Race And Social Class In Just Mercy By Bryan Stevenson

The New York Times Bestseller book, Just Mercy, entails true accounts of a young African- American lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, about the unjust criminal justice system of the United States. Stevenson embarks on sharing his first- hand encounters of racial prejudice and corruption against death row inmates and himself. Thus, giving vivid images of how race and social class can play a big part in the fates of people in America. After reading Just Mercy, it has given me a validation of what I’ve already known about the justice system against African-Americans especially in the South, with prior knowledge of accounts about black Americans and the deep bigotry against them. In which, my race plays an immense part of cruelly punishing black Americans without further consideration of the circumstances that led to the crime

No matter who you were, no matter what job or education that you obtained, you are still seen as an unintelligent and vulnerable human. For example, in the memoir, Stevenson explains his encounters of stereotyping and prejudice; in the courtroom, his intense meeting with Tom Chapman, the encounter with the prison guard while meeting with death row inmate, Avery Jenkins, exposing how even though he is a lawyer and a Harvard graduate, he is still seen as a helpless, foolish black man. Additional examples include the young children who receive convictions despite of the circumstances of the act committed or even their whereabouts of the act such as; Charlie, a fourteen-year-old boy sent to an adult prison after shooting his mother’s abusive boyfriend and George Stinney, another fourteen-year-boy executed in Georgia because of his knowledge of the whereabouts of two missing young white females. The book clearly frames how a person’s skin color will determine their overall fate in life under no circumstances thus validating my