Subjective Ignorance In Ignorance

In a speech, Frederick Douglass stated “[t]here are seventy-two crimes…which, if committed by a black man…subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment.” While that is not the case today, racism continues to be an important and urgent issue in the United States. Although the shadow of racism continues to haunt Americans, race relations among people in America have slowly improved. From the active practice of institutional racism during the 19th and early 20th century, the spike in criticism against institutionalized racism during the Civil Rights Movement, and the dissolution of racial barriers in the past two decades, the wane of racial tension in America is evident.

Over the last few centuries, the rights and freedoms of various citizens from the United States of America have been compromised throughout history. Racism in the USA has been a topic heavily debated over the years, from the beginning of the black slave trade in the early 17th century, to the movement that worked for the racial desegregation all over America. Although the black people of America have gone through a large struggle to gain their rights and freedoms, there has been success. These successes include the illegalisation of slavery in America, the racial desegregation of various facilities so they were able to be used equally and fairly by all American citizens, and the fall of the Ku Klux Klan and the illegalisation of their ideals

Kwame Anthony Appiah who wrote “Racisms”, believes that extrinsic racism is when people has a belief that different races are different genetically and that results in different treatments. “members of different races differ in respects that warrant the differential treatment, respects, -such as honesty or courage or intelligence – that are controversially held (held at least in most contemporary cultures) to be acceptable as basis for treating people differently.” (p.691) This is morally wrong to Appiah because it is not true at all. Humans are humans, even if there are different races, the genes that contributes to race does not set different races’ intelligence and moral standards, it is the teaching and environment that shapes the people. “the genes that account for the gross morphological differences that underlie our standard racial categories are not linked to those genes that determine, to whatever degree such matters

The criminal justice system in the United States is evident of several deep flaws relating to the treatment of black men and women accused of committing criminal offenses. It is logical to believe that due to the U.S.’s rather dark past surrounding the treatment of black Americans, systematic racism is included under the guise of the criminal justice system. The U.S. is historically infamous for it’s open racial discrimination against black Americans, up until systematic racism became one of the more dominant forms of discrimination in the most recent years. Systematic racism has been shrouded under societal ignorance and regulated particularly by social and political groups in order to keep the human rights of black Americans frigid and

Over the past five centuries, black people have endured violence in many different ways. Today, police officers use deadly, excessive force that leads to inexcusable assaults, beatings and shootings. This demonstrates the governmentТs role in initiating and prolonging racial suppression and provides the explanation for police brutality to become a federal crime(Black Radical Congress, 3). In history, racist violence, police brutality, has been used to suppress the racial blacks and to preserve power and privileges for the white race. This was done for five primary purposes. First, it has forced black people into slavery or low wage situations. Secondly, to steal land and other resources. A 3-rd was to maintain social control. A fourth

Despite the important racial progresss our society has made since Emmett Till’s death, from the civil rights era, to present increase of police brutality has still left the Black/African American community in shadows of segregation. The second most recent shooting of teenager Michael Brown has left citizens in ongoing battles with law enforcement officers of Ferguson, Missouri. New Statement (2014) reports, Missouri police similarly attempted to retain control of the narrative, claiming Brown had stolen cigars, and then paying for them, and then claiming he was a bad child and attacked the officer who shot him” (New Statement, 21). Brown autopsy reveals he was gun less and shot six times. Police brutality is not solely about Ferguson, Emmett Till, or the civil rights movement, but it is simply about the history of capitalism and police brutality in America and having many forms of it.

Following, numbers of shootings involving law enforcement and black men, race became a pertinent topic among American people. It seems that two groups have revealed themselves through these discussions, those who believe race is still a problem in America, and those who believe America is a post-racial society. History is one of the clearest indicators showing that race may still be relevant in modern communities. A plethora of connections can be drawn between discrepancies in poverty, incarceration, and poor education between whites and blacks when you look at events in our nation’s history such as slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, and more. With that being said, one of the more significant examples of institutional racism in America is one that is rarely

Racism, known as “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.” (Oxford, 2013) When an individual mentions the word ‘racism’ almost all the time it will be referred to a black individual, not white nor any other race, but black. Over the years racism has repeatedly occurred whether it was said or done; some showed racism by the words they used, while others presented it by the racist acts they committed. Racism towards the black community has not only been shown by other races, but also by individuals who were there to keep them ‘safe’. Very contradictory yet true, that a black man’s worst

Over the past five centuries, black people have endured violence in many different ways. Today, police officers use deadly, excessive force that leads to inexcusable assaults, beatings and shootings. This demonstrates the government’s role in initiating and prolonging racial suppression and provides the explanation for police brutality to become a federal crime (Black Radical Congress, 3). In history, racist violence, police brutality, has been used to suppress the racial blacks and to preserve power and privileges for the white race.

Is racism still a problem in America more than fifty years after the Civil Rights Movement, and 48 years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson? How far has America come from the days when African Americans were lynched by fanatical racist mobs and from the days when Jim Crowe laws trumped the laws set forth by the U.S. Constitution? This paper delves into those and other issues involving racism in America. Thesis: American has come a long way from the days of lynchings and prohibitions against African Americans voting or sitting at the lunch counter. There are laws that protect minorities from discrimination in housing and hiring, and great strides have been made. However, racism remains a reality, including institutional racism in America.

An individual who has no knowledge of racism in America may think that once African Americans were given the same privileges as whites, racism would be extinct. This, however, is incorrect because racism is not only alive but thriving. The oppression of the African American community is still relevant today and happening everywhere. Where slavery and Jim Crow laws were banned, the war on drugs and mass incarceration of African Americans were created. It is evident “in the inner cities that the vast majority of young black men are either under the control of the criminal justice system or branded criminals for life” (Graff 126). The problem of mass incarceration ties into one of today’s other most pressing ethical issues concerning the African American community - police brutality. Mike Brown, Freddie Gray, and Tamir Rice are just a few of the many names that come to mind when one thinks of police brutality and the African Americans. The ethical issue of police brutality is very muddled because each case must be treated singularly, thus to not automatically blame the incident on racism. Although the “police are meant to protect and serve all United States citizens, for too many minority communities, police have become a source of fear, quick to resort to physical violence” (Onyemaobim 162). It may be, however, that with an increasing number of these incidents in recent years,

I was fourteen when I first became aware of black struggles, particularly in the United States. An innocent, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was fatally shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. Martin was shot plainly because he was Black and yet, Zimmerman walked away a free man on the grounds of self-defense. His death had ignited something in me. A teenage boy was murdered because an ignorant, racist and self-glorified man had garnered the sympathy of the justice system. Truthfully, this was only a nudge to the direction. As sad it is, I was still naïve. However, with every bullet that pierced through each innocent black body, the systemic racism that had targeted the Black community for centuries had made itself known to me. More

Pop culture has enlightened and exposed the world to the good, the bad, and the ugly under every circumstance, and people tend to be more provoked, influenced, and intrigued by the bad and the ugly rather than the good. One topic of pop culture that never fails to gain attention is violence in its many forms. While at a state of constant social change and adaptation, the population finds more and more disagreements on the ever-changing and conflicting views and beliefs of each individual, which can lead to violence in some, if not most cases. Hate crimes are crimes or actions motivated by certain disagreements among groups that typically involve some form of violence. This essay will discuss the violence in racial hate crimes against African Americans, because the violence in these hate crimes, both past and present, will help educate individuals about different racial perspectives on the claimed “unfair” or “unequal” treatment of the African American race compared to the treatment of whites in all aspects of society and life. In the United States, African Americans as a race haven been one of the main targets for violent racial and hate crimes. Racial violence and hate crimes against African Americans have been a part of the United States since the very beginning, with a spike in conflict around the 1960s era of the African American Civil Rights Movement, and are even portrayed now in current pop culture sources. Violence against African Americans in films like The Help (a

All these inherited features are the same for every person belonging to the same race according to a racist. Since racists believe that human beings divide into races, they also believe that the different races are either superior or inferior (e.g. a racist would call white Europeans a superior race and black Africans an inferior race). The superior races are entitled to dominate, exploit and destroy anyone belonging to an, in their mind, inferior race, and racists do not hesitate to do so either.1 Members of inferior races are not seen as individuals or as human beings with feelings at all.

The population of the United States of America has been one of mixed race since its very beginning. Boatload upon boatload of enslaved Africans provided a labor force which would fuel the American South’s economy for many years, until national abolition and the subsequent civil rights movement created a primarily biracial population of blacks and whites. The US has come a long way since those days, and today every child born into the US is taught from an early age the evils of racism and the shameful actions committed by slave-owning US citizens in the past. From textbooks to televisions, the modern USA seemingly works tirelessly to teach its population that discrimination by race is wrong and that all races are equal. This has led to a great national complacence among whites, and a widespread belief that the US has mostly eradicated racial prejudices. But it is not so, and despite a population almost entirely composed of people who would not consider themselves racists, racism still pervades in the US. In many cases modern racism occurs at the hands of whites who almost absolutely are completely unaware of their discriminatory actions. In the films “Frozen River” and “The Visitor” racism was touched on repeatedly and played an evident part in the messages they were trying to portray.