Racial Injustice in America

The Race Gap
Racial injustice in the United States is provoked not by the law of the land, but rather exists in the minds of its citizens. Legal prejudice, like segregation, ended long before now, however it is still a problem facing our nation today. Research and studies, as well as many Supreme Court cases can support the idea that racial injustice is a product of the mind rather than the law. Racial profiling continues to anger many Americans of minority races, such as African-American or Latino. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, New Yorkers were stopped and questioned (using the "Stop and Frisk" method) by police 685,724 times in 2011. 53% of the stops were of African-Americans and 34% Latino. African-Americans and Latinos only make up 53% of population in New York, however 87% of all stops were were of these two races. From the documentary Black and Blue, some African-Americans claimed to have been stopped more that one-hundred times per year. Racial profiling also exists in other areas of the law. Cornell University states that 42% of all traffic stops in America are aimed towards African-Americans, yet only 12% of all Americans are African-American. This evidence suggests that African-Americans are four times more likely to get pulled-over. The data presented leaves a clear understanding that some law-enforcement agencies conduct their responsibilities on the basis of race rather than reason. Over the past years, presented with this data, law-enforcement claims to "look into and try 'end' the prejudice." The laws of our nation have undeniably ended legal segregation. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled against segregating schools, deeming the entire institution unconstitutional. Though unwillingly, many schools opened their enrollment to all. This led to the de-segregation of many other places like restaurants, public restrooms, and drinking fountains. However many African-Americans claim that in some public areas, such as stores, employees or security follow them through the store to "prevent" the theft of merchandise. Many call the idea "shopping while black," or a more politically precise “consumer racial profiling.” Eddie Bauer, a young African-American man in Washington D.C., filed a civil rights lawsuit in 1995 when a clothing store accused him of stealing the shirt he was wearing and threatened to arrest him, though he clearly walked into the store wearing the shirt. Bauer was awarded $1,000,000 in damages. Another incident of consumer racial profiling was in 2000, Billy J. Mitchell was arrested at a clothing store, though had barely even touched anything in the store. Mitchell was awarded $450,000 in punitive damages. Racial segregation was supposedly legally abolished nearly 60 years ago. However, it still exist the ideals of the public today. Dr. Kenneth and Mamie Clark were psychologists and supporters of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The Clarks conducted several tests involving race. In one experiment, they gave African-American children a choice between two dolls, one white, one black, asking them which one they would rather play with. Nearly all children choose the white doll. The results exemplified self-hatred in African-American children in a time period of overall rejection of the race. What may be even more interesting, what that those children in segregated schools had an even more critical opinion of the black doll. The study proves that rejection and degradation based upon race is detrimental to children of that race, leaving them felling inferior and critical of their skin color. Though hostility between races is not as harsh as it was in the 1960’s, the study still suggest that social rejection because of race can lead to a lifetime of self-hatred. Most may say that racial superiority only exists in few radical minds. However, if one is not on the bottom end of racial injustice, they often fail to realize the prejudice or simply want to “follow the crowd,” without foresight of common sense, by doing nothing about the issues they see in everyday life. Through the evidence presented, racial injustice is a clear and vivid issue, glaring at society as a whole.