Issues about race have threatened America since the colonial era all the way to the present day. Historically race was about separating people, starting the eighteenth century the term “race” solidified into a word that was used to distinguish Africans, Europeans, and Indians. Focusing on physical characteristics, like skin color, cranial size, prognathism, and many more, Europeans started picking out differences between them and the enslaved, later this linked these physical differences to sociopolitical status and created a new social identity. Presently, with Donald Trump as president, the progress to improve racial issues has come to a halting stop and may even reverse. With Donald Trump’s outspoken racist views, it is giving more people …show more content…
I want to focus on the Stand Your Ground Laws, these laws explicitly state that people can “stand their ground” and use force if necessary if it is self-defense. These laws have been continually changing, where historically the person had to retreat before using any actual force, but by 2005 it had changed so you may use deadly force when you feel reasonably threatened and you may do so in a public place, your home or where ever you feel threatened. According to Sabrina Strings from Taking Sides, the Stand Your Ground Laws only increase the likelihood of more violence against blacks. (Strings, p. 162) These laws are basically legalizing the violence against people, mostly minorities, with the reason for “self-defense”. In Taking Sides, Strings states that “it was lynching then, and it’s lynching now”. (Strings, p. 162) Some may argue, like Patrik Jonsson, that people are against the Stand Your Ground laws because they think it’s just another way for whites to get away with justifiable violence against blacks and that “whites are significantly more successful claiming self-defense when their attacker is black than blacks are when fighting back against an attacker who is white”. (Jonsson, p. 157) Which I think is true, studies show it is easier for whites to claim self-defense against a minority than a minority against a white person. The Stand Your Ground laws are a way for some people to get away with unnecessary violence, while still being justified in the eyes of the