In the news today it is pretty hard to ignore the amount of media attention towards the Police, the Black Lives Matter movement, and all the violence. Depending on what you watch will determine what is worse. According to many Conservative points of view, the Black Lives Matter movement is a Terrorist group. According to most Liberal points of view, police are getting out of hand. But, the world isn't so left or right. We must understand that there are much more complex ways of looking at everything. Many say that this violence has been going on for years, and the media is the new thing bolstering it. This may be true to an extent, but the media is not the one to blame. As Thomas Jefferson once put it, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." The one thing the media has done, is made us pay attention to what may have been ignored by many for years. We need to stop blaming people; BLM, the Police, the media. The true problem is communication, and societal relationships.
What is the first thing you do when you drive past any Law Enforcement Officer? I am sure your answer is similar to mine, buckle my seatbelt, check to see if I am speeding, then do everything in my power to avoid them. What kind of relationship have we established with our police? Are they not the ones that are suppose to serve mankind. Think back to The Andy Griffith Show. For those of you that never watched it, it features the Sheriff of Mayberry, NC and his day to day interactions with the community and his family. Andy was a member of the community who knew people he was serving, and people liked him. Nowadays, people probably couldn't even tell you the name of most, if not all, of the Officers sworn to protect them. Nobody is to blame for this but ourselves; no, not because we aren't putting in enough effort either. I am lucky, and the only interactions I have been privileged enough to encounter with the police are like the ones I discussed above, where you drive by, then avoid. Many are not as fortunate, many only know police from the badges with guns that shot a family member or a friend. Don't believe that to be true. For those of you that don't know, Ferguson, Missouri continues their sad story long after the shootings and riots happened; because the Department of Justice found that, in fact, the Ferguson Police had largely racially profiled and attacked African Americans unlawfully in every aspect of their Justice system.
How can you establish a relationship with police when they have been your only enemy in life? I am not saying all police are bad, just as I wouldn't say all people are innocent. But there is something clearly broken in the middle. People don't bother to learn the name of an authority figure who only cares about the crimes he stops. That's where we go wrong. We have started to treat police like their only job is to stop crime, to protect us. There is another part of their motto, unfortunately that has been placed last as well: to serve. We don't want to get the name of the very person we have spent all day avoiding. The person that has been taught to treat us as the offenses we committed. We are no longer people, we are crimes waiting to be stopped, and if you don't believe so ask yourself next time you check your speedometer when their car drives by. They don't have an easy job, and we don't exactaly make it easy on them. But society has shaped us to be against each other in every aspect.
Recently a study came out by Pew Resaerch Center, "Fully half of consistent conservatives (50%) and 35% of consistent liberals say it is important to them to live in a place where most people share their political views." More and more people are living with people they agree with. I know many people who have deleted a Facebook friend because they disagree with them politically. How will we fix these problems, if we never hear the other side of the argument? The biggest problem with people trying to convince someone of their political viewpoint, is making an argument that would make sense for their morals, like arguing to a mirror. The problem is, Conservatives and Liberals hold different priciples. So, those Facebook posts that supposedly make an argument that BLM memebers are Terrorists, and Cops are attacking more people, are not persuasive to the other side. There are two vastly different perspectives and if we continue to refuse the other, all we do is continue to polarize each other. Both Cops and people are mostly good, but if you could come together to stop the ones that are bad, wouldn't you?
The fact of the matter is that we don't have Andy Griffith anymore. How can the police serve the community when they haven't bothered to know our name. How can we make change, when we refuse to have a conversation with the other side. The Washington Post has a database on deadly police shootings. As I write this the number is at 551. Some of those are surely justified, and must have been in order to maintain the safety of the officer. But if just one, and I mean one isn't, wouldn't you do everything in your power to stop it? Would you have a political discussion that didn't polarize the other side? Would you bother to get to know the officer that serves your community? Would you stand with Ferguson, when it is proven that there is injustice? The fact of the matter is, unless we come together not as a nation, not as a race, but as human beings, only then can we create positive change in this world.
