Is it too much time?

It’s mid-evening and you’re riding in the passenger seat with your best friend. You both see the police then suddenly, she starts getting antsy, and she’s literally scared to the point she’s shaking and about to throw up. It makes the hair on your neck rise. You see the car out of the corner of your mirror, they bust a U-turn and turn their sirens on. You feel super sick; your stomach is churning just from the sight of the officer walking up, that’s how it feels being black in America. In a one-year study in New Minneapolis from Oct.31, 2016 to Oct.31, 2017, black people were stopped more than twice as often as whites for traffic violations. In instances where a person was searched, 62 percent were black. In vehicle searches, 63 percent of people whose cars were searched were black. 44 percent of those stopped for moving violations and 53 percent of those stopped for equipment violations were black. 51 percent of people on the receiving end of citations were black, and 57 percent of people booked as part of an arrest were black. 

 Social media has brought all these racial problems to light but it’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing because we can speak out about everything, we know is happening in America. Police officers and other law officials are giving the wrong people the wrong time. They don’t understand how it affects people in the community. This country is racially divided; it’s like black versus white. 

I feel America is unfair when it comes to how much time they charge a white man versus a black man, meaning a black man will get more time for the same crime they are both guilty of. Look at these different charges.   

Murder is defined as killing somebody with the intentions of killing them, while manslaughter is the crime of killing somebody but not having the intentions to kill them.  

Recently, a black man was shot and killed in his apartment by an off-duty police officer, according to abc13.com 

“A Dallas police officer who shot and killed her neighbor and later explained that she had mistaken his apartment for her own will be charged with manslaughter, ” Dallas District Attorney said. 

Residents of the complex said they can either access their apartments with a key or a keycode,” two neighbors identified as Simpson and Hernandez said.  

“It was like, police talk: open up! Open up!,” Simpson said. We heard cops yelling, but otherwise we had no idea what was going on,” Hernandez said.  

Guyger literally had to put in the code into his apartment number which would have opened the door or would have had to have a key to get into his apartment.  

This cop did not deserve a manslaughter charge she deserved murder because she intentionally went into this man’s house and killed him. Then made a false story to the police claiming she thought it was her apartment. Things like this keep happening to people in the black community because not a lot of people are being heard. The black community participates in protests, marches, poetry, all speaking out about what’s happening to them and their families. The charges aren’t murder because that’s not what the white community wants. They “look” up to officers when in all reality, this officer who is supposed to protect, is a murderer. It’s not murder because white communities are heard in any and everything while black communities are under-represented in these situations.  

Recently a man was charged with murder for protecting his 16- year old daughter from a pervert. 

The headline read: “Melvin Harris III is charged with second-degree murder in beating of fatal of man who tried to attack his 16-year old daughter in bathroom of a Pheonix convenience store.”(abcnews.go.com).  

“She feels guilty, that’s what she keeps saying. She wishes she never told her dad to take her to the store. She’s terrified by the incident and believes Armstrong was out to hurt her,” Melvin’s finance Diana Jackson said.  

I don’t believe he did anything wrong, he was protecting his daughter from a grown man, something his 16-year-old daughter could not do. His intentions weren’t to kill him, just make him regret following his daughter in that bathroom. No child should regret telling her father about her safety. It’s the parent’s job to protect his children if you can’t trust your parents to deal with something, what’s the point of parents? If you let a man hurt your children, in my opinion Harris was not wrong for beating this man, but you can’t say he meant to kill this man. Harris was charged with murder, but I feel he shouldn’t have been charged with murder, but with manslaughter because he did kill the man but didn’t intend to. 

These cases should’ve been switched. Harris didn’t deserve to get charged with murder, while Guyger got away with manslaughter. I really don’t know how we can solve this problem except for teach the younger generations about cultural appreciation. Meaning stop treating people different because of race. Because, no child is born racist and they don’t see color unless taught. We can also have families talk to press, judges, or officers about how they’re sentencing affected the family. But, the black community has done all of this and they’re still not doing anything about this problem. So, there practically is no solution, and it’s sad.