CSUN On Point

Recently, incidents of police officers shooting and killing African-Americans have gained more attention in the media.

A new study shows a relationship between racial bias and the police use of excessive force against people of color. The study found that police are more likely to use handcuffs, draw their weapons, and use pepper spray or their baton when dealing with people of color.

New technology such as body cameras and smartphones mean more and more officer-involved shootings are being recorded and posted on social media by witnesses. Although police brutality is not a new phenomenon, the coverage by both professional and citizen journalists has made it more prominent. Some hope this coverage will help lessen the violence, but others in the African-American community question the effectiveness of body cams.

“I don’t think it’ll make a difference,” screenwriter and actor Kyle Smith said. “Cops are killing innocent blacks on camera, and getting away with it.”

The Washington Post reports that 991 people were shot by police officers in 2015, but according to data collected by an Ohio researcher, only 26 officers have been convicted of murder or manslaughter.

“As of right now [the new technology] is not working, because even when they’re catching these assassinations and murders on camera, nothing is happening to the cops,” CSUN Africana Studies Professor Aimee Glocke said.

The problem now may be whether or not the media are accurately reporting and portraying these situations, and whether their coverage could actually be helping to perpetuate the violence.

In the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting, #BlackLivesMatter arose as a popular hashtag on Twitter to protest the violence that plagued the African American community. Soon the hashtag evolved into an organization geared toward ending the injustice of police brutality. But the attacks on the community have not stopped, and some feel the community and individuals continue to be targeted due to racism and unconscious bias.

“My interaction with the police has absolutely 100 percent always been different from my peers around me,” CSUN’s Black Student Union President Robert T. Wilson III said. “Personally, it would be nice to not have to feel scared; it would be nice to not feel nervous when interacting with the police, and I could be held accountable [only] for the things I do, or the things I do not do.”

The shootings of Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012, and Michael Brown in Missouri in 2014, generated an emotional response because they were young men, both under the age of 18.

“I’m a black mother of a 33-year-old black male and I’m constantly holding my breath,” CSUN Africana Studies Professor Monica Turner said. “There’re no words to describe that kind of torment: when you think about a child that you have loved and nurtured and cared for, [and] someone shooting them down like an animal in cold blood. There’s nothing to describe what that feels like. I really feel terrorized.”

Many politicians and law enforcement experts are calling for a closer examination of police training methods.

“’Just being black’: most police officers will say that’s a reason for excessive force,” Glocke said. “I know there’s a standard, and there’s supposed to be this whole judgement of when you use force, [but] many police officers don’t care. They will shoot first, and ask questions later.”

To view the complete interview with Robert Wilson III, President of the Black Student Union at CSUN, please click here.

Moderator: Thomas Gallegos

Anchor: Ke-Alani Sarmiento

Producer: Alicia Dieguez

Social Media Editors: Nick Torres and Jackie Wawee

Reporters: Alicia Dieguez, Thomas Gallegos, Susana Guzman, Ebony Hardiman, Ke-Alani Sarmiento, Nick Torres and Jackie Wawee

San Francisco 49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick re-ignited athlete-driven protests with his stand against police brutality, and he’s empowered many other athletes to speak out.

In 2015, The Washington Post documented close to a thousand fatal shootings by police, ninety-three of which involved people who were unarmed. Black men accounted for about forty percent of the unarmed people fatally shot by police, and were seven times as likely as unarmed white men to die from police gunfire.

Now the argument over whether or not professional and collegiate athletes should be able to use their platform as a personal means of expression has become a large national issue.

This isn’t a new movement. Athletes like Mohammed Ali and 1968 Olympic Medalist Tommie Smith are known for making athlete-driven statements decades ago.

Since athletes are technically at work when they decide to make these protests, the debate stems from whether or not they should be penalized for doing so.

“Some of them may feel they are not at that level to take that risk,” CSUN Africana Studies Professor David Horne said. “[Their employers might say] ‘we expect you to not conduct yourself in a way that would embarrass the team or the business’.”

But athletes have only their professional platforms to make a statement. Whether they are in an interview or on the field, they have a limited amount of airtime, but they often have a large following.

“It’s their right to do so,” said Reverend Jewett Walker, President of 100 Black Men of Los Angeles. “If someone chooses to do that, I think we should embrace that, honor that, and respect it.”

Many athletes have messages that aren’t meant to start controversy.

“My responsibility was to be an example,” said CSUN Women’s Basketball Coach, and former college basketball player, Jason Flowers, “so somebody that had the same background as me could look [at me] … and say ‘that person was able to succeed, and I’m capable of it too’.”

Moderator: Jordan Williams

Anchor: Kiesha Phillips

Producer: Daniel Saad

Social Media Editors: Delmy Moran and Celene Zavala

Reporters: Delmy Moran, Brittni Perez, Kiesha Phillips, Daniel Saad, Jordan Williams and Celene Zavala

In a population of more than 320 million American citizens, The Prison Policy Initiative estimates around 2.3 million of those citizens are incarcerated in local, state and federal prisons. Of those, more than 433,000 are serving time in federal prison for drug-related offenses.

According to NAACP, African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of Caucasians. Combined with the Hispanic population, these two minority groups comprise around 58 percent of all prisoners, even though they make up around 25 percent of the U.S. population.

“The whole criminalization of drugs really impacts minorities more than anybody else,” said Jane Bayes, CSUN political science professor. “Those are the people who are being picked up for drugs and targeted for drugs… I’m not even sure they’re the major consumers of them [though], because many whites are not targeted in the same way by law enforcement.”

According to The Sentencing Project, more people are incarcerated today just for drug-related crimes, than for all crimes in 1980.

“To a certain degree, you may look at racial profiling and stereotyping [as the reason], depending …[on the]…law enforcement agencies concerned,” said Los Angeles Harbor College political science professor Van Chaney. “I still think that is a problem within law enforcement.”

Chaney said minority groups are incarcerated at higher rates for a variety of reasons, such as lack of good legal representation, dysfunctional families and communities, and low income.

“We are all familiar with the zip code 90210,” Chaney said. “If you have a helicopter in that area at two in the morning … compared to say, Figueroa and King … who would the DEA’s office probably take the case with? Would it be at 90210, compared to South LA or at least South Central LA? Just the name itself changes [things]. I mean it’s that discrepancy that affects, unfortunately, a lot of minority groups.”

The Sentencing Project also reported that people of color make up about 37 percent of the U.S. population, but comprise 67 percent of the total prison population. A TIME study estimates black youth are arrested for drug crimes at a rate 10 times higher than whites, but whites are more likely to abuse these drugs.

Another controversy is the increasing privatization and profitability of prisons. According to the Drug Police Alliance, federal and state governments have spent over $1 trillion on the so-called war on drugs over the past four decades, relying on tax dollars to pay the bills.

“To me, one of the biggest problems is we’ve made prisons into money making operations,” Bayes said, “and that provides all kinds of new incentives to fill the prisons and to keep them [full,] too.”

Private prisons make a huge profit from incarcerating drug offenders, according to the NAACP, mainly due to the mandatory minimum sentencing put in place for drug possession. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average prison sentence for federal drug offenders is more than 11 years. According to the VERA Institute of Justice , the total cost to house prisoners ranged from $14,603 in Kentucky, to $60,076 in New York, per inmate each year. Critics suggest taxpayer dollars are not being well spent, considering that more than two-thirds of all incarcerated prisoners will return to prison within three years of being released.

The debate over the war on drugs is an ongoing one among many Americans, who are concerned about how their tax dollars are spent. Considering the high rate of recidivism, and how much money is spent to imprison drug offenders, many question whether the criminal justice system of prisons is a big business, or a new form of slavery, or both.

Moderator: Nicholas Seaman

Anchor: Caitlin Pieh

Producer: Nicholas Seaman

Social Media Editors: Noemi Barajas and Juaneeq Elliott

Reporters: Noemi Barajas, Halie Cook, Juaneeq Elliott, Ala Errebhi, Caitlin Pieh, Jamie Perez and Nicholas Seaman

“# Oscars So White” is the hot topic again this year as preparations get under way for the 88^th Academy Awards. This is the second year in a row that all of the nominees in major categories are white.

A Los Angeles Times study found that Oscar voters have a median age of over 60 years old, and are 94 percent Caucasian, and 77 percent male.

“This [year’s group of nominees] is a literal reflection of the members who make up the academy,” actress and comedian Alexandra Karova said. “They are old school dinosaurs; they do not reflect what the people are feeling at all.”

UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies Studies looked at movies, television and digital platforms in 2012 and 2013 in its recent Diversity Report, and found that minorities had only half as many acting roles as whites, and are proportionately under-represented in writing and directing as well. Over the course of its 87 years, only 35 awards have been given to African American actors and actresses, and Halle Berry is the only African-American woman to win best actress, in 2002.

CSUN Africana Studies Professor Marquita Pellerin-Gammage, author of “Representations of Black Women in the Media: The Damnation of Black Womanhood”, said many of the roles offered to African American actors and actresses reflect negative stereotypes.

“African Americans are pigeonholed into these stereotype roles,” she said.  “They almost validate the reason why they are not nominated for these types of awards, when they’re only granted such narrow representations.”

Many movie-goers are expressing their concern about the lack of diversity among the nominees on social media platforms, calling this year’s Academy Award nominations ‘a controversy’.

“This is not a controversy, because it has been happening for so long,” Cinema Television and Arts Professor Nate Thomas said. “They need to stop talking and do something about it.”

Some minority actors and actresses are choosing to boycott this year’s Academy Awards ceremony. Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith and director Spike Lee have vowed not to attend this year’s award show.

Karova said she believes that Oscar nominees should not be the only ones who boycott the Oscars this year.

“Do not give them the ratings,” she said. “Let’s give it to the other shows, [who give awards] that are based on talent, not based on appearance. Stop giving [the Oscar telecast] our eyes and money…and start paying attention to shows where people are paying attention to us.”

Moderator: Glenna Dixon

Anchor: Anna Logan

Producer: Harry Abelson

Social Media Editors: Harry Abelson and Jasmin Dalton

Reporters: Jasmin Dalton, Kiara Draper, Anna Logan and October Primavera

Black Lives Matter is a movement which began two years ago, after George Zimmerman was acquitted of the charges against him during the Trayvon Martin murder trial. CSUN was the site of a Black Lives Matters event recently, organized to bring awareness to students about the issues surrounding the cause.

One of the goals of the event was to teach students about what they can do to make a difference. Workshops were held so that students could learn how to become involved in the movement.

“The beautiful thing is, when we teach these things to students, then [they] get a foundation and they can use that foundation to move forward and help Black Lives Matter,” said Dr. Aimee Glocke said, a professor in CSUN’s Department of Africana Studies.

Some have questioned whether BLM’s decision to forego a traditional hierarchy and go without an appointed leader might limit the group’s ability to spread its message and accomplish its goals.

“I feel like that’s a phenomenal way to go,” Glocke said, “because then the idea is that there is a collective voice. There are different perspectives in it, and that includes same gender loving lives [and] black [transgender] individuals who have been murdered by the police…This is a leader-full movement, [and] this gives [it] an advantage, because it includes so many different black people in different walks of life.”

Another response has been to the name of the movement, and expression of the opinion that BLM should be focused on ‘all lives matter’, so it encompasses all ethnic backgrounds, but supporters of the BLM movement say this change would take away from the real problem.

Wesley Williams, the president of CSUN’s Black Male Initiative Organization, explained why the name Black Lives Matter is so important.

“It’s like there are two houses,” Williams said. “A perfectly standing [home] and a burning home….Because all houses matter, we’re going to water down this perfectly fine house while the other one burns. Even though one needs [the water] more than the other.”

“We’re getting murdered; we’re having the trouble with the police,” Williams said. “And other races aren’t being affected by it this dramatically.”

Another problem Black Lives Matter addresses is the media’s often unfair and selective view of Black America.

“The media embraces white supremacy and racism, so how can we ever expect them to give [this movement] a fair portrayal?” Glocke asked.

Glocke said the news media can manipulate the audience by showing only black violence, and almost none of the progressive work that is being done.

“How many news stations showed [the recent Million Man March]?” Glocke asked. “ The idea is here [was] a peaceful, wonderful, community-oriented movement, that revolved around Black Lives Matter, and that doesn’t get shown.”

Police brutality towards the black community is nothing new, but many Americans have become more aware of the issue because of the Internet. The internet’s accessibility makes it easy for people to share any videos documenting these incidents.

BLM has been successful using social media to spread its message. Even the name started out as a hashtag on twitter, and then the movement took off using social media.

“[The police] have control over media as a mass,” Williams said. “They own those. But they don’t own what I post on my Instagram, my Twitter, my Snapchat. Those go around and touch millions of people.”

Social media also make it easy for celebrity figures to get involved and bring these issues into the forefront.

“The people who [are] in a position of power and have the influence, [aren’t always using] it for good,” Williams said. “[These] are the people who the black people really need, and because they don’t care, is why white America [doesn’t] care.”

Moderator: Daisy Lightfoot

Anchor: Sarina Sandoval

Reporters: Jon Gripe, Ashley Horton, Daisy Lightfoot, Andrew Pitters, Sarina Sandoval

Social Media Editors: Jon Gripe, Daisy Lightfoot, Andrew Pitters