As North America pivots into the summer season, there’s a rise in public marketing, with a flourishing number of lemonade stands popping up on street corners. This is a tradition that should be kept innocent, but through the eyes of authority, seem to have lost it’s charm…if they decide that the vendor is unfit.
This month the Alameda County Sheriff’s department shared a photo of a man handcuffed on the side of the street because he was selling fruits and vegetables. In the photo, the man can be seen sitting cooperatively on the sidewalk, as the Cop arrests him and confiscates his array of produce.
The photo caused online conflict, in reaction to the clear discrimination that targets minorities and low income families, and their tendency to be treated with a different stance by the Law. If the person who owned the fruit stand had been presented as high income and Caucasian, the outcome would be bound to be different, given that that range of people are granted an immunity or leniency in the area of law that others are not.
After receiving a controversial response to their uploaded photo, the station defended themselves by claiming that photos can be deceptive. However, most found that difficult to believe. Their scraped together explanation gave a one-sided anecdote about the deputy claiming that the man was resisting, hence the handcuffs. The laws perspective clearly excluded prime information, about the state of danger between Police and minorities, a logical reasons as to why the man didn’t want to be in contact with the officer.
Although many locals came to the man’s defense, there were inevitable comments littered under the photo as well, including capitalized; BLUE LIVES MATTER. Many proposed the threat of E coli as a defense for the police officers decision, but studies show that 30-40% more people are actually killed by police annually.
In the repetitive trail of racial profiling, it’s proven that racial minorities are treated as villainous in even the simplest of acts, like selling fruit.
