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By Hannah Brandt<\/strong><\/p>\n

In July the nation was rocked once again by police shootings of African Americans. First it was the death of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La. Sterling was a 37-year-old man selling CDs outside a convenience store. Video of his death at the hands of police recorded by a store employee swept social media sparking outrage and accusations of excessive force.<\/p>\n

According to CNN, a homeless man who got into an argument with Sterling called 911 after Sterling refused to give him money. Two officers were sent to the scene. An altercation ensued, ending with one officer holding down and shooting Sterling. Unlike the vast majority of black men shot by police, Sterling was armed. He also lived in a state which has open carry laws where many people carry guns without this response. The vast majority of them are white.<\/p>\n

A week later, video of beloved Montessori school cafeteria worker Philando Castile\u2019s death by police in St. Paul, Minn. was recorded by his girlfriend on Facebook Live. Like any footage of a person dying, it is horrific. It is even more chilling because the cell phone video was shot at extremely close range and streamed live as Castile\u2019s girlfriend broadcast the details.<\/p>\n

Castile appears to be complying with the officer\u2019s demand for identification when he is shot point blank. He was pulled over by police, as he had been many times before, for a traffic violation. According to records obtained by NPR, in his 32 years, Castile had been pulled over 46 times and accrued $6000 in fines, the earliest before he was 19. These citations have many asking if he was targeted for his skin color and his death another example of unjustified police violence.<\/p>\n

Both cases have people questioning police policies and procedures around the country. As has happened since the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. attention has been drawn to the fact that a black man is seven times more likely to be shot by police in the U.S. than a white man. People were also furious to learn of Ferguson\u2019s imbalance of traffic citations and hefty fines placed on African Americans versus white Americans. Investigations since have revealed that is common in many jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

Philando Castile had trouble paying for his excessive traffic fines, which made him vulnerable to further citations. Whites on average have seven times the wealth that black people do (six times that of Hispanics), putting a tremendous burden on a people who also always have around twice the national unemployment rate. That causes men like Alton Sterling to do things like sell CDs on the street, where they are more likely than whites to be accused of loitering or disturbance when doing so.<\/p>\n