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The justice system sentences black people to harsh punishments for minor offenses, where white people would walk away free for the same crime. Our color blindness prevents us from seeing the racial and structural divisions in society, such as the unequal schools, the isolated jobless ghettos, and the segregated society the justice system has built by locking up African American men for up to half their lives and missing out on their
It has often been said that “that this is a greatest period for people of all races to live in.” Yet with change in society over time , there has a been a divide over the truth about that statement. In dialogue about race issues within the United States, one controversial issue has been about systemic racism towards people of colour, in particular, black americans. On one hand, Ralph Ellison, a recent predecessor to our present time argues that no matter what the future holds, people will judge others based on their association, their image, which will. In relation, a modern black activist group, Black Lives Matter, argues that even though change has come to America race relations, black people are still endangered by the system.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896, 163 US 537) For centuries people of African descent have suffered of inhumane treatment, discrimination, racism, and segregation. Although in the United States, and in other countries, mistreatment and marginalization towards African descendants has stopped, the racism and discriminations has not.
The “13th” is a documentary about the American system of incarceration and the economic forces behind racism in America especially in people of color. One of the claims that the author mentioned is that today incarceration is an extension of slavery. It is also mentioned that most of the time in society we are defined by race. In the documentary, we can see how African Americans are sentenced for many years since they are too poor to pay their fines or sometimes most of these people plead guilty to get out of jail fast. However, African Americans are separated from their families and also treated inhumanly in prisons just because they are of a particular race.
“For Life?” the question that just kept replaying in Lionel Tate’s head over and over again. He never thought he would be sitting in a courtroom at the age of thirteen. Tate had just been sentenced to life without parole. He did not really know what to think as he was charged with murdering a six year old.
1. If Martin Luther King Jr were alive today I believe he would be impressed at how things have improved. While there are still big issues to deal with race, culture wise we are more accepting, at least compared to the 1960s. The problem now has more to do with continuing institutional racism that is more subtle than the outright segregation of the Jim Crow days. The New Jim Crow would be a different fight as the victims are convicts and they are already being judged because of their history before they even had a chance to speak on how unfair the system is.
Is our justice system corrupted, racist or is it perfect? Did you know African Americans now constitute for nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population? This is probably the case because Blacks are incarcerated six times the rate of whites. African Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people. I believe race, ethnicity and gender disparities play a large role in how our system is executed.
Is it fair that an African American man is sentenced up to life in prison for possession of drugs when Brock Turner is sentenced to only 14 years, later to be reduced to six months for sexually assaulting an unconscious women. The judiciary system are believed to have a high african american incarceration rate as a result of discrimination. At a presidential debate on Martin Luther King Day, President Barack Obama said that “Blacks and whites are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, and receive very different sentences… for the same crime.” Hillary Clinton said the “disgrace of a criminal-justice system that incarcerates so many more african americans proportionately than whites.”
African-Americans have been treated unfairly throughout the years and it has still not ceased. In the articles "Blacker Than Thou," "White Rage," and "The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning," there are examples of this unjust treatment. For instance, in "The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning," the author demonstrates that black people are stereotyped to be lawbreakers, and some police have used lethal weapons against them unnecessarily, due to their race. Also, in "White Rage," the author describes occasions from the past, such as Brown v. Board of Education, a court case that ended racial isolation of schools, to demonstrate that there was extreme prejudice before these occasions. In "Blacker Than Thou," it indicates how some
Michelle Alexander, similarly, points out the same truth that African American men are targeted substantially by the criminal justice system due to the long history leading to racial bias and mass incarceration within her text “The New Jim Crow”. Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Michelle Alexander’s text exhibit the brutality and social injustice that the African American community experiences, which ultimately expedites the mass incarceration of African American men, reflecting the current flawed prison system in the U.S. The American prison system is flawed in numerous ways as both King and Alexander points out. A significant flaw that was identified is the injustice of specifically targeting African American men for crimes due to the racial stereotypes formed as a result of racial formation. Racial formation is the accumulation of racial identities and categories that are formed, reconstructed, and abrogated throughout history.
Introduction Crime, its punishment, and the legislation that decides the way in which they interact has long been a public policy concern that reaches everyone within a given society. It is the function of the judicial system to distribute punishment equitably and following the law. The four traditional goals of punishment, as defined by Connecticut General Assembly (2001), are: “deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, and rehabilitation.” However, how legislature achieves and balances these goals has changed due to the implementation of responses to changing societal influences. Mandatory minimum sentences exemplify this shift.
Annotated Bibliography Draft Student name : Haider Zafaryab Student number: 2360526 Thesis Statement : Capital Punishment is a very controversial topic around the globe. I believe that it does more harm than good and breeds violence in society. Source 1: Radelet, M. L., & Akers, R. L. (1996).
Over the decades, mass incarceration has become an important topic that people want to discuss due to the increasing number of mass incarceration. However, most of the people who are incarceration are people of color. This eventually leads to scholars concluding that there is a relationship between mass incarceration and the legacy of slavery. The reason is that people of color are the individuals who are overrepresented in prison compared to whites. If you think about it, slavery is over and African Americans are no longer mistreated; however, that is not the case as African Americans continue to face oppression from the government and police force.
Although there may have been mild attempts to cease racism directed towards certain groups, these same efforts are absent within racial groups based on group members’ various ranges of skin tones, which Jill Viglione and other authors discuss in their article “The Impact of Light Skin on Prison Time for Black Female Offenders” (250). As numerous studies show, black women in particular make up a large proportion of women arrested and put in prisons within the country. Women with lighter skin tones receive lighter sentences than darker women, along with those who possess other attributional European features, such as straight hair and narrow noses. These individuals tend to also be more included in mainstream society, “thus afforded greater opportunities and privileges” and “more likely to be members of higher social class and achieve a higher occupational and educational level than their darker skinned counterparts” (251). These European features are seen as more attractive, as women with “blacker” features like curly hair and dark skin are stereotyped as lazy and “welfare queens,’ which are ultimately determinants of prison sentences and
For years now there has been a lot of controversy involving the looming question: Is the criminal justice system racist? Racism is prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one 's own race is superior. Ever since the Trayvon Martin case of 2012, the justice system has been in a complete downfall including all of the police brutality cases since then also. According to sources, 1 of every 4 African American males born this decade are expected to go to prison in their lifetime. Census Bureau reports that the U.S. is 13 percent percent black, 61 percent white, and 17 percent latino.
