Saturday, October 19, 2013

Hand and Hand like Bread and Butter


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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