Police Brutality Videos Change How Black Men Live

High-profiled black deaths at the hands of police, have forced African-Americans to change their personality and the way they live their lives.

Amid a spiral of black deaths at the hands of officers, many young African-Americans worried about the possibility of becoming victims of police brutality, have for their own safety resorted to changing everything about themselves, including their friends and the kinds of clothes they put on.

The negative world, in which an unarmed Black man is murdered by cops about once every nine days, has instilled fear in millions of young men of color.

Horrifying videos of Black misery and death posted regularly on social media have made wearing a hoodie, faded jeans, and a cap synonymous to a possible police harassment or death warrant.

In order to be safe, young black people are substituting some of their favorite and culturally appropriate wears with clothes that represent neither their tastes nor their cultural background.

Young people of color can no longer take a quiet walk, run around the park or a comfortable drive in their cars without the harrowing images of young black men being shot or a black woman being slammed against a car haunting them.

Millions of black people like Jawad Pullin, a 20-year-old sophomore at Georgetown University, have decided not to go out without a white friend or without a gadget set to videotape police encounters.

“If you go with white friends, there is a far lower chance of bad things happening,” Pullin explains. “It’s like it defuses everything.”

High profile deaths at the hands of police like – the fatal shootings of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, 24-year-old Jamar Clark in Minneapolis, the murder of Freddie Gray, and the death of Sandra Bland in custody – have altered the way black people live their lives.

Black Americans do not only have to live with the psychological and physical impact of being treated like they don’t matter, they now have to live lives that are incomprehensible or unrecognizable in their own eyes.

However, things like these would never happen in the land of the free and the home of the brave if those charged with the responsibility to protect the citizens do not out of racial bias terrorize a selected group of people.

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