Stereotypes Native Americans

Mass incarceration is an issue that defines us as a society. Today, the United States of America makes up about five percent of the world’s population and has twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. Also, one of every one hundred adults are locked up, and one in every thirty-seven adults in the United States is under some form of correctional supervision: in addition, African Americans are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whites. Young black people went through many difficulties; however, they are still called super predators by Hillary Clinton. One of many difficulties is the African slavery, although it was over a century ago, it left a scar and a horrible memory in everyone's mind. All the phenomenons that occurred in our country during the last century gathered thoughts and escalated the problem of mass incarceration which made the people including the police look differently at African American people. I am against the mass incarceration issue. Opposing Donald Trump, I think we should reduce the number of people behind bars with cautions, because It is a complex subject that has many causes and effects in the long term to the people inside and outside the prison.

The film, Race: The Power of Illusion - The Story We Tell, exposes a plethora of race-based atrocities committed throughout American history. Specifically, the focus of my post is on the race project of "civilizing" the indigenous people of North America. According to Omi and Winant (2015, p. 125), "racial projects connect what race means in a particular discursive or ideological practice and the ways in which both social structures and everyday experiences are racially organized, based upon that meaning". As seen in the film, the English viewed indigenous people as equal in intelligence. Hence, the state believed the Indians could be "civilized" through teaching them

Mass incarceration is known as a net of laws, policies, and rules that equates to the American criminal justice system. This series of principles of our legal system works as an entrance to a lifelong position of lower status, with no hope of advancement. Mass incarceration follows those who are released from prison through exclusion and legalized discrimination, hidden within America. The New Jim Crow is a modernized version of the original Jim Crow Laws. It is a modern racial caste system designed to keep American black men and minorities oppressed with laws and regulations by incarceration. The system of mass incarceration is the “new Jim Crow” due to the way the U.S. criminal justice system uses the “War on Drugs” as the main means of allowing discrimination and repression. America currently holds the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and even more African American men imprisoned, although white men are more likely to commit drug crimes but not get arrested. The primary targets of the criminal justice system are men of color. Mass incarceration is a rigid, complex system of racial control that resembles Jim Crow.

Native Americans as a whole have been typecast as drunks ever since the coming of the white man’s “fire water.” TS Naimi, MD et al. reports that alcohol is responsible for 11.7% of all American Indian and Alaska Native deaths, compared to 3.3% for the U.S. general population (939). This disturbing discrepancy reinforces the age old notion of the “drunk Indian.” Generalizations aside, is there some truth to this stereotype? Are Indians more likely than other races to be drunks? Of all the races, “Native Americans have the highest prevalence (12.1%) of heavy drinking…A larger percentage of Native Americans (29.6%) also are binge drinkers” (Chartier and Caetano 153). Although some research has been done on genetic causes, little is

Racism effects the the high incarceration rates according to Michelle Alexander, the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. This scholar writes about how the civil rights movement has been taken back by the mass incarceration of black Americans in the war on drugs. Alexander also explains how the severe consequences that these black men carry on after being incarcerated, for example not being able to get school grants or housing. The author continues to argues that all it takes is a major social movement to end americas new caste system and that it is inhumane to treat any race less then the other. Agreeing with Alexander, I believe that every race deserves equal opportunity and that high mass incarceration rates are the way they are because of racism by the criminal justice system.

Native American people have a unique struggle in society. This stems from cultural epidemics like drug addiction, alcoholism, obesity, and rampant suicide, but also systemic racism and a sort of cultural lag. This is not meant to be a critique of culture, simply an observation of the condition of the families I have helped serve over the course of this internship. To be “Native” has become a slew of stereotypical representations. Stereotypes do not represent reality, but they do affect how individuals view themselves, and limit their ability to become anything but what they are expected to be. This is called the self-fulfilling prophecy. If Native American children grow up in a closed network, such as a reservation or a boundary, they are presented

The purpose of this study is to expose the process of mass incarceration of poor black males, and females increasingly, within the context of a fabricated war on drugs which really is serving to keep the prison population booming by exploiting traditionally disadvantaged minorities in society. Alexander rightfully calls this a ?redesign? of the old racial caste system in America which was supposed to have been destroyed by the civil rights movement. The war on drugs in the 80s merely became the newest vehicle by which to exploit the black community in this country. The War on Drugs is really the rationale for racial control, which targets black men and women and relegates millions of citizens to what Alexander calls a ?second class status (Alexander, 2012).?

The history of Jim Crow is a story of white power, but it is also a story of black survival and resilience. The Jim Crow era lasted nearly a century because of the federal government and there is still work to be done today. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander, is a book about the discrimination of African Americans in today 's society. One of Alexander 's main points is the War on Drugs and how young African American males are targeted and arrested due to racial profiling. Racial profiling, discrimination, and segregation is not as popular as it used to be during the Civil War, however, Michelle Alexander digs deeper, revealing the truth about our government and the racial scandal in the prison systems. The term mass incarceration refers to not only to the criminal justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control the labeled criminals both in and out of prison today. The future of the black community itself may depend on the willingness of those who care about racial justice to re-examine their basic assumptions about the role of the criminal justice system in our society.

Before her conclusion, Alexander points out the multiple similarities between current mass incarceration and Jim Crow (182). One major comparison is how mass incarceration segregates the community physically through

Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness goes into great detail on race related issues that were specific to black males, the mass incarceration, and how that lead to the development of institutionalized racism in the United States. She compares the Jim Crow with recent phenomenon of mass incarceration and points out that the mass incarceration is a network of laws, policies, customs and institutions that have been working together to warrant the subordinating status of black males. In this paper I will go into a brief examination of the range of issues that she mentions in her book that are surrounding the mass incarceration of black male populations.

Many races are unjustly victimized, but Native American cultures are more misunderstood and degraded than any other race. College and high school mascots sometimes depict images of Native Americans and have names loosely based on Native American descent, but these are often not based on actual Native American history, so instead of honoring Native Americans, they are being ridiculed. According to the article Warriors Survive Attack, by Cathy Murillo (2009) some “members of the Carpentaria community defended Native American mascot icons as honoring Chumash tradition and the spirit of American Indian Warriors in U.S. history and others claimed that the images were racist stereotypes” (Murillo, 2009). If people do not attempt to understand

Quote: “The persistence of stereotypes and the extent to which they have become enmeshed in modern culture is illustrated by continuing controversies surrounding nicknames for athletic teams (the Washington Redskins, the Cleveland Indians, and the Atlanta Braves) and the use of American Indian mascots, tomahawk “chops,” and other practice offensive to many American Indians. Protests have been staged at some athletic events to increase awareness of these derogatory depictions, but as was the case so often in the past, the protests have been attacked, ridiculed, or simply ignored. There are relatively few studies of anti-Indian prejudice in the social science literature, and it is therefore difficult to characterize changes over the past several decades.” (P. 254) Reason This Quote Caught My Attention: Chapter 9 repeatedly mentions how people view American Indians as past tense.

Women of other categories like Asians, Latinas and Native Americans face similar stereotypes to Black women. The two Black women stereotypes that Asians, Latinas and Native Americans can be compared to are the Mammy and Jezebel stereotypes. These stereotypes are either a threat to masculinity or an ideal way to be feminine in the male thought.

The Europeans quickly agreed on a very simple (and self serving) set of assumptions about the native peoples they encountered in the New World: there were "good Indians" and "bad Indians." The good were simple, free, and innocent; the bad were degraded, brutal, and untrustworthy. All individuals, all tribes, at all times could be understoodand all were inferior in the light of Western, Christian civilization. Children are harmed when they are bombarded with stereotypical images because they internatlize these negative perceptions and will hold the images throughout their lives. When a child sees or meets a Native American, their first impressions are the ones they were shown from the books and pictures they saw.

The image of Native Americans primarily consumed by all of America is more often offensive, stereotypical, or downright fictional. And this is all because a non-indigenous person is always the one teaching us about indigenous people, thus their bias is forever unconsciously tied to the “facts”, which could very well be just a “common sense racism” agreed upon by many others. For those who have no contact with a minority group, television is their best source of information on said group, and both the news and entertainment shows us what gets the best reaction; the Dakota Pipeline won’t get news coverage because it’s peaceful and not affecting 60% of America, but soon as black people snapped in during the Watts Riots of ’65 and they white life was in danger, everyone had their cameras pointed. And some went as far as to not know why the civil black man was no so up in arms all of a sudden, despite the recent court ruling of the police responsible for the assault of Rodney King. There is no looking at the cause of the anger, just like the argument to change many sports mascots from racial caricatures of Native Americans seems completely invalid for someone unwilling to see why it might offend someone. The only way to obliterate stereotypes fueling miseducation of the minority is to have everyone correctly educated on each minority group, through schools is good but through media (television mostly) is even better.