People of color have been the targets of bigotry, racial discrimination, and oppression since the arrival of the early European settlers. This is evident in the mass extermination of the Native Americans and in the kidnapping and enslavement of African’s in the 1600’s. Although slavery was abolished over 100 years ago the traumatic effects of this injustice is present in today’s society. The forefathers of America built this nation with the hands of black people and despite their contribution to this country they continue to be marginalized. Even though black people have made many strides this long-standing history of oppression has persevered throughout the generations. The deep-rooted contention of inequality and injustice has infiltrated the social fabric of American society and government as black people today experience discrimination on every level. Structured discrimination has been to blame for the many disparities that black people face in America. The most obvious are the disproportionate amount of minorities in the United States Criminal Justice System. Blacks make up approximately 13% of the U.S. population, and whites 67% of the U.S. population (Census, 2009); however, of the 2.2 million incarcerated, 900,000 are Black (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011).
Brief History of Racism & the Mythology of White Superiority
Throughout American history the ideology of racism has been ever-present. The idea of white supremacy and black inferiority was birthed from American nationalism. Ironically, the enslavements of African Americans were necessary in order to free colonial America from monarch rule. As a country founded on the philosophy of individual freedoms the enslavement of blacks’ needed to be justified.
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...covered that some neighborhoods spend more than a million dollars each year to incarcerate and return these residents, coining the phase “million dollar blocks” (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2006). To house a prisoner in 2010 it cost an average of $70.56 per day; this number is an estimated $25,754.40 per year. The average cost to attend a public 4-year college is approximately $8,000-$12,000; nearly half the amount to house a prisoner.
The oppression of minorities has occurred for generations. Its practices have been made policy since 1705 with the Virginia Slave Codes. Structured inequality has infiltrated the policies that govern this nation. This is evident in the many disparities minorities face. The depth of structured inequality goes beyond changing policy. Not only does policy need to change but also people must be inundated with the message of tolerance.
Slavery is the idea and practice that one person is inferior to another. What made the institution of slavery in America significantly different from previous institutions was that “slavery developed as an institution based upon race.” Slavery based upon race is what made slavery an issue within the United States, in fact, it was a race issue. In addition, “to know whether certain men possessed natural rights one had only to inquire whether they were human beings.” Slaves were not even viewed as human beings; instead, they were dehumanized and were viewed as property or animals. During this era of slavery in the New World, many African slaves would prefer to die than live a life of forced servitude to the white man. Moreover, the problem of slavery was that an African born in the United States never knew what freedom was. According to Winthrop D. Jordan, “the concept of Negro slavery there was neither borrowed from foreigners, nor extracted from books, nor invented out of whole cloth, nor extrapolated from servitude, nor generated by English reaction to Negroes as such, nor necessitated by the exigencies of the New World. Not any one of these made the Negro a slave, but all.” American colonists fought a long and bloody war for independence that both white men and black men fought together, but it only seemed to serve the white man’s independence to continue their complete dominance over the African slave. The white man must carry a heavy
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in the United States. Michelle Alexander (2010) argues that despite the old Jim Crow is death, does not necessarily means the end of racial caste (p.21). In her book “The New Jim Crow”, Alexander describes a set of practices and social discourses that serve to maintain African American people controlled by institutions. In this book her analyses is centered in examining the mass incarceration phenomenon in recent years. Comparing Jim Crow with mass incarceration she points out that mass incarceration is a network of laws, policies, customs and institutions that works together –almost invisible– to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined by race, African American (p. 178 -190).
Just Mercy’s Bryan Stevenson exposes some of these disparities woven around his presentation of the Walter McMillian case, and the overrepresentation of African-American men in our criminal justice system. His accounts of actors in the criminal justice system such as Judge Robert E. Lee and the D.A. Tom Chapman who refused to open up the case or provide support regardless of the overwhelmingly amount of inconsistencies found in the case. The fact that there were instances where policemen paid people off to testify falsely against McMillian others on death row significantly supports this perpetuation of racism. For many of the people of color featured in Stevenson’s book, the justice system was unfair to them wrongfully or excessively punishing them for crimes both violent and nonviolent compared to their white counterparts. Racism towards those of color has caused a “lack of concern and responsiveness by police, prosecutors, and victims’ services providers” and ultimately leads to the mass incarceration of this population (Stevenson, 2014, p. 141). Moreover the lack of diversity within the jury system and those in power plays into the already existing racism. African-American men are quickly becoming disenfranchised in our country through such racist biases leading to over 1/3 of this population “missing” from the overall American population because they are within the criminal justice
...system that has existed in the United States or anywhere else in the world” (Alexander 234). W.E.B. Dubois argued that “The burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs” (Alexander 217). Our nation must address this burden and correct that racial injustices created by our so-called criminal justice system. The criminal justice system cannot continue to hide behind the front of being a colorblind system - racial inequality and injustice must be challenged.
Many Americans pretend that the days of racism are far behind; however it is clear that institutional racism still exists in this country. One way of viewing this institutional racism is looking at our nation’s prison system and how the incarceration rates are skewed towards African American men. The reasons for the incarceration rate disparity are argued and different between races, but history points out and starts to show the reason of why the disparity began. Families and children of the incarcerated are adversely affected due to the discrimination as well as the discrimination against African American students and their likelihood of going to prison compared to the white student. African American women are also affected by the discrimination in the incarceration rate. Many white Americans don’t see how racism affects incarceration rates, and that African Americans are more likely to face discrimination from the police as well as being falsely arrested.
According to Alexander (2010), states the United States, has switched to a new form of racism know as color blind racism. Color blind racism refers to contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics. The types of practices that take place under color blind racism are subtle, institutional and apparently nonracial. These practices are not racially overt in nature, such as racism under slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow laws. Instead, color blind racism flourishes on the idea that a potential cause of such disproportionately high incarceration rates for African Americans is that they are disproportionately poor. When black people were emancipated many things were in a shamble for all people. Whites didn’t know what type of control they were going to have over the people of color. At least when blacks were in slavery the racial order was most effectively maintained, by contact between slave owners and their slaves, they had the control for supervision and discipline, and there was less resistance or rebellion behavior when they had control. This threatens slave owner’s interest and created a social distance or an inferior behavior from slaves. It would seem that white control was unclear since slavery was gone (Alexander 2010). There is nothing new about the lack of correlation between earlier system, crime and punishment. Punishment is primarily a tool of social control, the extent or severity in which a person receives is based on the crime. The reality is that the American penal system has emerged as a system of social control
The question becomes that, after all the progress we’ve made as a society, why do we still allow racism to exist, especially in our criminal justice system? The Sentencing Project, a non-profit organization that promotes changes in sentencing policies and fights against unjust racial practices, conducted a report in July 2009 and found that non-whites made up two-thirds of the people in the US with life sentences (Quigley, “Fourteen Examples of Racism in Criminal Justice System”). Our society is built upon the idea that whites are superior to all other races and, because of this, we may never be able to fully erase racism. However, we can try. Despite what these and other criticisms say, I believe that all humans are equal in all aspects of life, and that race cannot take away a person’s right to live happily and healthily in this world. Although we have come very far, we still have a long way to go. Our efforts will be worth it the day that jail sentences are based on the crime, not the race of the
Much progress has and is currently being made over history for the laws concerning the equal treatment, but this civil rights crisis seems like the criminal system does not follow its own laws. There are more African American males arrested and incarcerated than Hispanic or White males. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2010, the Black male imprisonment rate was 3,074 per 1000,000 U.S. Black males in total. They are incarcerated at seven times higher than Whites (The Sentencing
This research essay discusses racial disparities in the sentencing policies and process, which is one of the major factors contributing to the current overrepresentation of minorities in the judicial system, further threatening the African American and Latino communities. This is also evident from the fact that Blacks are almost 7 times more likely to be incarcerated than are Whites (Kartz, 2000). The argument presented in the essay is that how the laws that have been established for sentencing tend to target the people of color more and therefore their chances of ending up on prison are higher than the whites. The essay further goes on to talk about the judges and the prosecutors who due to different factors, tend to make their decisions
Alexander does an incredible job of covering the issue of race in today’s criminal justice system. We discussed in class that it is a relatively difficult issue to discuss and a sore point of our country, but she recognized the need for it to be addressed from start to finish and really paints a picture of how racially biased the laws are and have been since the days of slavery. I think an important framework to discuss race and the causes and responses to crime is something that Alexander deems the new caste system. She argues that our new system is the rebirth of a redesigned caste system. In her introduction, she notes that “to put the matter starkly: the current system of control permanently locks a huge percentage of the African American community out of the mainstream society and economy. The system operates through our criminal justice institutions, but it functions more like a caste system than a system of crime control” (Alexander, 2012, p. 13)
These authors’ arguments are both well-articulated and comprehensive, addressing virtually every pertinent concept in the issue of explaining racially disparate arrest rates. In The Myth of a Racist Criminal Justice System, Wilbanks insists that racial discrimination in the criminal justice system is a fabrication, explaining the over-representation of African Americans in arrest numbers simply through higher incidence of crime. Walker, Spohn and DeLone’s The Color of Justice dissents that not only are African Americans not anywhere near the disproportionate level of crime that police statistics would indicate, they are also arrested more because they are policed discriminately. Walker, Spohn and DeLone addi...
Many inequalities exist within the justice system that need to be brought to light and addressed. Statistics show that African American men are arrested more often than females and people of other races. There are some measures that can and need to be taken to reduce the racial disparity in the justice system.
You might find yourself reading the topic of this paper and automatically shaking your head in disagreement. After all, this is the 20th century and the Jim Crow Laws are a thing of the past. These laws are something that we read about in our History books. Racial segregation and discrimination is all but a thing of the past. Right?.....................Wrong! The facts and statistics (which I will document below) are overwhelming and the crux of the matter is that racial disparities and bias are indeed found within our criminal justice system today even in the year 2014. The truth is that our U.S. criminal justice system is a very racist system.
Although our present day society still questions whether the rights of the Individual should outweigh the public order or the social order of our country should outweigh the individual rights has enlightened me to a distorted vision and a compromised system and questionable Leadership. “African- American men comprise less than 6% of the U.S. population and almost one-half of its criminal prisons.” Quoted by the Bureau of justice statistics. When research is conducted by another other than oneself yield such great crippling results, it does hold truths to be true to that which began before our awakening
The majority of our prison population is made up of African Americans of low social and economic classes, who come from low income houses and have low levels of education. The chapter also discusses the amount of money the United States loses yearly due to white collar crime as compared to the cost of violent crime. Another main point was the factors that make it more likely for a poor person to be incarcerated, such as the difficulty they would have in accessing adequate legal counsel and their inability to pay bail. This chapter addresses the inequality of sentencing in regards to race, it supplies us with NCVS data that shows less than one-fourth of assailants are perceived as black even though they are arrested at a much higher rate. In addition to African Americans being more likely to be charged with a crime, they are also more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes- which can be seen in the crack/cocaine disparities. These harsher punishments are also shown in the higher rates of African Americans sentenced to