African-American Prisons

The Thirteenth Amendment was designed to free slaves. However, the prison system appears to be a form of slavery itself with the high number of Africa-American incarcerated. Out of the whole prison population, about 80 percent or more are of African descent. After the Civil War, an enormous amount of African-American men were being sent to jail or prison for a long time because of petty crimes such as loitering. That was in the late 1800’s and it is still going on today. The tension between law enforcement officers and African-American is caused by the way police officers are portrayed to African-Americans and how African-American are portrayed to police officers.
African-American have a negative perception of the police for many reasons. First, African-American are taught at an early age to not trust the police. This is because of unfair treatment of our
In early cinema, African-Americans were always portrayed as the villains. After reconstruction, African-American men were imaged as murderers and rapist. In The Birth of a Nation, a white woman threw herself off a cliff because she thought an African-American man was going to rape her. Later on, they were painted as pimps and drug dealers. One example of a pimp from the 1970’s is Goldie in The Mack. More recently, media portrays African-American as gang bangers and drug dealers. The movie Menace II Society would be a great example. Racial prejudice also contributes to stereotyping African-Americans in the role of villain. Police also tend to confuse the actions of a few with the whole African-American population. Hopefully with more diversity training, police will change their perceptions.
It is no secret that the relationship between African-Americans and the police is definitely strained. The media has played and is still playing an important role in this. With education and cooperation on both sides, there can be some conflict