Prejudice In The 1930s Essay

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.

One of the main reasons that leads the public to believe that America’s
A report issued by the Sentencing Project tells that “Whether acting on their own implicit biases or bowing to political exigency, policy makers have fused crime and race in their policy initiatives and statements. They have crafted harsh sentencing laws that impact all Americans and disproportionately incarcerate people of color”. This evidence shows the bias and prejudice that is still present in our society, even at the highest levels. Apparently, these policies and ideas begin to influence the public, giving the misconceptions of other races. The report furthers its earlier statement, saying “Many media outlets reinforce the public’s racial misconceptions about crime by presenting African-Americans and Latinos differently than whites — both quantitatively and qualitatively. Television news programs and newspapers over-represent racial minorities as crime suspects and whites as crime victims.” A book called Suspicion Nation, written by Lisa Bloom, points out that “The standard assumption that criminals are black and blacks are criminals is so prevalent that in one study, 60 percent of viewers who viewed a crime story with no picture of the perpetrator falsely recalled seeing one, and of those, 70 percent believed he was African-American. When we (the public) think about crime, we (the public) ‘see black,’ even when it’s not present at