Ritual Murder is a play by Tom Dent in 1967 and it is considered a hopeless tragedy because it depicts New Orleans as one of the most violent cities in the United States, especially amongst the poor African-Americans. It is about murder. It is a ritual murder because “it happens all the time in our race on Saturday nights (Dixon 474). More specifically, Ritual Murder is about Joe Brown Jr. who killed his best friend, James Roberts, on a summer Saturday night. It is a heartbreaking, chilling, and violent crime in New Orleans considering it's with black-on-black-- black people killing black people. Sadly, the problem Dent recognized decades ago in Ritual Murder portrays is still ongoing with us today (473). This paper will explain Dent’s Ritual Murder phenomenon of black urban crime by delving into the victims and perpetrators, as well as reasons that lead to the murder.
Oliver also writes in “African American Men”, “Research and public opinion polls of people’s attitudes and beliefs about crime reveal… greater fear of crime when in the presence of African Americans.” Modern day social medias also support the concept of unlawful persecutions, spanning from videos of beating or even obituaries, of African American men that can be a result of the perception society has of the potential threats African Americans may have in comparison to citizens of another
Any individual with any seed of compassion and humanity will agree, the events that led up to the unwarranted death of any individual, those noted in his article included, are appalling. Subsequent to evaluation of this article, readers are left with an appreciation that the author believes that there is an overwhelming conspiracy, which currently persists, that people of color are at imminent risk of being lynched by a mob. Had this article
On June 17, 2015 a tragedy occurred at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the oldest churches in South Carolina. Shooter, 21 year old Dylan Roof had attended a prayer meeting for one hour before opening fire. Nine people died that day. Roof was an uneducated white supremacist who had dropped out of high school in 2010 and had been previously arrested for drug
1.) This man who was suspected of a burglary, was a victim of institutionalized oppression from the police officers questioning him. Although the officer confirmed that the call was for a different neighborhood, this man was automatically assumed to be the burglar because he was black, and that in itself was deemed suspicious by the police due to the stereotype of black crime. These officers, who were also black, have internalized oppression about black criminals, which means that they harbor the oppressive thoughts about their own minority group. This leads to the fact that this man was also facing horizontal hostility. Despite the fact that the officers were the same race as the ‘suspect’ they still jumped to conclusions about his actions instead of approaching this man without judgment.
Wright would examine racial profiling if he was to write Black Boy today. Racial profiling is a very serious issue in the society today. Many African American were being target, and in some case murdered by law enforcement official because of their race. On August 9, 2014, a white police officer named Darren Wilson shoot an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown multiple time in Ferguson, Mo. According to news article “From Ferguson to Charleston and Beyond, Anguish about Race Keep Building”, Even though there was a video tape showing that the black teenager was unarmed, the county grand jury still decided not to indict the police office because they believed the old assumption that African Americans are more likely to be criminals. “Grand juries have tended to give the benefit of the doubt to police officers. National polls revealed deep divisions in how whites and blacks viewed the facts in each case. Whites were more likely to believe officers’ accounts justifying the use of force. Blacks tended to see deeper forces at work: longstanding police bias against black men and a presumption that they are criminals”.
In The New Jim Crow, Alexander addresses our lack of comprehension of our rights as an important factor in why targeted groups by police may sometimes run into legal troubles despite being avoidable issues. Johnson’s Privilege, Power, and Difference addresses our naivete towards our individual privileges in society as an important factor that solely contributes to why the system of privilege has been able to continue in the United States and other nations. Meanwhile, Omi and Winant’s Racial Formations addresses the fact that race is a construct created as a method of separating those who were free and who were enslaved, not as a mere name that established our origins in a manner that pertained to individuals. As a
The racial stereotyping of minority groups is a prevalent problem within the United State’s criminal justice system. It is a regrettable issue which permeates American society. The young Black male, in particular, is often portrayed as a criminal based on incorrect assumptions regarding who perpetrates crime. There are several components contributing to the criminal stigma of Blacks. The way crime is conveyed by American culture is possibly as important as how crime actually functions. The widespread belief that Black males commit the majority of crime skews the view society’s perception of Blacks. Typifications of Black males include a violent, threatening, thug-like character. The connection between race and crime is so deeply seeded in
Dylann Roof, killer of nine innocent people, was taken into custody two weeks ago Thursday morning. Some would say God forgives him, and some would like to strike back. Dylann walked into a bible study and shot three men and six women, in order to start a ‘race war’. It was his belief that white people should stand with their own, and war against other colors.
Primarily, this paper is structured as a cause and effect essay as he narrates his personal experience, reinforcing his message and making the audience realize his viewpoints. In his article, Staples takes out all of his frustrations of being treated as a criminal throughout the passage. Firstly, Staples express the fear a white woman faced when she felt a young,broad six feet two inches black man with a beard and billowing hair was menacingly close. He continues by stating more incidents he experienced as a teenager, as a journalist and so on where people (mostly women) panicked imagining him as a mugger or a rapist. Furthermore, the author
In A Gathering of Old Men, Ernest Gaines addresses racism within a mid-twentieth century Louisiana town through a story about the murder of Beau Boutan, a white man, by Charlie Biggs, a black man. To protect Charlie, most of the elderly men of the black community gather and protest the sheriff taking him to almost certain capital punishment without examining the case. When Luke Will, an old friend of the Boutan family, learns of Beau’s death, he immediately declares that “the trouble already been started… when n-----s start shooting down white men in broad daylight, the trouble was started then. Somebody got to (settle it) ‘fore it gets out of hand.” (149) Will, like the old men, wants to retaliate against injustice, but rather than a logical protest, he relies on threats and mindless violence. Bringing a group with guns to the scene, Will brings the tension of the novel to a boiling point and sets up for a final conflict.
June 17, 2015, a dreadful shooting that occurred during a bible study service in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Dylann Storm Roof, age 22, killed nine people, all African American, and one injured that left everyone speechless that night. Before the shooting, a white man with a handgun enter the church while he was soon identifies as Dylann Roof by several people, then open fire and killed nine people including the Senior Pastor and State Senator. After the shooting, Roof was soon the center of a manhunt that ended the next morning after the shooting. Before all this incident occurred, Roof wasn't planning to go after the church, but he had different plan. According to his childhood friend, Roof was
The South was considered the homeland for racial discrimination and prejudice through the use of Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation. Dad Watson sheds light on this social issue in the south with a joke: "Oh yeah," Dad interrupted, "they're a laugh a minute down there. Let's see, where was that 'Coloreds Only' bathroom downtown? (5). While on their journey to Birmingham, the Watson’s stop at a rest stop in Tennessee at night. Every single one of them is afraid of “crackers and rednecks up here that ain’t never seen no Negroes before. If they caught your ass out here like this they’d hang you now, then eat you later” (146).The boys slowly begin to the extent of hate, violence and discrimination in the world around them. They realize that the church in Birmingham is bombed because, “Two grown men hate Negroes so much that they’d kill some kids just to stop them from going to school” (203). Byron objects to his mother’s explanation of the motives of these men. When she says that they did it because they were sick, Byron retorts that he thinks that the men “just let hate eat them up and turn them into monsters” (200). This explanation is not only applicable to the entirety of the Civil Rights Movement violence, but it also remains applicable to hate and violence that exists
6. Since all of these crimes have been committed by white males, what are some of the messages that white males internalize about race, power and hate?
Many people in the United States have either experienced or witnessed some form of discrimination in their lifetimes, and one person, in particular, was Brent Staples, an African-American man who lived in New York during the mid-1970’s, which was not too long after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. Racial tensions in the United States were still considerably high back then, and this led to racism and discrimination towards others based on their social statuses such as race, class, and gender, and Staples himself has dealt with this issue numerous times in the past, which inspired him to write and to share his own thoughts and experiences about this controversial topic. He believed that even though black men were statistically more likely to get convicted of crimes than any other racial or minority group, it didn’t mean that all black men were violent criminals. He chose to format his writing into a personal essay for his story to have a more personal tone to it that anyone who reads it can easily relate to. The purpose of this text was to raise public awareness of the unfair discrimination in a society that Staples, along with many others, had encountered time and time again. It was written for both the general public and anyone who has also experienced discrimination to use as motivation to try to better themselves and make people realize that not all of them fit the stereotypes that society has set towards certain minority groups. In his text, Just Walk on By, Brent