Alexandra Newton
Dr. Dubose
English 102
November 13, 2017
Paper One: Mystery of Iniquity Lauryn Hill once said, “Truth comes, but we can’t not hear it when we’ve been programmed to fear it? Lauryn Hill, a songwriter, singer and rapper from New Jersey expresses her strong emotion on the justice and legal system in her song, Mystery of Iniquity. The Mystery of Iniquity is a verse taken from the bible; 2 Thessalonians 2:7. The word iniquity means immoral or grossly unfair behavior. In her song, she exposes her truth and views of the legal system. She touches on multiple topics such as religion, policing, court systems and orders, the president, and the amount of African Americans incarcerated. This song was released in the early 2000s, when
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Lauryn Hill’s, Mystery of Iniquity goes into detail about police injustice, black men incarceration, and religious corruption through the legal system demonstrating her feelings, opinions, and thoughts towards the justice system.
Lauryn Hill’s, Mystery of Iniquity goes into detail about police injustice demonstrating her feelings, opinions and thoughts towards the justice system. Lauryn says in her song, “Do we expect the system made for the elect to possibly judge correct? Properly serve and protect?” How can blacks believe that a system that has always been created against them possibly be able to judge, serve, or protect them correctly? American policing was shaped on many factors but out of the few, slavery and control of blacks were two of the main goals. At that time majority of police departments were put into place to control blacks because they were originally slave patrols and/or night watchers. The police system has always been corrupt and set up to be against blacks which justifies Lauryn Hill’s first opinion towards the justice system.
Still today, 1,026 people have been killed in 2017 alone, and though blacks are only thirteen percent of the populations, 26% of the police deaths were black. According to mappingpoliceviolence.org, blacks are three times more likely than a white person to be killed by a police officer and thirty three percent of those are unarmed. To make matter worse, ninety nine percent of police officers get off
In the year 2014, 1108 people were killed in cases of police brutality. Of those 1108, 23.5% (265) of the victims were African Americans. In a poll conducted in 2009, 54.4% of African Americans said that they or people they knew experienced violence at the hands of police. Only 44.2% of the African Americans taking the poll
The theme of this paper is, the discrimination in courtrooms. The reason for this theme is because, once you listen to the 3rd stanza of this poem you can tell what it is and how the system is in operation to imprison African Americans, and it will never change. The paper will focus on these few topics, a corrupt law system, bias judges and perjury from peers. As a matter of fact, in the poem “Mystery of Iniquity” the writer Lauryn Hill examines discrimination in courtrooms to illustrate, a corrupt law system, bias judges, and perjury.
Racial Injustice and police brutality is a huge subject that has been for decades. According to data released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2011), between 2003 and 2009 at least 4,813 people died in the process of being arrested by local police. Of the deaths classified as law enforcement homicides, 2,876 deaths occurred of
Lauryn Hill was and still is an iconic individual of the African American Hip Hop genre. She is known for her enlightening lyrics and historical puns that resonate with her listeners. During a time where blacks were being served with the injustice of society and being defied the moral code of citizenship, Ms. Hill released a song-like poem that not only told our story but spread the message of frustration and struggle so those without a voice can be heard. “Mystery of Iniquity” is poem that transcribes three main topics and unifies
Millions of people in the world listen to music for all different reasons. Most people all over the world listen to different genres of music in order to relax, but not too many people pay attention to the actual lyrics of a song. If you listen to the lyrics of a song you will realize that many songs have important messages or themes to them. An example of this is the lyrics of the song “Changes” by Tupac Shakur. If you listen to this song, you will realize that Tupac raps about not only the problems that African Americans face from society, but also the struggles that poor people in society have to endure and overcome. Many
Ironically, “Cops killed nearly twice as many whites as blacks in 2015, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black. The majority of these victims had a gun or, were armed or threatening the officer with potentially lethal force.” “Alternatively, some believe that these statistics are
This denotation to the silent cries supports for an emotional appeal to an example of the silent cries in African American women. As stated in the title, Powell is aware that black women are merely being betrayed in the hip-hop industry and simply states that the choice of words that hip-hop artist chose to rap about is simply “the ghetto blues, urban folk art, a cry out for help.” (298) and it is rubbing off on almost every man in our American society and giving them a different perspective of women all because women refuse to speak out and speak up. “As a result, female rappers are often just as male-identified, violent, materialistic, and ignorant as their male peers.” (298). Over 100 years ago, women were not even allowed to vote, the closest they got to voting was sitting there and watching. They were not allowed to work, they were forced to be stay at home wives while their
Although African Americans may make up 13% of the U.S. population and 14% of monthly drug users, they are 37% of the people arrested for drug offenses. The chances of a policeman stopping blacks are higher than the chances of them stopping whites. It is proven that the police force will ignore the situation of a white person committing a major crime. Compare any case of a black person involved with drugs to the case of Dylann Roof, a white twenty-one year old that opened fire and killed nine black people, and nothing makes sense. Witnesses say he proclaimed his hate for black people right before he began shooting. When he was arrested, the police were very polite to him and never treated him
Last year, blacks were killed very often and in bad demeanors by cops. Alton Sterling was pinned to the ground, hands up unarmed, was shot twice in the chest and died. Nothing happened to those cops because they say it was self-defense. Another incident where a black male was pulled over his hands clearly shown on his steering wheel, was shot dead with his wife and son in the car. Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in his own neighborhood just because of his appearance, the man was set
According to a Washington Post database of lethal police shootings 24 unarmed black men have been shot and killed by police so far this year. This means one a black man dies every nine days. Three unarmed black men were shot and killed in the month of April alone. All three shootings were either caught on tape or reported on local TV. The 24 unarmed black men that were killed compose a startling small amount of the 585 people shot and killed by police. According to The Post database. Most of those killed were white or Hispanic, and a good number of all races were armed. However, according to Wesley, black men accounted for 40 percent of the 60 unarmed deaths, even though they make up just 6 percent of the U.S. population.
The second book of Thessalonians, part 2 verse 7 says, "For the secret of injustice doth as of now work: just he who now letteth will let, until the point that he be taken out the way". Lauryn Hill, an American artist, rapper, and performing artist, who is otherwise called an individual from the Fugees, put out a standout amongst the most noticeable collections of the 90s entitled The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. A standout amongst the most politically charged tunes on this collection is additionally titled The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. In this tune, Lauryn Hill discusses how individuals are not taught or liberal about what is happening in the public eye today, regardless of whether it be in the legal system, religious convictions, or instruction structure. She talked about her dedication to God and she additionally dove into self-aspiration, however she passed on a more profound all inclusive significance in her lyric.
In 2016, there were almost 1,400 recorded arrest related deaths, and in arrest African American people are three times more likely to be killed than white people (Banks, 2016).
In the song ‘u’, on the album called ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’, is one of my favorite representations as mentioned earlier. The song starts off by contradicting
As for police violence towards blacks, a study analyzing data from the U.S. Shooting Database found that in America “the probability of being black, unarmed, and shot by police is about 3.49 times the probability of being white, unarmed, and shot by police on average.” As you read the only
U.S. police killed at least 258 African American citizens (The Guardian) in 2016, according to a project by The Guardian that tracks police killings in America. (Huffington Post) What kind of cruelty is that, is that really what the police force is for. The police force is breaking our trust with the murders that they have been committing. Is that really “JUSTICE”, is justice killing innocent people because of their race? Is that really what our policeman are showing us, all of these killings are showing us that our police force is non-trustworthy. How are we supposed to rely on our police force when they themselves