Essay On African Americans

During my early years of school, I remember being taught white accomplishments and wondering if blacks and other people of color had made any significant contributions to today's world. I noticed that television consist of all white people. Throughout my research paper I hope to cover certain aspects of African American heritage. Aspects such as blacks making up the largest minority group in the United States, although Mexican-Americans are rapidly changing that. The contributions blacks have provided to our country are immeasurable. Unfortunately though rather than recognizing these contributions, white America would rather focus on oppressing and degrading these people. As a consequence American

Imprisonment is more common in some social groups than others and makes it easier for racial groups to fall into that stereotype. It becomes more widely expected for groups such as Black males and even Hispanics when they live in the low income communities. At some point one in three Black males and one in six Hispanics will be incarcerated at some point in their life (Berg, & DeLisi, 2006). Nationwide, African American men are confined at 9.6 times the rate of White men.

Although we would like to believe the world is not as racially charged in 2013 as it was in the 1960s, a look in our penal system would show that minorities are still arrested and incarcerated at a higher rate than whites. The United States has experienced a rise in its prison population over the last 40 years and our incarceration rate is nearly 5 times higher than any other country. Even though 13% of the US population are African American males, they make up 38% of the prison population. Contributing factors to these numbers are mandatory minimum sentences, high crime and poverty areas, and lack of rehabilitative resources within our system (p.77-78).

The population at large in the United Stated is very different than the population of the prison system. Racial inequality in the criminal justice system is often ignored because it does not affect most people. If there is to be a change in racial inequality, this issue is one that must be addressed. According to Inequality and Incarceration, “497 out of 100,000 Americans are imprisoned.” This means there is “less than one percent of people” in the United States that are imprisoned. This may seem like an insignificant amount.

The disproportionate numbers of African Americans in the prison system is a very serious issue, which is not usually discussed in its totality. However, it is quite important to address the matter because it ultimately will have an effect on African Americans as a whole.

"Black men are seven times likely to go to prison than are white men; black women are eight times likely to go than are white women. The lifetime likelihood of incarceration for aggregate numbers requires some getting used to. If today's imprisonment stays stable, nearly one-third of black males

The intersection of racial dynamics with the criminal justice system is one of longstanding duration. In earlier times, courtrooms in many jurisdictions were comprised of all white decision-makers. Today, there is more diversity of leadership in the court system, but race still plays a critical role in many

In order to understand the nature of the statistical disparity, the first aspect that must be examined is necessarily the statistics themselves. Recent data (1998) shows that more than two out of every three arrested persons are white (67.6%) and that African Americans account for only 30% of all arrests. More striking is the data adjusted per capita: African Americans are two and a half times as likely to be arrested as whites, and are even more over-represented in violent crimes, for which they are over three times as likely to be arrested. African Americans are five times as likely to be arrested in cases of robbery or murder (Walker et al., 39).

African Americans are targeted by law enforcement more often than any other race (Toth, Crews & Burton, 2008). Because of this the term racial profiling was created to explain the process of targeting people for criminal activity because of race not evidence (Toth et al, 2008). African Americans are over represented in the criminal justice system based on their population amount compared to whites (Toth et al, 2008). African American males are incarcerated at a rate 9 times that of white males in most states, in others that number may be as high as 12 to 26 times more (Toth et al, 2008). Nationwide statistics show in most states 1 in 20 over the age of 18 are in prison, while 5 other states report 1 in 13 or 14 compared to the 1 in 180

One in three African-American males will go to prison in their lifetime, they constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million imprisoned population, and this is not simply because they commit more crimes than other racial groups. African-Americans drug offenders are 20% more likely of being sentenced to prison than white drug offenders, whilst Hispanics has a 40% greater chance of being sentenced. African-Americans make up 12% of the nation’s drug users, but represent 34% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 45% of those in state prison for such offense as of 2005.

Today, one in every 100 U.S. residents are incarcerated, and this rate is even more stark for people of color; one in 15 black men age 18 and over was incarcerated in 2008, compared to one in 54 white men and one in 36 Hispanic men.142 A DOJ study found that if incarceration rates remain unchanged, 6.6 percent of U.S. residents born in 2001 will go to prison at some time during their lifetime.143 People of color are most likely to spend time in prison: one in three African-American men born in this year is expected to go to prison; one in six Hispanic men will go to prison; and one in 17 white men will spend time in prison. The incarceration rate of people sentenced to more than a year of prison more than tripled over the past 30 years, growing

Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to end up in prison. As Carroll writes, “According to the U.S. census, Blacks are incarcerated five times more than whites are, and Hispanics are nearly twice as likely to be incarcerated as whites. Hispanic men are 2.4 times more likely, to a sentencing project analysis of the data”. Given these statistics, the most important question is: why is the disparity so great between whites, Blacks and Hispanics in terms of the prison population.

Historically black colleges and universities, otherwise known as HBCUs, have played an integral role in advancing the education of underprivileged black teenagers since their inception after the American Civil War. They have had students extremely well known in their fields today, such as billionaire entertainer Oprah Winfrey, the first African American Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. Though their graduation rates tend to be around 1 in 3, they have produced a majority of successful African American professionals. For the continued advancement of African Americans, HBCUs are necessary for offering educational opportunities that their students had been historically denied and presently out of financial reach, while promoting strong family values and equality that may be lacking at traditional schools and displaying positive African American role models in their alumni and staff.

The newspapers covered many of the social and political problems of the South because it was the best communication to the

The United States population in 2015 was estimated at 320.9 million people. One in every 37 adults in the United States as of 2015 are under some sort of correctional supervision. Racial disparities occur in incarceration in the United States as African American are incarcerated at 5 times the rate of whites (Nellis 2016). African Americans in 2015 made up 2.3 million of the total correctional population. When it comes to drug sentencing, Whites and African Americans use drugs at the same amount but when it comes to sentencing and imprisonment African Americans are almost 6 times more than Whites (http://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/).