Hands Up, Don't Shoot

Why the Protests in Ferguson and Baltimore Matter, and How They Changed America

De: Jennifer E. Cobbina

Narrado por: Joniece Abbott-Pratt

Understanding the explosive protests over police killings and the legacy of racism.

Following the high-profile deaths of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and 25-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, both cities erupted in protest over the unjustified homicides of unarmed Black males at the hands of police officers. These local tragedies - and the protests surrounding them - assumed national significance, igniting fierce debate about the fairness and efficacy of the American criminal justice system.

In Hands Up, Don't Shoot, Jennifer Cobbina draws on in-depth interviews with nearly 200 residents of Ferguson and Baltimore, conducted within two months of the deaths of Brown and Gray. She examines how protestors in both cities understood their experiences with the police, how those experiences influenced their perceptions of policing, what galvanized Black Lives Matter as a social movement, and how policing tactics during demonstrations influenced subsequent mobilization decisions among protesters. Ultimately, she humanizes people's deep and abiding anger, underscoring how a movement emerged to denounce both racial biases by police and the broader economic and social system that has stacked the deck against young Black civilians.

©2019 New York University (P)2020 Tantor

A collection of second hand personal anecdotes

The narrator did an excellent job.

Most of the book is a series of secondhand personal anecdotes of people who claim to be mistreated by police. Most of the mistreatment is rudeness, and some of it is unwarranted physical contact, the author doesn't say if they're verified or not. I believe most of it is exaggerated or fabricated because who wants to admit that they were fairly arrested. The author then makes the bold claim that black police are racist too, to impress other white police, without any evidence. There are also many references to slavery with the same logic as Colin Capernik' s reference to slavery. Black people are pulled over by police in the same way slaves are pulled over when leaving plantations? I'm sorry, that's a pretty weak analogy. The sad part is there ARE well thought out comparisons to the modern justice system and slavery to be made, but the author just dropped the ball.

She admits in the intro that a collection of secondhand stories shouldn't be generalized for the entire population, but then proceeds to do just that throughout the entire book, relying only on unverified testimonies without any statistical research. She says black lives matters protesters shouldn't be judged based on a few looters, as most of them are good people, but then judges all police by the actions of only the worst few police. There is no research on police training or hiring practices, just criticisms and generalizations of the worst few cops, none of whom she did any real research, just secondhand testimonies.

I had to read this for class, but it's probably the worst book I've ever read. If you want to get into politics there are a myriad of better choices chuck full of convincing and sound arguments with heavy research behind them, whether you are for blm or not.

Edit: she also says black communities should be policed by black cops, which I think is a dangerous line of thought on the way to segregation. I would recommend a hopeful history of humankind, the mathematics of life and death, or blackout.