Monday, December 15, 2008

The End

Today is perhaps the last blog of the year, and it will be tying into everything I have said so far.
Wait, who am I kidding? I think that it is time for a good old fashioned rant about the American political justice system. But first, even before that, let’s take a look at what has been written thus far upon this blog space.
I first began with an introduction, where I used the word blog a bunch. I then talked about the Jena 6, and how the justice system continues to fail in the American south. I expanded to talk about the unfair incarceration rates that blacks and Latinos are faced with every day. Poor folks, thrown into jail so often and so early that they never really get much of a chance to succeed in life. Then I talked about black people tend to get terribly long and harsh sentences that whites get rehabilitation or something equally fluffy for. I talked about immigration and how deporting Hispanics costs or justice system millions of dollars every year, monies that could be spent of social welfare programs and such. I looked at someone else’s blog and made a comment, and then bam! moved on again. I talked about a poor man who had been shot a bunch and then sentenced to death for kidnapping somebody. That’s a bad rap. At some point I posted a link to Chocolate Rain. I talked about Mumia Abu Jamal, and how racialized justice first got its start in America during the Cold War in an attempt to make the South not such a horrible place to live if you are non-white. I also talked about Disco Judges (enough said on that one).
So all in all it has been a good run. I learned that blacks and Latinos get blamed for a lot in this country, and I think that is why we imprison them a bunch. It is a terrible reality to face, an America that is so heavily biased against our darker skinned brothers.
Well, goodnight America, and sweet dreams. Maybe we’ll see each other around sometime.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Disco Judges

Hello everyone, and welcome back. Sorry, I have been kind of lazy when it comes to writing for this blog as off late. The week before Thanksgiving was rather stressful, and the week of Thanksgiving had me at home and alternatively bored or playing Fallout 3 in the middle of the night. Good stuff children, good stuff.
So, today I posit a simple question:
How many black judges are there in America?
This question is very much like the question “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?” in that nobody really knows the answer. Ok, some people know how many black judges are in America. But those people own or help write the book Black Judges in America.
So let’s talk about this Time article about black judges in America. Basically, black judges sometimes feel like blacks being accused of crime need black juries to get a fair. Black judges are also worried about how poor people are being treated. They just want to ensure that everyone gets a fair trial. So there are people in the justice department who want to make things better.
No here comes the saddest part. That article up there, if you haven’t noticed, was written in 1971, 37 years ago! Not much has been done since then. Few people have really done anything to ensure this sort of thing comes to pass. In fact, I believe that there are even few black judges (when it comes to percentages) then there was before.
Sad day indeed.
You know what, perhaps the court system in America needs the same affirmative action policies that most of the companies and even universities of this great country are put under. I guess the problem with that is that judges are professionals turned servants of the law, and that means we would need more black lawyers to have more black judges. To do that, we need to increase black people’s opportunities. There’s a lot of ways to do that. Maybe we will get into that a little later.
Coming up, another blog to make for the last 2 weeks. Hurray!