Rodney King Perspective

An experience I encountered that influenced my way in which I perceive the issues surrounding the Rodney King assault was when I was driving to school and our vehicle was pulled aside by a police officer because we had done an illegal u-turn. The police officer had stepped out of his car, the flickering blue and red lights moving in quick circular motions. He walked towards the front of the car, wearing glasses and keeping his right hand on his weapon as if he was seeking for an intimidating and menacing look. He knocked on the driver's side window implying she needed to roll it down. He then set his arms on the door and looked at my mom who was driving, then who was inside the vehicle, then asking if she knew what she had done wrong. He asked a few more questions and it wasn’t long before the police officer left only giving my parents a warning. This experience triggered an immediate reaction from me, I questioned myself that if my mom had been a male or a person of color, would the outcome have been different. Being a white female with two young sons with the same skin color, I had been able to recognize that through his lens this was just an innocent mistake made by innocent people, this is called racial profiling. This brings me to the Rodney King assault, where he was a young african american male in a time where the police force was more rejecting of people of color than they are in the modern day. I believe that the complexion of one’s pigment can play a large role in situations such as the Rodney King assault. This one incident has greatly changed my perspective on how I perceive the issues leading up to the beating.