Racial Injustices

In today’s modern world, many people would be surprised to find out that there is still a racial caste system in America. After witnessing the election of a black president, people have started believing that America has entered a post-racial society. This is both a patently false and dangerous mindset. The segregation and stigma of race is still very much alive in our society. Instead of a formalized institution such as slavery or Jim Crow, America has found a new way to continue the marginalization of blacks by using the criminal justice system. In Michelle Alexander’s book “ The New Jim Crow”, she shows how America’s “ War on Drugs “ has become a tool of racial segregation and how the discretionary enforcement of drug laws has

The United States features a prison population that is more than quadruple the highest prison population in Western Europe (Pettit, 2004). In the 1980s, U.S. legislation issued a number of new drug laws with stiffer penalties that ranged from drug possession to drug trafficking. Many of those charged with drug crimes saw longer prison sentences and less judicial leniency when facing trial. The War on Drugs has furthered the boom in prison population even though violent crime has continued to decrease steadily. Many urban areas in the U.S. have a majority black population. With crime tendencies high in these areas, drugs are also prevalent. This means that a greater percentage of those in prison are going to be black because law

Throughout history, the drug war has always targeted minority groups. “At the root of the drug-prohibition movement in the United States is race, which is the driving force behind the first laws criminalizing drug use, which first appeared as early as the 1870s (Cohen, 56)”. There were many drug laws that targeted minority groups such as the marijuana ban of 1930s that criminalized Mexican migrant farm workers and in the Jim Crow South, reformist wanted to wage war on the Negro cocaine feign so they used African Americans as a scapegoat while they overlooked southern white women who were a bigger problem for the drug epidemic (Cohen, 57). Instead of tackling the root of the drug problem they passed the blame to struggling minority groups within the United States.

In 2010, President Barack Obama signed a Fair Sentencing Act with the objective to reduce disparity when it came to sentencing for crimes including powder and crack cocaine. Several have the belief that the Fair Sentencing Act will confront the issue of racial disparities in sentencing for crimes involving drugs (Carlsen, 2010). Minorities are more likely to be in possession of and convicted for crack cocaine drug crimes. Whereas Caucasians are more likely to be in possession of and convicted for powder cocaine drug crimes. Prior to the Fair Sentencing Act, one in possession of five grams of crack cocaine received equal punishment with one in possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine (Carlsen, 2010). This contrasting disparity can impact the way individuals view the system of justice allowing them to question whether the U.S. justice system is biased. Through the U.S. justice system, bias can be presented in various forms. During the pretrial detention stage, blacks were 10 percent more likely and Latinos three percent more likely to be detained than white defendants. During the plea-bargaining stage if a sentence is awarded, minorities are more likely to be offered deals that include prison time (74 percent) and very rarely are they offered deals of community service, fine or time served. Whereas Caucasians have a lower rate of jail/prison time (50

African Americans constitute 12% of the U.S. population, 13% of the drug using population and fully 74% of the people sent to prison for drug possession. Studies have shown that minorities are subject to disparate treatment at arrest, bail, charging, plea bargaining, trial, sentencing, and every other stage of the criminal process. These disparities accumulate so that African Americans are represented in prison at seven times their rate in the general population; rates of crime in African American communities is often high, but not high enough to justify the disparity. The resentment destabilizes communities and demeans the entire nation. (Justice, 2004)

The “War on Drugs” established that the impact of incarceration would be used as a weapon to combat the illegal drug problem in this country. Unfortunately, this war against drugs has fallen disproportionately on black Americans. “Blacks constitute 62.6% of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons in 1996, whereas whites constituted 36.7%. The drug offender admissions rate for black men ranges from 60 to an astonishing 1,146 per 100,000 black men. In contrast, the white rate begins at 6 and rises no higher than 139 per 100,000 white men. Drug offenses accounted for nearly two out of five of all black admissions to state prisons (Human Rights Watch, 2000).” The disproportionate rates at which black drug offenders are sent to prison originate in racially disproportionate rates of arrest.

However, those cases should be the only cases that would be permissible. As for reducing racial disparities in adult offenders, along with reformation of poorer communities, we need to focus on fair representation and sentencing for minorities. National surveys conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice find that while African Americans may be subject to traffic stops by police at similar rates to whites, they are three times as likely to be searched after being stopped. The “war on drugs,” acknowledged above, has been a big success in many areas, but it also represents a substantial part of the imbalanced rates of incarceration. In 2005, African Americans represented 14% of current drug users, yet they constituted 33.9% of the people arrested for a drug offense and 53% of people sentenced to prison for a drug offense. Indication of racial profiling by law enforcement does not mean that all officers’ practice this way, it just goes to show that such behaviors still persist to some degree and clearly prevent efforts to promote racial justice. (Justice for All, American Bar

In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012), Michelle Alexander empathizes on the issues of the complex of criminal justice systems which has a significant impact on people of color as The New Jim Crow. She also attaches significant to the racial dimensions of the “War on Drugs” because the convictions for drug offenses are only the most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates in the United States. This argues that federal drug policy inequity targets groups of color, keeping millions of young, black men in a vicious cycle behind the bars.

The drug war is racially defined, and that is why there is a huge number of African-Americans and Latinos in prisons and jails all across the country. The rate of incarceration for African American drug offenders dwarfs the rate of whites. Even though whites make up the majority of illegal drug users, three-fourths of the people who are imprisoned for drug offenses are black or Latino. Black men have been admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is more than thirteen times higher than white men. Arrests and convictions for drug offenses, not violent crimes, have propelled mass incarceration among African-Americans and Latinos. They are convicted of drug offenses at rates out of all proportion to their drug crimes. The system of mass incarceration has operated in a way to effectively sweep people of color off the streets, lock them in jails, and then release them into an inferior second-class status. When it comes to racial bias in the drug war, research indicates that it was inevitable, and a public consensus was constructed by political and media elites that drug crime is black and brown. Once this "black drug crime" became conflated in the public consciousness, the black men would be the primary targets of law enforcements.

The sentencing disparity for drug use by race is disproportionate for African Americans because of The War on Drugs. “In 1951, Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, collaborated with senate of criminal investigations to target black “dope peddlers” who were luring pretty white blondes into drug addiction. Anslinger was quoted saying, “ For the peddler who is willing to wreck young lives… no punishment is too severe.” (Lassiter 2015) Using this rhetoric, presidents like Nixon and Reagan would shape the way drug law are enforced.

The passing of these unfair ordinances and laws paved the way to other unjust laws being passed. In 1914 Congress passed the Harrison Tax Act which outlawed cocaine. Cocaine usage was predominately associated with blacks. A 1914 New York Times article caused hysteria with the article Negro Cocaine ‘Fiends’ Are a New Southern Menace: Murder and Insanity Increasing Among Lower

It is widely known that the United States is the number one country in the world with the highest incarceration rate. Race and ethnicity have a huge impact on the decisions that the criminal justice system makes. The competition between presidents of whom was more tougher on crime, the war on drugs, and the three strikes policy led the U.S. to a mass incarceration era with racial and ethnic disparities. According to Pager the war on drugs targeted African Americans the most (Pager 20). At this time, drug crimes were the perfect target to incarcerate more African American men. Since then, minority groups experience inequality and discrimination in the criminal justice system compared to the

Consider the following statistics in reference to the disparities among the different groups of defendants when it comes to minimum sentencing in the United States. According to the 2010 Commission’s Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics: over three-quarters (77.4%) of convictions of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty were for drug trafficking offenses; Hispanic offenders accounted for the largest group (38%) of offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty, followed by Black/African American offenders at 31.5%, White/Caucasian offenders at 27.4%, and other race offenders at 2.7%. More than 90% (90.3%) of offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty were men; and Black/African American offenders received relief from a mandatory minimum penalty least often (34.9%), compared to White/Caucasian offenders (46.5%), Hispanic/Latino offenders (55.7%), and other race offenders(58.9%).

In Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, Kumalo’s journey throughout the novel is in response to the racial injustice of South Africa and the effects it had on his family and tribe. The tribal town where Kumalo lives is very poor and has deteriorated throughout the years. Most tribal people, including Kumalo’s sister, brother, and son, have left to find a better life in the city of Johannesburg. When Kumalo learns that his sister has fallen ill he heads to the city to seek help, although what he finds is not what he expected.

The U.S. government eventually began establishing statutes against individuals possessing and using the drug. During a 1914 Congressional hearing, Congress approved the Harrison Act, which was a federal tax statute aimed at managing cocaine and attending to the dramatic increased addiction to the drug (Davis, 2011). Initially, southern legislators objected government regulation on cocaine due to its high demand and their suspicions over the power of the federal government (Davis, 2011). Southern legislators ultimately manipulated federal legislators through racist illusions to manage cocaine restrictions against Blacks only, although White individuals were the dominant proportion of addicts (Davis, 2011). Furthermore, advocates of the Harrison Act stated that “southern employers gave cocaine to black workers . . . and it caused the workers to be violent” (Davis, 2011, p. 380). Events like this guided the social processes of drugs and drug panics as society began developing racial stereotypes on cocaine because they identified Black individuals to be cocaine users and abusers (Faupel, Horowitz & Weaver, 2010). The drug panic of the 1980s led to the mass and disproportionate incarceration of Blacks and minorities.