Jack Bullard
12/2/15
Prof. Deinert
English 101
A World Divided
Since the forties, South Africa and the United States of America have shared a common
theme, racial segregation. In South Africa, apartheid created a nation in which black and white
were disallowed by law to ever mix. This resulted in a world of chaos for black Africans who
were being told by immigrants in their own land as to what they could do, where they could go,
and how they could live. Similarly, in the United States, African-Americans were forced to listen
to the demands of a law enforcement that was corrupt and racist as they assaulted and killed
minorities in their own neighborhoods. While each issue occurred a world apart from the other,
the ties between the two could not be stronger. In NWA’s 1988 track, “Fuck tha Police”, the
group brings awareness to an issue that many at the time were unaware of and in doing so
opened the eyes of a largely ignorant America. Likewise, Peter Gabriel’s, “Biko”, tells the story
of what it is like to live as a black man in a segregated land where his rights mean nothing, and
the color of his skin means everything. Between the two, each group exposes the life of a
minority living in their respective neighborhood, and how institutional racism leads to a life of
pain and unrest.
In NWA’s “Fuck tha Police” acknowledges the brutal lifestyle they deal with growing up
in Compton, more specifically the racism they face whenever they encounter the police. In the
first lines of the song rapper Ice Cube exclaims, “Fuck the police coming straight from the
underground/ A young nigga got it bad cause I’m brown/ And not the other color so police think/
They have the authority to kill a minority.” As shown by the lyrics, people in south central Los
Angeles are faced with constant harassment of law enforcement strictly because of their skin
color. Due to institutionalized racism, officers, no matter their color, believe they themselves are
above the law and can do whatever they feel is justified. However, the institutional racism does
not end there as former Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates contributed to the problem by
“expanding his infamous police gang sweeps and keeping entire areas of the city, especially
South Central and East L.A, under conditions of military occupation”(Zirin). Knowing that these
areas were home to mostly African-Americans, police chief Gates felt the need to treat an entire
race as criminals by performing these massive sweeps in the area rather than perform the
standard patrol. This tactic that became known in preparation for the 1984 Olympics in Los
Angeles, created the path of destruction that would take place throughout the eighties. In
