold and available to the public. This includes birth control. At one point, birth control was actually illegal. But luckily for many of us, an oral contraceptive was eventually produced that would make it so that women could take a pill every day and not have to worry about unwanted pregnancies anymore. But there is a racist history behind giving out birth control. In its early stages, birth control was given to people to test in order to work out any side effects that might come along with it. It was given under the disguise as a fertility treatment and primarily given to people of color living in low income areas. This meant that without them knowing, people from black and Latino families were given medicine that could potentially lead to their permanent sterilization. Sometimes women were also given hysterectomies without their consent after giving birth. We have come a long way as far as birth control and reproductive health is concerned, but it certainly had a racist start.
Discussion about this post