An unarmed African American 18 year old, Michael Brown was shot and killed on August 9, 2014 by a white police officer, Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Shortly before the shooting, a convenience store had been robbed. Officer Darren Wilson claims that as he encountered Michael Brown, he recognized him as the suspect of the robbery. Therefore, he backed up to block him. There are several claims, and not enough evidence to anticipate what exactly happened next. Officer Wilson claims that Michael Brown charged towards him, and struggled to take his gun. Others claim that Michael Brown had not put Officer Wilson in any harm or danger. In either case, Officer Wilson fired a total of 12 shots at Michael Brown as he was unarmed and moving toward the officer as the final shots leading to his death were fired.
The shooting sparked unrest in Ferguson. The protests were targeted against the police having pitted the predominantly black community …show more content…
Schema is the information we acquire and store about the world. This schema becomes generalized information. Schema can cause prejudice because when we form schema for a certain group of individuals it becomes a stereotype. Stereotyping causes us to come to conclusions about member of that certain group that you know nothing about. Because of stereotypes we are able to predict the behavior of others, and without them each and every interaction would be a new experience. For obvious reasons, stereotyping can become an issue when we stereotype an entire group of people with no regard to who the person really is. Stereotypes become a prejudice when they are negative and involved with negative emotions toward all individuals who belong in that group. Something ironic, in Officer Wilson’s case, is that fear is the one emotion that is correlated with prejudice, when someone holds a prejudiced belief, it is found in the