Why are we being gun downed in the streets?

Modern America is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. This motto is slowly coming into conflict with this image. The images that are shown across our televisions screens show police harassment, brutality, and murder. In the last few years’ police shootings of young African Americans, mostly male, has been the hot topic of the news media.
The phenomenon has shocked many in a nation, which is headed by a black president. These events are not a modern occurrence. Conflict and mistrust of the police has always been a problem in the black community. This steams from police stereotyping, harassment, brutality, and profiling. A lot of these incidents have never been reported or noticed by the news media. The last “big” coverage of this type of abuse took place during the early nineties, when Rodney king was brutality beaten by the Los Angeles police department after being pulled over. The Trevon Martin killing and the rise of the activist group #BlackLivesMatter, has brought these events back into the public eye but it did nothing but fuel the fire. Over the summer, Baton Rouge, Louisiana was featured in the horrible media spotlight. There was the usual video of some police officer shooting an African American male for a seemingly non-critical reason. Yet the police didn’t even shoot the white guy who went on a mass-shooting spree at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. There is a huge difference in police response due to race! White Americans commit some of the worst crimes in America child rape, child pornography, robbery, familial murder, and many other crimes and are brutalized by the police at a lesser rate then blacks who commit lesser crimes.
Whites are usually given harsh sentences and punishment for harsher crimes then blacks. In the last year and a half, several ignorant individuals used more racist rhetoric amped up by the Donald trump campaign and his ignorant followers. This is the time as a community to become more conscience and aware. We need to ask the question, why does this keep happening and what can we do to stop it? With instances such as the shooting of Keith L. Scott, a man who was shot by a black police officer while in the parking lot of his apartment complex for carrying a gun in a state where it is legal to carry. The main question would always be “What if he were white”, would the police react in the same way? The officer was not even there for Mr. Scott, but for another person. This shooting lead to protest that turned violent when a police officer and a civilian where injured by gunfire from another civilian. This I am sure only made things worst. The only response when things like this happen is why? Why in this country that was built on the backs of African Americans, we are constantly made to look like villains and victims. Why do we have to constantly prove ourselves, and justify ourselves? Ta nehisi Coates tried to answer some of these questions in his now famous book between the world and me. The most important question is why when we think there’s hope for us it is constantly being stripped away from us. When Obama was elected twice we felt nothing but hope, since these shootings all that hope is being slowly taken away.