The Minority Law Students Association (MLSA) submits this brief in support of the Petitioner. The Minority Law Students Association was created to provide law students of color with a united forum to promote key issues that confront all minorities. MLSA maintains an interest in guarding against racial discrimination in all areas of the law. Therefore, MLSA has a substantial interest in the outcome of this litigation.
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
There is a deeply rooted stereotype that those of color are inferior to Caucasians. This has been in place since slavery, while racism is not as obvious as it once was it is still corrupting our society. When President Obama was speaking at an ABC Town Hall about the Black Lives Matter movement he said, “It’s
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The Civil Rights Movement brought about great change and many people thought blacks would one day be treated as complete equals, this was a fantasy. There will always be racism, maybe not extreme racism, but always systematic beliefs that one race is better than another. In the 21st century racism isn’t as much of a public threat, but is still an issue within the criminal justice system and is now known as institutional racism. Although, the Court has worked hard to eradicate racism in the criminal justice system and allow review under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b), if there is a clerical mistake or a mistake arising from oversight or omission whenever one is found in a judgment, order, or other part of the record.
In Mr. Buck’s case, the credibility and biases that Mr. Quijano had as an “expert,” encouraged jurors to follow their implicit bias in finding that Mr. Buck had an increased likelihood of dangerousness in the future. The fact that Mr. Quijano was the defense’s expert magnified the effect of his testimony. Due to the defense counsel’s decision to introduce Mr. Quijano’s testimony against his own client, the court should hold that Mr. Buck’s circumstance falls under Fed. R. Civ. P.
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Blacks were thought to have thicker skin and thicker skulls than whites. Leading to the belief that they were less sensitive to pain and less able to think abstractly. Even Abraham Lincoln believed that they were inferior to that of the white man, once stating “There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white
The racism found in the criminal justice system is not systematic. Racism found in the justice system may be found in small parts, but not in the system as a whole. Officers or corrections as individuals could be racist but as a whole the system is not racist. Although there may be small parts of the criminal justice system that hold racist traits, as a whole the criminal justice system is not racist.
Despite the passing of the Civil Rights Act and Affirmative Action, racism evolved from the blatant discrimination of the 1960s like segregation, to the slightly more passive racism of the 1990s such as unfair arrests/jail time (Taylor). Curtis’ writes three decades after the aforementioned progress and yet, looking back on the 90s, there is an alarming amount of similarities between the two.
“There must be the position of superior and inferior” was a statement by Lincoln which formed the basis of discrimination towards black Americans as it highlighted the attitudes of white Americans. Although civil rights for black people eventually improved through the years both socially and politically, it was difficult to change the white American view that black people are inferior to white people as the view was always enforce by the favour of having “the superior position assigned to the white race”.
Although the Donald Marshall case may be apparent today, it would be just as easy for another case like Donald Marshalls to occur again. It depends on the people involved in the case and whether or not they are dedicated to performing their positions professionally and adequately. If the individuals enforcing the law are not following regulations and allowing their personal beliefs of culture and race impact their professional performance then I do believe this could occur again. When looking at the current Toronto Sun and other news reports the most common wrongfully convicted are accused of sexual assault, having said that, this shows racism is not as common. In addition, when looking at the news reports most people who are wrongfully convicted are kept in jail for many years before their case is settled, therefore it is difficult to tell if wrongfully convicting people is as common today as it was when Donald Marshall was
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
Brown, D. (2012). An invitation to profile: Arizona v. united states. International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, 12(2), 117-127.
We have a long history of racism in America that has been structured to favor White people. Structural racism can be defined as, “a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies the dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time”(Structural Racism, 2004,p. 11). Overt racism became illegal during The Civil Rights Movement that took place between 1954-1968 (Tuck, 2015). Although society seemed to be heading toward a more socially acceptable society, the movement enabled white people to blame the struggles black face as a character flaw. White people will believe that black people have a lot of problems because their culture is bad or they have bad values. The message they are reinforcing is that being black is inferior, and this is an example of structural racism operates. Structural racism is a system of forces that keeps people of color in a permanent second-class status, and it is the foundation of racism in our society. Society is structured in a way where the hierarchy of white people oppresses Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, etc and has
This mentality derived from the idea of profits. This was evident when white workers decided to call Africans/Native Americans as “colored” and how much wage they should received. Race was one of the ways to maximize profits through the recognition of cheap labor and the value of blacks/Native Americans to society. By putting labels of ‘colored’ or ‘freeman’, it prolonged the notion of ‘whiteness’ through acknowledgement of who has independence and freedom vs. who did not have it. The focus was not on labor alone because it also focused on property and enforcement of power to white folks and the powerlessness to the ‘others’.
If given this prompt at the beginning of this semester I would have answered with a resounding yes, the criminal justice system is racist. The classes I have previously taken at LSU forced me to view the criminal justice system as a failed institution and Eric Holder’s interview in VICE - Fixing The System solidified that ideology. The system is man-made, created by people in power, and imposed on society, so of course there will be implicit biases. The issue is that these internally held implicit biases shaped the system, leading the racial and class disparities. VICE – Fixing The System addressed heavily the outcomes that we see in today’s society based on these implicit biases. Additionally, this documentary focuses on the ways that mainly
However, there are still those who are racist and discriminate against people of different color. Even if slavery had ended and people may not talk about it much openly, racial caste and discrimination still goes on in the modern times. From the article, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander states how America has entered the era of “post- racialism” which is said to be the colorblindness era. Alexander states how racial caste is still alive in America and just merely redesigned it. It is those who are poor and colored that “amount to a new caste system- one specifically tailored to the political, economic, and social challenges of our time. It is the moral equivalent to Jim Crow”. The problems with police brutality, drug war, and the expansion of the America’s prison system all got to deal with those who are poor and colored. People of color are more likely to get the racial profile and abused by the police, even if they didn’t do anything wrong. They become labeled as “criminals” and then become part of the practice America has left behind towards slaves. The person of color labelled as a criminal have all their rights taken away from them like a slave. This interferes with their employment, housing, denial of having the right to vote, and excluded from jury
As soon as Europeans brought Africans to America to be slaves, the Africans were seen as an inferior race. Their inferiority meant they did not deserve the same rights as the white people they belonged to, nor did they deserve to be treated as people. These African Americans worked hard as slaves and were viewed as a physically capable race, so when slavery was abolished in the South, whites saw these capabilities as a threat and were frightened by the African Americans. Whites let their fear of African American strength run wild, thus the beginning of racial stereotypes. African Americans were also seen as a lesser species because of their skin color and people began to treat them differently solely because of that reason, beginning the racial
Even though racism has always been a problem since the beginning of time, recently in the United States, there has been a rise in discrimination and violence has been directed towards the African American minority primarily from those in the white majority who believe they are more superior, especially in our criminal justice system. There are many different reasons for the ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system between the majority and the minority, but some key reasons are differential involvement, individual racism, and institutional racism to why racial disparities exist in
...mproved, especially as a result of the Civil Rights Movement, racial inequalities still remain; from income to IQ levels, to the number of the incarcerated and life expectancies. While Americans like to think of our country as the equal land of opportunity, clearly it is not. Racism continues to remain "our American Obsession" (Loewen 139).
According to the documentary race is still one of first things we notice when we meet or see new people. Even though we may not be racist or believe in racial stereotypes, we can still perpetuate them by letting them determine our initial thoughts or passing them on. Throughout the history of the United States, being a minority never carried the same advantages as being white. At a time, even groups who we would determine as caucasian were not considered to be fully white as they were immigrants from places such as Eastern Europe and had to go through legal processes to determine their “whiteness”.
The thought of African Americans being less than whites has carried on for years and was first challenged with the abolition of slavery in 1865 with the 13th Amendment (Our Documents). Abraham Lincoln gets credit for the freeing of the slaves because he was the president who fought to get these amendments. Although slavery was no longer aloud that did not change how people felt about the African Americans. Races with darker ski...