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Critical Race Theory African Americans

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The sentencing disparity for drug use by race is disproportionate for African Americans because of The War on Drugs. Matthew Lassiter (2015) explains, “In 1951, Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, collaborated with senate of criminal investigations to target black ‘dope peddlers’ who were luring pretty white blondes into drug addiction”(2015:128). According to Lassiter (2015), Anslinger believed that peddlers, who destroyed teenagers’ lives, required the most sever punishment (2015:129). Using this rhetoric, presidents like Nixon and Reagan would shape the way drug laws are enforced. For example, Richard Nixon made it his goal to focus on treatment, rather than criminal punishment (Yuill 2009). The Reagan …show more content…

Derrick Bell, who was an African American law student at Harvard created the theory. Victor Caldwell and Kimberle Crenshaw (1996), emphasize it to better understand white hegemony and the subjection of African Americans. Amanda Carlin (2016) pronounces Critical Race Theory emphasizes two elements: 1) the use of speech, education, and whiteness as forms of credibility and 2) the invalidation of African American testimony before it is given. CRT proposes that courtrooms have intentionally been set up to exclusively hold white people, which have shaped the views on how legal procedures should be dealt with. Any person that does not uphold these standards is excluded from “whiteness” and not a credible source (Carlin 2016:453). This tactic has prevented many people of color from successfully testifying on the behalf of the …show more content…

It can be traced back to World War II and the housing market. Black Soldiers were drafted into the army to fight against the Vietnamese, but were seen as inferior, so the military created segregated units (Werner 2015). Once the war was over, all soldiers were promised a G.I Bill, which gave them low mortgage loans and interest rates when buying homes. Unfortunately, the bill only allowed them to rent out housing in the inner city, which was known for overcrowding of minorities. The crime rate was high and the education system was segregated and

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Analysis: Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" aims to bring attention to the racial caste system that exists within the American justice system, particularly in the context of mass incarceration of African Americans. Alexander argues that although America has moved past Jim Crow segregation laws, it has not moved past the racist system of oppression that existed during that era. Instead, a new caste system has emerged, with the American justice system serving as its primary mechanism for the maintenance of racial hierarchy. To support this thesis, Alexander details how the War on Drugs, initiated during the Reagan era, has resulted in an explosion of the prison population in America, particularly among people of color. She argues that the

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Even in court rooms today, there are incidences of unfair treatment of African Americans. Many cases occur with unexperienced public defenders assigned to poor African American clients. As if not bad enough, juries are sometimes composed of an imbalanced mix of races. In Darryl Hunts case, both times that he was in the court room trying to prove his innocence, the juries were entirely composed of white people. This is an unlikely coincidence, due to the fact that the case took place in a racially charged area of North Carolina.

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“This might be due to prejudice by police officers causes them to arrest African Americans more frequently thus over criminalizing African Americans” (Macionis, pg. 258). It was sad to see African Americans on every search page, but at the same time it is great to see the majority of them being exonerated. Even though, people of color make up 71% of the exonerees, approximately 60 percent of the victims in these cases were white. Furthermore, “whites accounted for 69.2 % of all arrests in 2011”, but a majority of the people who are incarcerated are people of color” (Macionis, pg. 257). Only .005% of the exonerees are of Asian descent and about 7% are of Latin descent.

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This connects to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 2 & 7 because it discriminates against people and also makes the law unfair to people of color. Critical Race Theory is a set of ideas holding racial bias in inherent parts of western society, especially in the social and legal institutions. This idea is strongly believed because white people designed and created social and legal institutions. " CRT (Critical Race Theory) challenges white privilege and exposes deficit-informed research that ignores, and often omits, the scholarship of people of color" (George 9). The idea of Critical Race Theory is a national issue throughout the United States.

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In The New Jim Crow, published in 2010, American writer and civil rights activist Michelle Alexander argues that a new racial caste system was born in the United States after the death of Jim Crow. A system that was caused by the war on drugs, which was created in 1971 by President Ronald Reagan, as well as the Fourth Amendment. Alexander conveys her argument that the war on drugs, and the government's disregard for the Fourth Amendment, led to the unfortunate birth of mass incarceration using logical and ethical appeals. In the beginning of the excerpt, Alexander discusses the Terry v. Ohio decision and how it limited the effectiveness of the Fourth Amendment when it comes to drug crimes.

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