Technical Difficulties

Today, I planned on embedding this video into my blog, but due to some unforeseen technical difficulties in blogging software and youtubes’ huge memory requirement, I will not be doing that today. Instead, have a link
Part 1
Take a very close look at part 1. Allow me to summarize it for you. Before World War 2, most black Americans lived in the rural areas. Prejudice and racism was limited mostly to the south, and America was alright with that. Around World War 2, blacks started moving into cities, northern cities. Suddenly, discrimination spread across America. Places were blacks lived in numbers became ghettos, schools and businesses segregated, and in general it was a bad time to be black. The American House and Senate were deadlocked between destroying racism and ignoring it. America was involved in the Cold War, so it was bad publicity to not practice true democracy at home. So the Supreme Court stepped in to remedy the situation, and bring the south back in line.
The later parts of this lecture go on to discuss how the American justice system eventually turned on black America, and went from liberating minorities from unfair practice to jailing them in order to control the more “dangerous” elements of society. Perhaps it takes something as harsh as segregation to spur the justice system to do its job; if it goes too long without doing something important, it gets lazy, complacent, and occasionally malicious.

Sounds like a riveting story, no? That’s because it is. Now, I know that this blog may seem a bit off topic, but it is really completely on topic. Here we see the justice system actually doing its job and standing up to bigotry. Those people who are against “legislating from the bench” better not be black, because without bench legislators America would be a much meaner place, full of restrooms for all of the separate “races”.

Relevance

Today I will be looking at a fellow classmate’s blogging website. Her website is about race in the media, although there is the occasional post about the way in which women are portrayed in various media forms. Her blog is essentially the different ways that the media tries to portray people of various ethnic backgrounds. Her first blog is just an introduction to her subject, much like mine. Her second post is about how minorities are typically related to gang violence by the media. I actually just recently read in Racializing Justice, a book that is rather pertinent to this blog, that the release of movies like Boyz in da Hood and other forms of media depicting black men as fierce gangsters only led to more needless arrests of black Americans; media has typecast these poor souls as being violent, and our justice system responds in kind. Her third post in about women in the media. In this short bit, she makes many good points about how women are sexualized by the media (turned into sex objects). I particularly like her formula
“Man + Sexy Ad = Profits, Profits, PROFITS!”. In fact, I remember reading a chapter in my old Women’s Psychology book that detailed pretty much everything that she mentions in this blog. Frankie is right on target. Her fourth blog is about racism during this presidential election. Personally, I don’t think that racism during this election is nearly as bad as it could be; that being said, in order for this country to be truly free it shouldn’t be there at all. Her fifth blog is about typecasting minorities in film. Anyone who has ever seen any movie can see this if they look close enough, and it’s a shame. Her newest blog, dated today, is a blog exactly like this one, detailing another blog.
So how is this relevant to racism and justice? Because the American justice system is powered by people. Judges, juries, and even criminals are influenced by the media. A jury may convict a black man of drug possession merely because he is black, and everyone “knows” that blacks are prone to drug addiction. In reality, they are no more susceptible then you or I. But the media shapes beliefs, and beliefs can get folk thrown into jail needlessly.

Mexican Rain

Hello, and welcome again to the Sunday night special. Tonight, I’ll be talking about a couple of things. First among them is this article I found on good ole’ NPR. Not the newest article, but since it pertains to both racism and justice, I think that it should find a nice new home here. If you don’t feel like reading it, here’s is a very short summary:
There are a lot of Mexican immigrants that enter this country every day. Its hard to get an accurate count of how many are in this country right now. When law enforcement captures them, they either drop them off at the Mexican border or fly them to Mexico City. If they are non-Mexican, they are flown to their country of origin. All of this puts a strain upon the justice system; presumably flights to outside of this country are expensive.
So what is the solution for this sort of problem, if one even believes it to be a problem? Well, perhaps we could open the borders to all. That way, we wouldn’t have to guard them or deport people unless they commit a crime. Alternatively, we could use the money to build a very large and guarded concrete fence to keep immigrants out so we don’t have to deport them. We could also not deport them at.
All in all, immigration is a very complex issue that isn’t likely to be solved anytime soon by anyone, unless some sort of drastic measure that we all can get behind is found. Personally, I don’t really view Mexican immigration as a large problem. America has a history of blaming its problems on whatever group is considered sinful or outcast at the time. In the 1800s it was the Irish, then the Eastern Europeans, then the Chinese. IN the early 1900s it was still the all of those groups, no including Mexicans. It hasn’t changed much since.
This whole talk has me kind of down, so I think that I will post a bit of music here. Listen closely, and I think you may hear some lyrics that relate to racism in America, both past and present.

Unbalanced Crime

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Sunday night special. Tonight, we will be looking at a gorgeous supermodel who recently decided that wasn’t worth living. Her name is Jeanette Sliwinski In a reckless attempt to end her own lie she ended up taking the lives of three men, Michael Dahlquist, John Glick and Douglas Meis. Fortunately for her she managed to escape the accident nearly unscathed, both physically and legally. She was sentenced to three years in jail for the 3 counts of “reckless homicide”. Thanks to a few technicalities, good behavior, and a diagnosis and treatment for mental illness she was out in little more then one year.
Now, what makes Sliwinski so special? Is it the intense and tragic irony that her attempt failed but managed to take 3 innocent people? No, not exactly. It is that her story parallels the stories of racial bias in the justice system that were sent to Mary Mitchell, Suns-Times columnist, by Andre Duson, an African American man who is currently serving 18 years in prison for drug related crimes. Duson was caught carrying 15 grams of cocaine, along with a few other drug possession crimes, all minor.
Both Sliwinski and Duson have been model prisoners, and both have had their time cut in half because of it (the extra time cut off from Sliwinski’s time is because of technicalities in the legal system). The primary difference between Duson and Sliwinski is that Duson was convicted of a drug charge, which usually carries a heavier weight then other crimes. The other difference between Duson and Sliwinski is that Duson is black and Sliwinski is white.
The full news article on this issue can be found here. The reader commentary is actually quite interesting to read, although sometimes it can be rather uninformed, aggressive, or just plain stupid. That’s just one person’s opinion though.
On a lighter note, the FBI is opening up some “cold cases” that were not completely solved back in the segregation era. It is believed that these cases were ignored at the time because they involved minorities, specifically black men, whom police cared very, very little for at the time. The full article for that can be found here.

Prisoners of...

Today is a nice and rainy Saturday. The skies are dark and everyone over in my apartment complex is holed up inside of their rooms, waiting for the downpour to cease and for the sun to come back again.
We are like prisoners, trapped inside because nature has found today to be a good day to frown down upon us. So I, being a prisoner of the weather, will now blog a bit about the real prisoners in the United States, those stuck behind walls of concrete.
Many people in America are aware of the skewed statistics of people behind bars, namely how minority populations somehow make up a majority of prison populations. Lets take a look at a handy graph to show us incarceration rates by race:

Even a cursory knowledge of statistics will show us that there is definitely something wrong with this picture. There are nearly six times as many Caucasian Americans as there are African Americans, and yet there are more African Americans in prison. Strange indeed.
Does this imply that African Americans are somehow more violent then Caucasian or Hispanic Americans? That for some inexplicable reason they commit more crimes? I’d like to think that we abandoned that kind of thinking, at least in this state, more then 100 years ago. Socioeconomic standing could be part of the cause of this; poverty tends to encourage crime, and African Americans make 22-26% less then their white counterparts, on average. Follow this link to a wonderful article that can better explain how this situation could have happened, and how bad the gap between the different races of America really is, with a specific focus on blacks vs. whites.
Take a look at my previous post about the Jena Six. So far, no white children have been charged with any crime, although they have been on record for intimidating, beating, threatening, and coercing fellow students. This situation is unfortunate indeed. Even worse is that, over the years, there have been specific laws put into place in order to put more African Americans in jail for longer. Take the difference between carrying a gram of cocaine and a gram of “crack” cocaine. The two are essentially the same, except crack is “freebased”, smokable, and chemically held together by any number of this (often times other drugs). Getting caught with a gram of cocaine will net you perhaps a year in prison, while the same amount of “crack” cocaine will get you perhaps 20 years or more. Why? Because crack is cheaper and is used primarily by poor, black communities.