Final Blog.
So, as I mentioned in my past blog, I'm using the TV American animated sitcom South Park to talk about racial profiling on Latino and African Americans in the United States. South Park doesn't have a linear plot it's all over the place and literally they make fun of people, politicians, celebrities, things, ext. They literally mock everything using satire and dark humor, more in your face comedy and talk about and criticize real life issues or situations and everything. What's particular about it is that the protagonists are children so it's how these children see all these issues through their eyes. In the show there is a lot of cursing and a lot of Kenny dying. I'm taking two episodes, but I’ll be going talking about that more on, but first let's talk about racial profiling.
Racial Profiling
What it is? We can define racial profiling as literally the “practice of using race, ethnicity, national origin, or religious appearance as one factor, among others, when police decide which people are suspicious enough to warrant police stops, questioning, frisks, searches, and other routine police practices.” (Harris, 2020) and this is nothing new it was practice since police forces in United States were formed, and we can go back to when slavery was happening where the racial inequality was a factor of it. And racial profiling was established to supposedly catch the ‘bad guys’ meaning drug users trafficking, also firearms. It was by that time in the 80’s and 90’s that it made to the public that most of them were African Americans and the Latino people. But it wasn't until 2000’s George Bush that addressed the situation where police were literally stopping more African Americans and Latino disproportionately compared to white people. He mentioned that under his administration that will stop but it didn’t. And there are studies that addresses if racial profiling really works but it turns out that back in the 2000s racial profiling didn't help at all because they knew that it was just a way to just put people in jail and police to get that bonus paycheck. “An ACLU lawsuit uncovered police data indicating that while 73 percent of suspects pulled over on I-95 between 1995 and 1997 were Black, Black suspects were no more likely to actually have drugs or illegal weapons in their cars than white suspects. According to the Public Health Service, approximately 70% of drug users are white, 15% are Black, and 8% are Latino. But the Department of Justice reports that among those imprisoned on drug charges, 26% are white, 45% are Black, and 21% are Latino.” (Head,2018)
Butters Very Own Episode
So, the first episode that we're going to talk about is Butters Very Own Episode and basically to summarize: Butters parents are near to their anniversary and Butters dad is going to find a present and Butters tries to go undercover and spy his dad to see what he's going to get his mother. It turns out that he doesn’t go to get her a present but going to a bathhouse and turns out that his dad is bisexual and was cheating his wife with men. Butters then tells her mom, and her reaction was shock and the way that she though it was going to save her marriage was to kill Butters. She told Butters to get in the car, went to a lake, got the car in the lake, Butters stayed in the car, the car sank, obviously Butters escaped. But he got lost, the mother went back to the house told her husband. They thought Butters was dead, so they came up with an excused that ‘some Puerto Rican Guy was the one who killed Butters, and this is where the main discussion of the episode begins. Other real-life cases get involved in the episode we're talking about The Ramseys (https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/bq2cnn/south-park-the-ramseys) , Gary Condit and OJ Simpson (https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/kc9qnv/south-park-one-of-us) .
Susan Smith
The act of the mother of Butters doing what she did, it turns out to be based on the real-life case of Susan Smith where she literally did the same thing to put the car in South Carolina Lake and drowning her two sons and blamed an African American. She was later got caught of false claiming and currently in jail.
The Ramsey Case
The other one well talking about the Ramsey case, so JonBenét Ramsey was this 6-year-old girl she was found beaten and strangled in her house basement. The parents went on to that her daughter went missing and everything people were getting Falsely accused but it turns out that the case is still unresolved, and they found new evidence, but the evidence took too long to be analyzed and so they're trying to re-open the case. The episode clearly makes a statement about this one (https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/od3c2v/south-park-murdering-murderers-confess) .
Gary Condic: The Chandra Levy Case
As for Gary Condit and the Chandra levy case, Gary Condit was a 53 Congressman in 2000 and Chandra levy was a 23 intern. It turns out that they were meeting in secret and Candid having an affair which he denied multiple times. But the family knew about it and suddenly Chandra disappeared, and it turns out that they falsely accused Ingmar Guandique supposedly an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, but he was later dropped off from all charges and still Levy's death is still unsolved, but the episode addresses and directly points who they think truly did (https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/od3c2v/south-park-murdering-murderers-confess) . This episode demonstrates how if any person and especially if wealthy commits a really grave crime, that person can easily blame a generic minority to try to deflect attention their attention and law enforcement follows. Also, a cathartic way to put the real-life suspects on the spot.
The Jeffersons
In The Jeffersons episode they take on Michael Jackson changes his identity to Jefferson, and they moved to South Park Colorado and when police see in their profile that this new family moved to town, they are rich and he is African American the police wanted to act quick and to find a way to frame Mr. Jefferson.( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk3Aj0NhZzA) The episode goes on obviously they we're making fun of Michael Jackson for his parental behavior in that time but now in contextual time right now it's not funny anymore, but the main discussion of the episode is scathing take on police racial discrimination. And as soon as the police see Mr. Jefferson they enter in a crisis where they don't believe that how in paper it says that his African American and in person, they see that his white. One of the officers says something like: “we almost put in jail an innocent man I cannot live with myself, and I can no longer take this job”. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JGNaRut0sY) This literally referring to police racially profiling and making this statement like the black and Latino people are the bad guys, so we have to put all of the black and Latino people in jail because the white people are the ones that are good ones. But like I mentioned and referred to above at the beginning that isn't true. The nature of human behavior and acts aren’t and isn't determined by the color of the skin.
On Going Situation
Again, like I referred at the beginning this racial profiling and bias that was going to ‘reduce’ in Bush administration, but it never happened. Even with the arrival of Obama it increased and got even worse with Donald Trump as president. So, when we compare how the government handled this issue in the past 20 years. Some states passed a law that the police department must report every stop and intervention made. Then again, it’s just in some states, letting cases slip. Even white people are calling the police just because doing everyday activities. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3r3mOo4LmY)
One of the most recognizable cases that generated a whole movement caused by police brutality We can relate back to 2020 to George Floyd’s case on how police handled the detainment and ending up killing him. This is just one of the many cases where police used unnecessary force in instances that aren’t called for. You can see more recent cases of racial profiling that the New York Post has covered in this link here: https://nypost.com/tag/racial-profiling/
What Lawrence, Kansas is doing?
In Lawrence Kansas on February 22, 2022, the police chief Rich Lockhart talked about racial profiling in determining traffic stops and how the police department is handling the distrust of the citizens towards the law enforcement. He stated: ““So that’s where we want to get with this,” he said. “We want to educate our officers about what constitutes a good traffic stop. Make sure you have a good policy in place that prohibits racial profiling of any kind or any bias-based policing. Train on that policy so that your officers understand what it means.”” (Albright, 2022) This is something really important for people to know and that there is something being done about it.
Final Though
Unfortunately, my friends and I have been victims of this. For example, while we have a conversation and a person comes and tells you that Spanish is not spoken here and that we need to go back to our country, what that person does not know that like them we are also part of this country. As a Puertorican besides being Latino we are also American citizen.The US Government still has a long way to truly ensure safety to every person in the country no matter their race, religion or where they are from. As for the police departments, they need to retrain law enforcement and inform themselves before engaging in a forcefully way unnecessarily and in a racial bias way. The level of intolerance of the people and police is something that needs to change, and that change starts with the goverment as for us.
Resources:
Albright, A. (2022). Data is revealing, but new Lawrence police chief wants to examine racial disparities at the individual level. The Lawrence Times. https://www.propublica.org/article/changes-in-police-policy-payouts-to-latino-victims-of-traffic-stops-and-arrests-following-investigations
Crime Museum. (2022). JONBENÉT RAMSEY. Crime Museum. https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/cold-cases/jonbenet-ramsey/
Harris, D. A. (2020). Racial Profiling: Past, Present, and Future?. American Bar Association. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/criminal_justice/publications/criminal-justice-magazine/2020/winter/racial-profiling-past-present-and-future/
Head, Tom. (2021). Why Racial Profiling Is a Bad Idea. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/downside-of-racial-profiling-721529
Martinez, M. (2020). Scoundrels: Political Scandals in American History—Chandra Levy and Gary Condit. J.Michael Martinez. https://www.jmichaelmartinez.com/post/scoundrels-political-scandals-in-american-history-chandra-levy-and-gary-condit
Russakoff, Dale, & Sontag, D. (2022). Changes in Police Policy, Payouts to Latino Victims of Traffic Stops and Arrests Following Investigations. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/changes-in-police-policy-payouts-to-latino-victims-of-traffic-stops-and-arrests-following-investigations
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