The Hate Cycle

For a good chunk of Global we have talked about race relations between minority communities and white police officers in cases from Rodney King to Ferguson to O.J. Simpson. I remembered hearing that the Black Panther's answered this problem by arming themselves and following police to make sure that they did not brutalize the black community. We even heard of a milder modern organization called "cop watch" when we were watching documentaries about Ferguson. While I can understand this type of knee jerk reaction to years of targeting and oppression it only deepens the divide. It makes us more and more distrustful of cops, and makes cops angry the betrayal from the people they were entrusted to protect. This vicious cycle of hate can be best highlighted in the two different theaters of WWII. On the Pacific Front, American and Japanese propaganda dehumanized the other along ideas of racial inferiority and superiority. In the book "Double Victory", by George Takaki, he details how American soldiers in the Pacific would pull the the teeth or cut the ears from dead Japanese soldiers and how Japanese soldiers would behead American P.O.W.s. This widescale treatment that was so prevalent in the Pacific was never seen on the Western front and as a result, the Pacific Front was a place where no quarter was asked and none was given. We can see the beginnings of this hatred now with police not being humans but cops, and citizens as out to get the cops. You can't drive out hate with hate.