Both examples show how prejudiced the city in the South actually was. I. The people of Maycomb reveal the racial discrimination of the Great Depression era South. a. Tom Robinson was shot 17 times and killed, and Bob Ewell almost killed Scout and Jem on Halloween. i. Tom wasn’t only shot 17 times, he was also unjustly ruled guilty before that.
The author says it makes him feel uncomfortable. Staples says he was mistaken for a burglar and a thief because of his race. Staples also explains a time when his friend a fellow journalist was mistaken for a killer when his friend was just reporting the murder. Staples believes it was because his friend is black. Staples sees himself as a young educated black man staples states he was "one of the good ol boys” being only in a few fist fights.
The book, The Death Penalty in America, provides a table from 1995; the total number of blacks on death row at that time was 1,246 versus 1,470, the total number of whites (Bedau 65-66). One thing to keep in mind is that blacks make up only 12.8% of our total population (D’Alessio & Stolzberg). Racism is a hateful word. Many people look the other way and deny its existence. But not only does it exist; it subsists in one of the most sensitive areas of our judicial system, capital punishment.
All the evidence and the defendant weak testimony made him look so guiltily that 11 out of 12 jurors voted guilty in the preliminary vote. Both these texts have a setting of trial and in order to come up with a verdict in an equal opportunity court of law, the jury must have a true understanding of the entire hearing. In To Kill a Mockingbird Tom Robinson, a crippled African-American man, was accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a female teenager from a poor, racist family. The setting of the book was a small, prejudice town in Alabama. Even though the facts testified against Tom Robinson were weak and he was physically unable to beat and rape Mayella do to a gimp arm, he was still found guilty by the jury.
However, it would be safe to assume the heredity contributed to Marilyn’s beauty that was the foundation of her success. Marilyn had a very traumatic and unstable childhood. “She was put in foster care at only two weeks old and until her marriage at the age of 16, she was passed between foster care, orphanages, and guardianships” (Leaming, 2009, p. 5). There is little known-about the people or places she resided in throughout her childhood. However, “Marilyn herself said “these events made me feel like a “mistake” easily abandoned” (Leaming, 2009, p. 7).
Wrongful Convictions This article discusses the issue of wrongful convictions, and how many innocent people pay the price because the justice system has failed them. The article focuses on the case of Paul House, a man who was wrongfully convicted of murdering Carolyn Muncey. He spent twenty two years in a prison for a crime that he did not commit. His case “includes mishandled evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, bad science, cops with tunnel vision, DNA testing, the near-execution of an innocent man, and an appellate court reluctant to reopen old cases even in the face of new evidence that strongly suggests the jury got it wrong.” (Balko). In 1986, Paul House, was the prime suspect in the murder of Carolyn Muncey.
The criminal system is supposed to be justice, but as we see it is very injustice. (www.racismreview.com) Across 34 of the 50 states, a black man is 11.8 times more likely than a white man to be sent to prison on drug charges and a black woman is 4.8 times more likely than a white woman. (www.racismreview.com) Their 10 states with the greatest racial disparities for drug offenders are Wisconsin, Illinois, New York, Maryland, West Virginia, Colorado, New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Arresting a lot of black Americans has not ended street corner drug sales. When someone gets arrested there is someone to take their place.
You know how many black man graduate? Not many, because you bring them down to this type of level, where they feel like they don’t have nothing else to live for anyway” An angry St. Louis mother said after her unarmed son was shot 6 time and killed by a white officer. After listening to this I felt her pain because she is speaking the truth. Society had been targeting the black community and black for the longest. It feel like they are pushing us back to segregation times where we was separated by race.
Judge Marvin Arrington, a black judge in Atlanta, confirms that in Atlanta, African-Americans are 54 percent of the population, but are responsible for 100 percent of homicide, 95 percent of rape, 94 percent of robbery, 84 percent of aggravated assault, and 93 percent of burglary. Source: APD Uniform Crime Reports, Apr 2011 to Apr 2012. The real problem is the moral structure deterioration so prevalent around the country, not the skin pigmentation of our citizens. It is sad that more of our black citizens are not more upset about the realities of these statistics as the black citizens seem to be suffering the most acutely as
same race crimes drastically different from one another? Referring back to paragraphs three and five, America’s reaction to a white and Hispanic male killing a black caused a drastic uproar. America reacted with protests, speeches, vandalisms, and looting, while the reaction to black on black crimes are little to none. People seemed to just sit back and observe it as if black on black crimes are expected. That shouldn’t be the mind-set of America.