Chapters one through three: Moral Dilemma

For my English class, we're reading The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and every three chapters, we have to identify and analyse moral dilemmas. Here's my week's work.

The night of the party, Khalil is pulled over by a police officer, for no apparent reason other than the fact that he was black, and he was driving his own car. And he faced the first dilemma: be a good boy and do what the cop told him to or remind the cop that black people had human rights as well. He went for the second option. When the cop started asking things from him, Khalil gave the cop a lot of smart-ass attitude instead of meeting his demands. That is, until Starr asked him to do everything the officer told him to do. He stepped out of the car with his hands behind his back but when the cop went to his car, Khalil broke the rules. He disobeyed the police officer because his friend’s well-being was more important to him. He made a sudden move. And the cop saw it. And he was faced with the second moral dilemma: to trust that the black guy was doing nothing and risk him grabbing a gun or escaping, or not take the risk and make sure the black boy stayed put. The cop chose the second option as well and shot Khalil thrice, killing him on the spot.

Now, Khalil wouldn’t have been shot if he hadn’t moved like the policeman told him to. However, the policeman had spit on him and his human rights. He had stopped him for no reason and he had been brutal with him, taking advantage of his authority figure to humiliate and subdue Khalil. The cop was in the wrong, he started it. But Khalil had a passenger. If he wanted to keep Starr safe, he should’ve listened to the cop and done everything he said just as he said it. When he moved, he was being selfish, he didn’t think what could happen to him and how that would affect Starr. Even if what the policeman did afterwards, was completely unacceptable. When a potential criminal is asking suspicious, you can shoot him in the leg or tase him. But shooting him three times in the upper body? That’s a sure way of killing him. And nobody should ever kill a suspect. That was wrong on every level, rendered worse by the fact that Khalil had done nothing wrong. I hate that guy. It really astonishes me that someone would be so afraid of someone else just because of his sin color, how deep-rooted racism is that even when a guy has done nothing to alter you but move, move, is enough for fearing for their lives so much that they have to take his life.