Despite the desire to remove racism and discrimination from this nation, these terrible attributes have been woven into the fabric of American society. And while we try our best to cut the threads that poison our morality, a lack of understanding has made sewing America together so much more difficult. Systemic racism and discrimination exists in almost every facet of our country and, for a basic understanding of the problems minorities face, we’ll talk about the three most prevalent instances of such so that as an educated American you can start to end this problem.
While addressing systemic racism it’s important we start with the most evident and apparent at this time, that being our law enforcement system with police brutality. From Breonna Taylor to George Floyd to Trayvon Martin, thousands have been abused by our law enforcement system. It’s evident that accountability of the police has been eliminated as racist agendas hinder justice and proper treatment towards individuals. Turn to Mapping Police Violence, a database on police killings, which reports that back in 2015, 36% of unarmed people killed by police were African American, with at least 104 cases that year. The disproportionate amount of police killings towards African Americans is ridiculous and abhorrent. There should never be a doubt that now is the time to change that.
While we understand the scale of police brutality affecting African Americans, it’s not the only racist institution; our prison system is actually just as discriminatory. It starts with the criminal justice system and its mandatory minimums. The Drug Policy Alliance back in 2018 found that prosecutors are twice as likely to pursue a mandatory minimum sentence for black people as for white people charged with the same offense. The majority of these cases come from drug offenses, either selling or possession. With African Americans disproportionately targeted, they can spend between five to ten years in prison. This not only takes them away from families, eliminating a source of income for many, but it also prevents them from getting a job. The National Center for Biotechnology Information reported in 2009 that a criminal record reduces the likelihood of a callback or job offer by nearly 50 percent. So even a small non violent offense like possession of drugs, with a 5 year sentence, can eliminate job opportunities, keeping people in poverty and thus the prison system. And the fact that these sentences are targeted towards African Americans highlights the racism in our justice system, opting to keep minorities in poverty and prison rather than letting them prosper. But this isn’t all of it. In prisons, prisoners can be used as labor with no pay. And because these minorities, particularly African Americans, are in prison and used as free labor, our prison system has become institutionalized slavery. We say that justice is blind because it's impartial, but now justice is blind because it can’t see injustice.
The physical abuses towards minorities and people of color are awful, and it’s sad to say it isn’t the only form of suppression. Minority voter suppression has existed for decades and continues to repress the power to choose representatives that would benefit their districts. But how does it work? The National Public Radio highlights examples back in October of 2018: A) Stripping the voting rights of released felons. B) Requiring a photo ID. Or C) “use it or lose it" laws, which strike voters from registration rolls if they have not participated in an election within a prescribed period of time. These methods claim racial neutrality by saying they protect the integrity of the voting system, but that's false. The Brennan Center for Justice back in 2017 highlighted reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for voter fraud found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. Nobody is committing voter fraud, states are just being racist. Furthermore, the changing of voting locations and time available to vote have restricted minorities. As the Atlantic explains in July 2018, Fifteen percent of black respondents and 14 percent of Hispanic respondents said that they had trouble finding polling places on Election Day, versus 5 percent of whites, indicating that frequent changes to polling-site locations hurt minority voters more. Additionally, African American and Hispanic respondents were twice as likely as white respondents to have been unable to get time off work for voting. These changes might seem neutral at face value but only serve to damage minorities and their communities
Now I’m going to start giving my opinions on this issue and how to solve it, so stick around if you want to hear me out. First and foremost, I want to extend my condolences to the families affected by police brutality and the racism in our nation. It’s terrible but we can always try to turn it around. Now for my opinions and thoughts on this issue. On the topic of police brutality: don’t immediately resort to force. You have power, don't abuse it or you fuel an authoritarian police state. For our prison and justice system: stop prioritizing punishment and support reform. People change if you help them, not harm them. And for voter suppression: any efforts to restrict voting rights should be condemned, not just because of the racism affecting it, but because holistically, these efforts are restricting democracy by silencing citizens. All in all we need to advocate for changes to these parts of society, because if we don’t we’ll drift away from the fundamentals that built this country.
The biggest question we should be asking is, how can we solve these issues? Obviously, signing petitions to give to your representatives and contacting your local governments about change is what you should do, but on a broader level there are some policies we can look for. Again, these are opinions. For police brutality, I don’t think that defunding the police is the right step. Obviously the billions of dollars given to the NYPD can stand to be reduced, but funding is important for my idea on holding accountability: police body cams. National Institute of Justice (Nov. 14, 2018)- found that the use-of-force by police fell by 50% in some areas when officers were wearing cameras. By making it mandatory to keep body cameras turned on while on duty, officers will have to be more conscious of their decision. The funding is necessary because the data storage and cost of cameras will accumulate costs quickly. There also need to be laws that punish any video and audio tampering to keep the truth straight, and these videos (in the event of a misuse of police power) need to be accessible to the public. Managing accountability is the biggest issue with police and I think that funding body cams would work to tackle that. Moving on to our justice system, I think that reducing or eliminating mandatory minimums would keep less people out of prison for low non-violent offenses. I would also like to see an increase in quality of care and attention to rehabilitation facilities, because beating someone down won’t change their thoughts. Sending more people to rehab, building more rehab facilities, these are the actions we need to take to actually help people grow. And last but not least, voter suppression. This one is really simple; just get rid of these ridiculous limits. There's no reason why in Texas a handgun license gives you the right to vote but not a student ID from the University of Texas, especially when 80% of handgun licenses go to whites and half of the kids in the UT system are minorities. (That stat is backed by the Brennan Center of Justice).
At the end of the day, ideas and enforcement are needed to change the status quo for the better. Even if these problems don't affect you directly, they do have a negative impact on society, so let's start making changes.
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