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Racial Injustice In A Lesson Before Dying

729 Words3 Pages

In my opinion, racial injustice is still a problem in the United States criminal justice system. While the circumstances of the Trayvon Martin case did not affect me personally, it had a large impact on Miami-Dade County. I am friends with a bunch of students who attended the same public high school as Trayvon. However, while I live five minutes from that institution, the private school I attended was thirty minutes away, in Broward County. Thus, I could hardly sympathize with my friends back at home. But regardless, everyone in the democratic South Florida area, including myself, were enraged by the racial influence of the not-guilty verdict. Basically, I believe that while murder can sometimes be accidental, murder is murder. No matter who …show more content…

While certain laws prohibit discrimination based on race, they do not abolish racism completely. Some people are open to accepting change, but others, especially in the south, prefer to stick to their moral values. But regardless, people need to start accepting that racism is a myth. In the words of Grant Wiggins in the novel “A Lesson Before Dying:”
“A myth is an old lie that people believe in. White people believe that they’re better than anyone else on earth – and that’s a myth. The last thing they ever want is to see a black man stand, and think, and show that common humanity is in us all. It would destroy their myth. They would no longer have justification for having made us slaves and keeping us in the condition we are in” (Gaines, 1993, p. 434). In other words, white people in general believe that they can still rule the United States. However, times have changed. The legislative branch is composed of representatives and senators of different nationalities. Three justices of the federal Supreme Court are female while one is African American. On top of that, President Barack Obama is half black and half white. My point is, some people claim that legislation has abolished racism to the point where it no longer should be acceptable. However, unless every single American accepts that racism is a myth, it will remain in society for a long

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This caused there to be more segregation, thus leading to more crime or more "black killing" (Peterson & Krivo, 1993). I also found an article that stated Zimmerman apologized to Trayvon’s parents, saying he did not know if he was armed or not, as well as not knowing he was a kid (McCann, 2014). This just goes to show that this issue matters because without knowing who this person is, people can assume they are dangerous based on their race. He might have suspected Trayvon was a criminal because he looked suspicious, but there was no probable cause that he committed a crime; therefore, Zimmerman should not have followed him, which is unjustifiable. Then there is the case of the police, who just automatically believed Zimmerman without verifying that he was dangerous or engaging in illicit behavior.

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That lead to racial tension and prejudice in American since this country was made from the painful history of slavery, segregation and the old concepts of racial order that blacks and white have their place in society. Therefore, for Trayvon Martin family living in a gated community not in the ghetto where most white people think that all Blacks live in this type of community wearing a hoodie with a bag of skittle in his pocket, but to a white man looks like a gun made Zimmerman think he has the right to murder this young man without no evidences that he was dangerous, violence or suspicious. With the Trayvon Martin case was an example of injustice since the justice system has always been a race relations with blacks have been treating harshly as suspects and offenders but never as victims. The justice system was created from white supremacy and black inferiority from slavery so the system still has the disadvantage for blacks and still use some of the slave codes, blacks’ codes and Jim crow

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