The author’s have a background in law, specifically he was a Special Assistant Attorney for the United States, who persecuted people with midsummeror in the District of Columbia in 1990. who mainly persecuted those with misdemeanor crimes. The author did not just write this article for the sake of writing an article, he wants to answer a specific question. “…what role race should play in black juror’s decisions to acquit defendants in criminal cases.” In this articles he hopes to get that point across that the American criminal justice system needs to change. He does not only want to tear it down because for its treatment of African-Americans but he wants to build it back up in a way that treats everyone equally.…
At the root of all injustice, whether past or present, is an underlying human selfishness and flawed decision-making ability. For example, in the past, during the Scottsboro Trial of the 1930s, 9 innocent African American teenagers underwent a wrongful accusation and years of suffering in prison simply because of their race. This injustice highlights selfishness because the women who accused these boys of rape were thinking solely about the protection of themselves; not wanting to arrested for being prostitutes, but not thinking about how the false accusation could and would ruin and torture the boys’ lives. In addition, the jury showcased flaws of the human ability to make choices, as they let the social norm and racist bias of the time…
Dr. Brown’s article “Requiem for Trayvon Martin: When Will America Stop Destroying the Lives of Black Boys” moved me as I was thoroughly reading it. I felt a sense of anger and disbelief running through my mind without realizing till I finished. The anger came from the verdict of Trayvon Martin’s case against George Zimmerman. And the disbelief came from the fact that white people tried to justify George Zimmerman’s actions by stating that historically black men are violent creatures so you can never be “too careful”. The main argument of the article is that blacks are arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced more harshly than whites, for similar criminal offenses. It still amazes me how the skin color you are born with can ultimately define your life, lifestyle, or whether you deserve to die or not.…
This uneven playing field is evident in both America’s education system and criminal justice system. From United States v. Schooner Amistad, in which the freedom of abducted Africans was questioned, to Plessey v. Ferguson, in which the Court claimed that laws allowing segregation "do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other” (Linder, 2016), the American justice system has been forced to address color. Legal decisions such as Plessey v. Ferguson allowed for racial segregation until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 (Linder,…
In the past year there have been multiple cases of “racial discrimination” against the police, these cases have been associated with police brutality. Segregation and racial prejudice was a large part of the history in the United States but not in a positive way. Many Americans are not proud of the way the African Americans were treated by their fellow citizens. Prejudice and racial discrimination are prevalent today in both the same and different ways as when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought against it. In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” he uses periodic sentences, syntax, diction, and allusions to write about his beliefs about the immense struggles African Americans experienced to gain their rights, how he…
Institutional discrimination is the negative treatment of minority groups, that is built into society's institutions, such as banks, and schools. Whereas, Individual discrimination is the negative treatment by one person on the basis of that person's perceived character. (Henslin, 2013).…
Police, courts, and the judicial branch enforce laws and punish transgressors. The capability and fairness of the “justice” system, however, is not always effective. Members of the court and police men are humans with varied backgrounds and beliefs. It is difficult to have no prejudice and bias whatsoever when judging offenders of the law. A prime example of discrimination by law enforcers is the Ferguson riots in 2015. An African American teenager was shot by a Caucasian police officer. The incident led to “riots and tumults” between two diverse racial groups, which Paine identifies as nonexistent. America’s justice system works to ensure equality and unity, but the system in turn forces people to make debatable…
Many people know that people of color, especially African Americans, were treated quite unfairly around the 1930s - many don’t know, however, that the same horrendous treatment is still present today. In the 1930s, most people held prejudices against those of other races, and those prejudices became known through the decisions of the legal system. Now, it has been about 90 years, and society has yet to make the necessary improvements to counteract the influences of such prejudices on the legal system. True, there have been many changes in the American Legal system over the past years, however, it has not changed drastically enough so as to provide justice to everyone.…
Although equality is a well-settled idea in constitution and on the surface of the laws, its meaning on a day to day level is still hotly contested. Formal equality as between races is stated in American constitution, but the data and report on the inequality of the American lived experience illustrate how much farther the idealized path of equality needs to go. News reports on police violence that tends to kill disproportionately men of color, and the statistics showing that the enduring poverty in this country are largely among communities of…
Alexander, who for many years worked as a civil rights lawyer, uses her vast experience and knowledge concerning the criminal justice system to craft a meticulously researched argument that “colorblindness” is this generation’s most important civil rights issue. As the title indicates, she makes the bold claim that mass incarceration is the 21st century version of Jim Crow. This era in our racial history was one in which brutally devastating laws discriminated and segregated black populations. During Jim Crow, the idea of justice did not exist for black people within law enforcement or court systems. Though her argument is daring, Alexander successfully proves it by analyzing the criminal justice system. She discusses multiple ideas to formulate a case for individuals who are interested in social justice that refocus efforts to tackle the issue of over-populated prisons. In the books introduction, Alexander asserts that she is writing for an audience that cares deeply about racial justice, but also, she wants to empower individuals who have a impression that our nation’s criminal justice system is flawed, but do not have the data or evidence to back up their assumptions.…
In the film Fruitvale Station depicts the last 24 hours in the life of Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old black man from Oakland, California who was shot and killed by a policeman early in the morning of January 1, 2009. Oscar was unarmed and pinned on the ground by the two officers, one of whom shot him in the back. Oscar died several hours later. The officer who shot him was eventually charged with involuntary manslaughter and served 11 months in prison. This is just one example of how people of color are brutally mistreated and discriminated. In this essay, I will argue that all Americans should recognize that people of color are discriminated against, racism is as strong as ever, and there needs to be a social movement of the American people.…
To begin with, in today’s society, the Criminal Justice system is broken. A person’s trial can have a different outcome depending on their ethnicity. Statistics prove that all races are not treated equally, whites always have an advantage for being the dominant group in the U.S. At this period in time, there has been a lot of shootings involving African Americans the most. In various incidents, law enforcement officers state that they felt that their life was in danger when the suspects were not armed.…
At one time or another people may experience unfair treatment in the workplace due to differences that include but are not limited to age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race or spiritual practices. Fortunately, there are federal and state legislation and risk management strategies in place that not only offers support for fair workplace practices but also reinforces responsibilities of human resource managers.…
It should be noted, the criminal justice system in the United States of America is represented by a picture of a balanced scale. In theory, the scales of justice is supposed to be fair, and impartial, the scales are balanced, which signifies it’s equallity. However, the earlier example reveals that justice is not fair, and that minorities are unjustly targetted more than the majority group. The Critical Race Theory in a sense qualifies and quantifies the role race plays in every aspect of the American life. It qualifies it from the perspective that it explains systems of oppression and discrimination are purposely given to people based on race/ethnicity/gender and class. It quantifies it the statistical data that shows an unfair distribution of wealth and power that excludes the same group of people forcing them to deal with systemic inequalities and systems of oppression.…
As the Federal government is now doing, all state agencies as well need to continually document and collect statistical data that identifies the race of those individuals processed through the criminal justice system. In the areas of administering justice (police, courts, and prison authorities), we need to pay specific attention to and hold accountable individuals for any instances where racial discrimination exists. As a society, we need to be concerned¡Xand express this concern, at the all-encompassing patterns of racial discrimination. By pressuring our governments to take urgent action to stop racial discrimination in our country¡¦s justice system, perhaps we can begin to prevent or reduce the incidence this practice. By effectively acknowledging that there is a problem in the criminal justice system, we can clearly communicate the expectation that discrimination on the grounds of race or ethnicity is unlawful and a violation of an individual¡¦s…