American Police Shootings: Racial Epidemic, or Media Epidemic?

American Police Shootings: Racial Epidemic, or Media Epidemic?

By Brian Thomas Armstrong

God did not make man in a racial image, but in his own; that is why we are all equal in the Lords eyes.

(Genesis 1 26-27)
26: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27: So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Anyone these days with a television set or a radio would have to be aware of a seemingly national epidemic of racially perceived unwarranted police shootings, sparking protests across the country and promoting political and social debate that has seemed to unfortunately promote a spreading social opinion that is split down racial lines, rather than down rational ones.

The national media has been accused of promoting racial shootings over random shootings, or sensationalizing racial toned shootings while virtually ignoring common race on race shootings and crime. Not exactly a far-fetched accusation of the currant medias tactics, especially when main stream media competes with social medias tendencies to fuel social hysteria along with every post , comment, or like,  over the High Speed Internets vast empire of On-line users.

 It seems that it is our human nature to be ever ripe for a good or new controversy to post about.  American media cannot be expected to carry the full weight of the blame, we tend to demand for what we get and expect from the media monster, and then self–righteously chastise it for doing so.

In giant urban cities like New York, New York, the racial statistical reports on police shootings in the city look pretty damning to the NYPD at first glance, with a staggeringly disproportionate 70% of the people who were shot by police in New York City being African Americans according to The New York Daily News.

The trouble with these sorts of statistics is they do not truthfully gauge so many other factors that make these types of statistics seem absolutely drawn down racial lines like, sprawling crime ridden areas that are poverty stricken with large singular racial make-ups, that have both roots in race and community, but are made up more out social cultural norms rather than created by racism. Poverty, crime, social and cultural tension are not new problems to American society, and simply blaming race for the societal and economic problems and barriers that face a vast majority of  us all eventually regardless of our race.

The best way of sifting through the latest controversies, scandals, conspiracies and world calamities that seem to barrage us everywhere we look these days, is pure and simple rationality, self-honesty of your own political or cultural motivations in maybe secretly wanting to believe the worst first,  Take time to contemplate the real social reasons for this seemingly plague of on-going racial tension in America, and most importantly in this fast age of instant internet  information traveling faster than the valid facts and points of the real story. Reason, patience, conscious, faith and openness are the true tools in fighting racism and flare ups of national racial tensions. These tools have always been and always will be aspects and virtues of god’s own image in ourselves.