Perception of the African American Males

Even at their youngest stages of life, African American males are being told that they’re just following a path to jail from birth. Even figures that as a child you’d look up to are telling young black males that they can’t succeed in this world. The vice-principal of the Rosa Parks School when talking about a young African American male said “That one has a jail-cell with his name on it”. Education institutions are the ones who hold the power to decide and construct who has access to opportunities and resources needed to advance in our capitalist society. The system is setting up African Americans for failure from the start. “The racial bias in the punishing systems of the school reflects the practices of the criminal justice system. Black youth are caught up in the net of juvenile justice system at a rate of two to four times that of white youth”. The profiling starts at a young age as well, planning their future for them. In conclusion, Education Institutions are the ones who hold power in this world. They are the building blocks of the future, as they shape young lives. With institutional racism putting some races ahead of others, however, a majority of students are stunted in their path to adulthood, leading to racial issues and divides that would otherwise not

A common stereotype for Black Americans is the over criminalization of black men. Although criminals come in every shape, size and race black men are targeted as criminals more than any other race. The media recently came out with the movie “Straight Outta Compton” which focused on the real life events of young rappers now. White policemen harass and attempt to

How are African American men portrayed? They have many stereotypes under their race and specifically the men of African Americans. There are numerous reasons why African Americans have dominant racial stereotypes. However, it does not make it right that African American men should be the scapegoat for every problem. Being a scapegoat is taking the sins of others. How can African Americans get equal rights and respect if all they get is racism, disrespect, and get blamed? They do not get equal rights in education, job force, etc. Some African Americans may be in a lower class than Caucasians but often time African Americans make it to the high-class hierarchy but they are still not appreciated or respected as much. This other stereotype that African American men may be boxed into is black masculinity. Conversely, if an African American man acts different from usual African Americans, their own people and Caucasians judge them for being different. African American men are getting blamed way too often for many things and even crimes they did not commit. The society needs to stop view African American men as the scapegoat because it is absolutely not fair to them. Even if those men are purely innocent, people think they are not masculine. African American men should not be blamed or deal with punishment that they did not commit.

Racism and stereotypes occur greatly throughout the life of Jesmyn ward. The Men We Reaped would talk about how African American males would not leave their town because all of the influences that are around their life. So the research articles in sociology and psychology talk a lot about the stereotypes of African American males and women are more prone to stay in their home town and not do much with their life. So these articles hopefully will give insight to anybody that reads these articles and realize how people actually stereotypes African Americans. The way Men We Reaped relates to the topic that I chose and the book has material that talks a lot about racism and stereotyping.

For decades, Americans have been associating young black men with stereotypes that affiliate them with violence. These stereotypes, which are based purely off of appearances, have caused many young black males to face violent, unnecessary, as well as unjust encounters with white police officers. As the number of deaths among young black men increase because of police brutality, society should change how they perceive these men in order to prevent inflicting more harm to them. Specific cases, such as the cases of Freddie Gray, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, and several others, will be presented in order to display how the distortion of the stereotypes can cause incredible harm to young black men due to police violence in addition to how stereotypes affect society’s perception of all young black men.

A number of recent investigations have concluded that news programs often systematically misrepresent black Americans as perpetrators of crime and whites as victims of or defenders against lawbreaking (Dixon 1). According to those investigations by Dixon and Linz (2000a), “Blacks were twice as likely as Whites to be seen as perpetrators, six times more likely to be portrayed as perpetrators than officers, and overrepresented as criminals.”

From the media I consume on daily I personally believe that the overrepresentation or misrepresentation as well as negative portrayal of black suspects/ criminals in the media cause the maintenance and reinforcement of black men stereotype such as dangerous and threatening. However, when I read the article I was intrigued to find out that media play only a small part of the larger problem. The problem is deeper than just negative media portrayal of black men.

African American males in higher education have captured the attention of researchers; sadly, exhausted amount of research has focused primarily on the failing black male, while little has been done to address the problem. This paper focuses on factors that influence the perceptions and self-esteem of African American males in higher education, and explore why their educational achievements are overwhelmingly lower than any other racial/ethnic group. Specifically, this review focuses on how research in education or the lack thereof has contributed to this particular issue. The review of literature in this paper leads to two research questions: (1) What efforts if any have been directed to address the negative outcomes of black males in higher education? (2) What other external factors have prevented black males from achieving their objectives at a lower rate than any other racial or ethnic group? The following 10 reviews attempt to answer the above questions.

The Condemnation of Blackness: Analysis of Black Criminalization in America. Khalil Muhammad’s analysis of black criminality in the history of The United States provides a stunning perspective on our world today. His work is an invaluable gift for all individuals who are interested in understanding the racialization of crime in America. From the first chapter to the last chapter, Muhammad dissects numerous information and draws conclusions regarding black lives before, during and after the civil war. As he puts it “The Condemnation of Blackness demonstrates and explains how ideas of racial inferiority and crime became fastened to African Americans by contract to ideas of class and crime that shaped the

The media has misrepresented African-American men by consistently headlining negative news, therefore causing unjust fear and treatment from society which has led to serious and sometimes fatal consequences, now African-American men must alter their public persona so that they aren’t viewed as a threat.

Society takes cues about how to treat African American men from past and current stereotypes that often misrepresent them (Johnson & Bryan, 2017). This vilification of black boys and criminalization of their behavior leads to the unjust killing of black men. It is clear the racism

One study reported that African-American males that were released into areas reporting these factors had a 10% higher-recidivism rate in the span of two years (Reisig, Bales, Hay, Wang, 2007). It can be reasonably stated that minorities trying to assimilate into society with these issues may have a larger setback to conquer, and thus fail to integrate as sufficiently as those without these challenges, such as Caucasians. Additionally, the article from Abate has shown that self-worth and stereotypes often combine to impact the actions of minorities, especially in regards to criminal action among youth (as cited in Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, & Master,

African–Americans are 63% of people that make up prisons for drug charges. Constant bigotry is the pattern and animosity that is inside our minds and are working outside of our conscious knowing. There is a common stereotype that associates minorities, mostly African-American people, with crime. 72% of people follow this stereotype, but it’s common in our life so we are attentive of it. “Our unconsciousness Is not good at distinguishing between associations that we approve of and those we don’t, so merely having the two concepts (Black and crime) associated in our memories causes one to be automatically activated in our thoughts when the other is presented.” (Harris)

The view of African Americans “Blacks” and women have always been wrong. People from the start of the movement to move west where the great nation seen today was found by Christopher Columbus, this nation wasn’t always at its best after the movement and whites were settling down. There was a major problem Blacks and Women were viewed as they were unequal to men; they were treated like a second class citizen with no equal rights, now days no one understands what people went through the people that fought for others and their rights to be a human and every individual should have freedom in life To not be controlled by others, now days many people are forcing on social media and technology other than understanding where we came from. Many people have different views as what they want to believe in or just simply move on to the future technology is evolving so fast and its crazy how as humans only knew how to walk on the surface of the earth now can fly over the sky, fly into outer space in such short time. The development keeps growing as time passes by this will defiantly help individually to the fullest who knows in the next ten year or someone could build the first machine to teleport things across seas, or build cars that fly it all depends on this generation and how determent they are.it has been proven that this generation of kids are the worst at academics because of parenting and careless individuals. To think about it the internet has taken over so bad that if it was

In the news you hear stories of how another black male have been sent to prison. Why? He was selling drugs. A petty crime like that gets a black male at least 10 years in prison. Whereas, a white male selling drug gets probation. African American is portrayed as thugs who sell drugs and are always in the streets terrorizing people. Like, in the article, THE FIGHT FOR BLACK MEN, by Joshua Dubois. This man named Joe lived in a black typical life style. HE was fatherless. At a young age, he started to use narcotics. Later, he was caught by the cops and sent to jail. Then, he met someone that taught him how to become more knowledgeable about how to sell drugs in the streets. This lifestyle is the stereotypical lifestyle of Black males or Black people in general. People assume that ‘ALL’ African Americans are the same. They rob you, use drugs, goes to jail. Fatherless, and not educated. No one would ever have the thought that there are some black people that are educated and they are not thugs. In another article, Black Men and Public Space, by Brent Staples; the characters describe how his first encounter with racism is when he was behind a white woman, who thought he was going to rob her. So, she started to run. He mentions that just because he was wearing baggy clothes and black, she automatically thought the worst of him. In addition, another stereotype for Black males is that they are not educated. In Black Boys in Crisis: The School-To-Prison Pipeline, it states that