Race and crime in today’s
society, unfortunately, are like bread and butter. These are two objects that
can stand alone, but once together it is a perfect match. Butter goes with all
sorts of bread, but the best bread is one that is toasted, or “darker” for a
lack of better words. Applying butter to the heated bread allows the butter to
go on smoothly like it was always meant to be. Crime is the societal butter and
African Americans just happen to be the bread in America.
Crime
today is no longer about what is morally right or wrong, crime is all about
money! There are over 153 privately owned prisons in America and more are being
built. The big question to ask is why? Well we live in a capitalist society and
one man’s physical presence is another man’s dollar sign. The more people who
are put in these prisons, the more money the owners make. With the cooperation
of the government, businessmen were able to come up with a system that would
work out for everyone, it just happens to be at the expense of African
Americans.
For centuries
black people have been the victims in America. With institutional racism and
environmental racism in play, African Americans have been set up to always fail
in America. For the most part, they are thrown in urban, inner city
neighborhoods with very few resources. This causes them to live in more
hazardous situations which result in them fighting for their lives almost every
day. They are given less work opportunities and the jobs that are available have
very low upward mobility and promotional opportunities. Most importantly, they have poor school
systems. Most of the schools lack the funds necessary to make learning fun and
also lacks the proper administration to higher good teachers. Without education
these students cannot grow into fully functional/successful Americans. Now for
the icing on top, it has been psychologically proven that the more you observe
a behavior the more likely you are to display the behavior in the future. This
is important because they use media such as music and movies to promote violent
and illegal behavior in these neighborhoods, but it is used as entertainment.
Well the youth sees enough of this media and eventually starts to portray the
behavior that they've seen before. This formula has allowed the government to
keep African Americans in jail committing “crimes.”
“Crime”
is such a funny term in our society these days because the biggest crimes in
our country are committed by white America, yet there are more blacks in jail.
America’s top 10 most wanted criminals don’t have any African Americans, yet
blacks are looked at as more of a threat. It is interesting to see what is
considered crime in America. The infamous crack vs. cocaine discussion is the
perfect example. You need cocaine to produce crack rocks, crack rocks are more
commonly found in urban, inner city communities. You would think being found
with cocaine (which is more commonly found in suburban and upscale communities)
would be a bigger issue than being found with crack rocks, but instead being
arrested with crack rocks is punished four times harder than being found with
cocaine.
As
we see, there is a direct correlation between crime and race because over time
the relationship was forced. It’s easier to punish minorities, especially
blacks because they look like more of a threat. It’s the same with bread and
butter. It’s much easier to spread
butter on toasted bread then it is on average everyday bread. The toasted bread
creates more satisfaction.
Further Readings and Crime and Race are here:
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