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.…
During two class sessions, we have viewed the movie Crash. In this particular movie, victims and offenders are shown to be victims of racism and end up being shown as a racist under different circumstances. This shows various characters of different backgrounds and ethnicities going through a certain roadblock in their lives due to a personal matter that may be because of a racial thought.…
Journalist, Brent Staples, in his narrative essay, “Just Walk on By: Black Man and Public Space” narrates a series of events when he was growing up. Staples purpose is to tell personal stories in chronological order of how he was viewed by society. Other people convey the idea of a black man as a dangerous man in society. By the work of other people stereotypes. He adopts a fearful but apathetic tone in order to appeal to what he is feeling by applying a set of rhetorical devices in his narrative essay to his readers.…
focusing on the racial roles in the show and how they compare in relation to criminal activity I…
Officer Ryan and Officer Hanson are two characters that stood out in particular. Throughout the movie Hanson is portrayed as the "good" white, male, police Officer and Ryan is portrayed as the "bad" white, male, police Officer. During the movie Officer Hanson, is striving to steer clear of being racist and discriminating. For example, in one scene both Officer Hanson and Officer Ryan pull over a black couple. During the investigation, Officer Ryan is intimidating the couple and they aren't sure how to handle the situation.…
Today, the number of deaths including black people in custody has continued and black people are disproportionally stopped and searched on streets. After the case of Macpherson life for the black community was expected to change, however to some it is known that the changes have been extremely disappointing. Black people feel they are less likely to get a decent job, they feel they are treated disproportionally by police, by being stopped and searched and within communities (Janet et al,…
It began with the curiosity of a young African American male, name Wes Moore. Whose name appeared in the Baltimore sun in December of 2000. An article was written announcing that he, a young “fatherless” son of yet another single mother, was receiving a Rhodes scholarship. Little, did he know that, not far from his “memorable” write up in the Baltimore Sun, would be a series of article that would change his life even more than his scholarship that he had earned. What was written, were articles, about another “fatherless” son of the city. A young man, who accompanied three others, in a botched jewelry robbery, that ended with a Police officer being shot and killed.…
The movie tells stories about racism between whites, blacks, Latinos, Koreans, Iranians, cops and criminals. The different levels of the rich and the poor, the powerful and powerless are also shown in the movie. The lives of the characters crash against each other. The most people feel prejudice and resentment against people of other groups.…
The screenplay Crash, talks about character Cameron Thayer who is a fictional black man that is well educated and comes from a wealthy family (Haggis). He is pinned to be a troublemaker by a cop because of the color of his skin and is pulled over. He and his wife are taken advantage of as the cop inappropriately checks them for weapons or illegal substances. When stereotypes like these are put into affect, they can cause serious emotional harm. White writer P. McIntosh also relates to these assumption in his essay stating, “I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race” (McIntosh 1). McIntosh believes that many blacks are taken advantage of and he has the privilege, as a white, not to worry. White people do not have to deal without the privilege they especially have when it comes to the law. The connotations of ones race can be thrust upon them even if they do not wish…
Michelle Alexander depicts the grim reality for many young African American men in today’s society in her book the New Jim Crow. The harsh reality for many of them is that they will never be able to fully participate in mainstream society and receive the benefits and basic rights that are taken for granted by the rest of the nation. Her findings show that existence of the Jim Crow laws have yet to fully disappear from society like many believe they have, when it fact, the restrictions of the Jim Crow era have merely been reinvented in the form of the United States’ federal justice system. Today, the United States prison populations are overwhelmingly comprised of people of color. Since the founding of the United States, African Americans have been “denied citizenship that was deemed essential to the foundation” (Alexander 2010: 1). The name given to this denial was Jim Crow and today even with Barack Obama, a black man, as the President of the this great nation, African Americans are still not treated as equals to whites by continually recreating Jim Crow through the federal justice system. As Michelle Alexander writes, “As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow” (2010: 2).…
Johnny is shocked when he is captured by Cush. He is used to being superior to African Americans, not being commanded and pushed around by one. Everyone back home says it is beneath the dignity of a white man to have to fight “darkies” as equals, and Johnny agrees. He is even questioning whether or not Cush has the brains to know how to shoot a rifle. Johnny thinks to himself, “Darkies weren’t smart enough for much, which is why they had to have white people over them to tell them how to do things” (p. 77). Being surrounded by racists his whole life has shaped Johnny’s opinions about black people, but those opinions change as he gets to know Cush better.…
The face in the criminal justice carnival mirror is also … very frequently black face. Although blacks do not make up the majority of the inmates in our jails and prisons, they make up a proportion that far outstrips their proportion in the population.2 Here, too, the image we see is distorted by the processes of the criminal justice system itself. Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey write in their widely used textbook Criminology that Numerous studies have shown that African-Americans are more likely to be arrested, indicted, convicted, and committed to an institution than are whites who commit the same offenses, and many other studies have shown that blacks have a poorer chance than whites to receive probation, a suspended sentence, parole, commutation of a death sentence, or pardon.3 Curiously enough, statistics on differential treatment of races are available in greater abundance than are statistics on differential treatment of economic classes. For instance, although the FBI tabulates arrest rates by race (as well as by sex, age, and geographical area), it omits class or income. Similarly, both the President’s Crime Commission Report and Sutherland and Cressey’s Criminology…
One point I found interesting within this chapter is the characteristic of the typical criminal. As mentioned by Reiman and Leighton, the typical criminal is male, young, urban, black and poor (61). Furthermore “that blacks are arrested for violent crimes at a rate more than three times that of their percentage in the national population” (61) which was 13% in 2006. This I found to be troubling because as mentioned in class the relationship between the population number and numbers arrested is disproportionate. From this, the authors write that there characteristics of the typical criminal has a lot of offense on arrest because individuals who commit wrongdoings or crimes may not be arrested. They give the example of whites who blame blacks for any crime and they will be believed without question, calling this method ‘racial hoaxes’. Adding to this is learning that the public losses more money from tax cheating and fraud, consumer deception and embezzlement than from property crime” (64). They write however that these issues do not come up much in the media…
The movie Crash is an interesting look at a variety of perspectives regarding the interaction and socialization of several different groups of people and how sometimes their intentions can be misconstrued. In the movie, Officer Hansen proves to be a specially interesting character. Hansen is a white male who seems to have grown up in a fairly typical environment and doesn't stand out from the normative views of an individual coming from his social grouping. Unlike his partner Officer Ryan, Officer Hansen tries his best to set aside his differences with out groups and choose to treat everyone equally from the beginning and one of the main opening conflicts in the film is geared towards Officer Hansen feeling that his partner is taking advantage of a situation and grossly abusing his position of authority and being especially ruthless and vulgar towards a black couple. Hansen appears from the beginning to be one of the special cases in the movie that is willing to accept someone from another group with open arms and actively acting out against unfair treatment of the undeserving.…
While scholars have long analyzed the connection between race and America’s criminal justice system, argue that our growing penal system, with its black tinge, constitutes nothing less than a new form of Jim Crow.…