America would love to say that this is a “free country.” But to what extent? Let’s be real. This country was stolen from a group of indigenous people and forcibly built by people who were made to leave their own country against their will. These same people today are still treated unfairly. This country is everything but free. Yes, we can speak our minds, practice any religion we would like, wear what we would like, and more. But at what cost?

If you speak your mind strongly to let people know how passionate you are about something, you’re labeled as angry or crazy. You’re given the right to practice the religion you would like, but then you get stared at and labeled as a terrorist by ignorant people who associate your whole religion with a few bad seeds. You can wear that hoodie you like, but make sure you’re ready to get labeled as a thug because of your race and being in the wrong neighborhood at wrong time. Institutionalized racism is such a vague topic because there are so many different factors to it. One of the many is police brutality.

Police brutality is an epidemic in this country. Many don’t want to accept it, but, sad to say, this is what is happening in today’s world. Every time I get online, I see an uproar on social media regarding unjustified killings by the hands of law enforcement:  Sandra Bland, Sean Bell, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Mike Brown, and Freddie Gray. There’s definitely more, but those are some of the most popular cases. In 2016 alone, 234 African Americans have lost their lives to police brutality. Many would say that maybe if they had done what they were told to do, they would still be alive today. That is not the case. The reason these people are losing their lives is because cops are being put into these areas to protect people that they are scared of.

To be fair, I will acknowledge the fact that it is not only African Americans that suffer from police brutality. It was actually concluded that more Caucasians die from police brutality than African Americans do. But the thing is that African Americans only make up 12% of the population, while Caucasians make up 77.2%. We are a minority, so for 234 of us to die when we are already a small group as it is, is not a good thing. Caucasians are the majority, so the number of them that are killed is larger because there are more of them.

An article from Al Jazeera says that one of the things that contributes to police brutality is when rookie officers are placed in high crime areas. Rookie officers reportedly have a higher level of anxiety and insecurities. It is said that rookie officers, especially when they are young, tend to escalate situations instead of de-escalate them. The people who are supposed to be brave and protect the community are scared of the community.

Sometimes, officers lack empathy because they are so wrapped up in policy and procedure. I will recognize the fact that being a police officer is a scary job.  Officers are probably on edge because they do not know what to expect. It’s a dangerous job; they really do not know what they will be up against daily. Police officers are putting their lives on the line daily in order to protect their communities.

An article on Bloomberg.com recognized that policing and oppression have a very long history. The history of policing in America is deeply intertwined with the violence of racial oppression. Slave Patrols and Night Watches were designed to control the behaviors of minorities and later became modern police departments. If slave patrolling was never created, we would not even have a police force today. Since the beginning, this was a system setup to hurt us.

Hillary Clinton wants to reform our criminal justice system. She has proposed policies that she believes will aid in the reforming of the criminal justice system and “restore trust between communities and policy and end the epidemic of gun violence.” This includes supporting legislation to end racial profiling by federal, state, and local law enforcement officials, and  acknowledging that implicit bias still exists across society—even in the best police departments—and tackle it together.  Donald Trump on the other hand, is not as educated on the topic and doesn’t really have a plan to try and fix things. He dismissed the topic and constantly compares African American and Latino communities to “hell” because he describes the areas that people of color live in as “inner cities.”

Yes, it is nice that Hillary Clinton is thinking of a plan to try and implement change to one factor of a deeply rooted issue. But I honestly feel like it’s going to take so much more than that. It’s not easy to change people’s attitudes and values towards certain things. All the billions of dollars in the world to fund a plan that will stop racial profiling by law enforcement is not guaranteed to work. It’s going to be hard to change both the law enforcement and people in the communities’ attitudes towards each other because this is an issue that runs very deep. It will be difficult to re-write this history.