Reference no: EM133351436

Respond to at least one of your colleagues' postings in one or more of the following ways:

Ask a probing question and provide insight into how you would answer your question and why.
Ask a probing question and provide the foundation, or rationale, for the question.
Expand on your colleague's posting by offering a new perspective or insight.
Agree with a colleague and offer additional (new) supporting information for consideration.
Disagree with a colleague by respectfully discussing and supporting a different perspective.

This is my colleagues article below.

One scenario where privilege and stigma always produces drastically polar results is interactions with police. Dylann Roof went into a black church and wreaked havoc. He killed eight of the twelve church members with absolutely no remorse. You would think that such a horrific event would incite a more forceful response from the police, considering they're dealing with a mass murderer. But what actually happened? When Roof was arrested, they put him in a bulletproof vest for protection and got him Burger King. While he did have guns drawn on him at the time of arrest, it wasn't for long. His white privilege allowed him to live through that police interaction. Rosenblum and Travis state this reality very well: "While privilege makes people's lives easier, it also makes their lives safer."(2016) Since white people are rarely seen as a threat by police, their interactions together are less violent and definitely less fatal.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, black people often have horrible experiences during police interactions, a lot of the interactions ending fatally. For example, George Floyd's interaction with the police cost him his life. Unlike Roof, who definitely committed crime, Floyd was being arrested under suspicion of a crime. Officers detained him. One officer then put his knee on his neck and kept it there for over nine mites, restricting his breathing and ultimately killing him. Food was not accused of a violent crime like Roof, he was not being violent, so why was his outcome so different? All of the stigmas associated with being a black man. He was automatically perceived as violent, despite cooperating. He was a larger size too, so that definitely played to the stigma. People also automatically assume that black people are criminals, so he wasn't even given the benefit of the doubt. Looking at both situations, I'm not implying that Roof should have been mistreated during his police interaction. It just shows that privileges and stigmas often dictate the outcome of societal situations we face.