Minorities In America

If you are being held under water how do you expect to breath. This is what is happening to minorities in America. America’s society holds down minorities and all they are trying to do is come up for air. Doesn’t everyone have the right to breathe? America’s jails are filled with minorities. Minorities that would have less likely been put in jail for the same crime if it was a caucasian person. Minorities are put in the system and are made to work and in a sense, treated as modern day slaves. It is not right that minorities are still treated as less than and that is why we continue to see minorities so easily jailed. This is slowing the overall progression of minorities. For example, African Americans make up about 13 percent of the United …show more content…
That is why in America’s mind African Americans have to remain inferior. Kayla Martensen stated best in her speech The Price US Minority Communities Pay, “... a minority is defined as a person who maintains a minimal amount of power compared to the persons of the majority group, particularly political power”(212). The title minority already gives people a mind set of inferiority. Making the majority think this is the way minorities should be treated, justifying their actions of the history books’ hate ridiculed pages. The past of minorities seems to be the defining factor of their lives today. The past of how minorities were treated is taken as an instruction manual for today’s society instead of a lesson learned on what not to do. America only pictures minorities in chains, and who wants to mess up a perfect picture, right? From the time after the Civil War African Americans were arrested in mass, for fraudulent reason, just to make sure that many African Americans remained oppressed. They lock them away and made them work and rebuild the economy of the south. Minorities should be given credit for everything good that ever happened to America. America’s buildings, minorities built them, America’s crop, they planted them, America’s C.E.O’s, they took care of them. The history books do not dwell on the fact the minorities are the foundation of America, America would be nothing without minorities. In the past …show more content…
Martensen talked about how minorities are trapped in this cycle of “unforgiving social imprisonment” and how this makes them go into the criminal side of life looking for income just to provide for their families (217). This goes to show how society is trying to keep minorities oppressed by mass incarcerations, leaving no way for minorities to become economically sound except for in a life of crime. Mass incarceration is meant to be a block on the progression of minorities, and it has. Society has locked many minorities in an economic and mental low point. The structure of America’s society is set against minorities. In Coates article he states, “In essence, the Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole” (63). Coates highlights the fact that society has held down minorities and continues to. Minorities in America have never had the chance to be the leaders of themselves, they have always been conducted and directed by someone else, they have never been able march at their own pace. Minorities’ growth has been stunted, because of the mere fact that America is scared to let minorities be free, because they know how wise and intelligent minorities are, they are afraid that they will be easily out done.