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
Other reasons could be that the majority of blacks were poor for two generations, and one out of every four lives in poverty today. Blacks are more involved in street crime- typically street drug sales, due to the fact that they have trouble finding legitimate jobs. Another reason could be that Blacks may still be seen as ex-slaves. They are regularly suspected of being criminals, and constantly have feel the need to prove to the rest of society that they are worthy of the American Dream. If African Americans reject low paying jobs that other immigrants are competing for, they justify the belief that they are less deserving than immigrants.
Treatment of African Americans as second class citizens was still bad regarding economics in the north, but not as severe as in the south. For example, a mass migration of brought two million blacks to northern cities to seek out better economic opportunities. Also, unemployment in the north fell from almost one million to around 150000 by 1945. This was due to the creation of jobs in factories during World War 2, when it became easier for blacks to get jobs (although not as easy as it was for whites). In the
The African Americans were treated unfairly and they were the first group of people that were laid off during any economic downturn. When things were bad economically the Blacks suffered even more. The economical difference between whites and Blacks was that the Whites had more money so that meant they were better than them. Some of the African Americans eventually left and this was called The Great
Racism is very apparent in our criminal justice system as well. Drug laws, prison sentences, and police contact disproportionately affect African-Americans in a negative way. According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report of 2009, the percentage of arrestees in metropolitan areas of African-American race was 24.2% with Whites making up74.4% and the remaining made up of Pacific Islander, Asian, Alaskan American Native, or Native American. This shows a disproportionate rate of offending among African-Americans seeing as according to 2009 U.S. Census data they only make up 13.6% of the United States population. Why are the rates disproportionate?
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world with about 2.3 million people in prison. According to Vitanna.org’s statistics, an estimated one million of these prisoners are African American. 12.3 percent of the population is black, yet over 43 percent of America’s prisoners are black. This disparity is certainly unnatural, seeing as how African Americans are no more likely to be criminals than whites. Black men are overrepresented in prisons because of the unfortunately common stereotype that they are all remorseless criminals.
Logically if an overwhelming majority of the poor in the US are black, and since poverty causes crime, then a lot of the criminals are black. Obviously, it’s the same in any country. Claiming that poverty causes crime does mean that the poor are criminals. That's because the word "criminal" implies a moral value; "he's a bad person", while it should in fact be more of a social issue. What's even worse is that the habit of long-term jail sentences in the US has completely wiped out any chance of ever getting a job again for most of these people.
African Americans are often portrayed as flashy drug lords or homeless fiends. Once again this is an exaggerated miss representation that doesn’t stand up to the truth. “In fact, blacks are no more likely than are whites to use drugs; and more whites than blacks are arrested on drug charges.”(9) With that said the media over represents African Americans in regards to crime, illegal drug activity, and poverty. These three aspects are the foundation upon which the faulty African American stereotype stands. The media’s portrayal of African American’s is both inaccurate and highly degrading.
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.
By doing so the school district, whether unintentional or not, alienated qualified teachers of other races. This includes the majority race of the students, in favor of white teachers. One major example of institutional racism is in our legal system. According to the FBI Homicide Table 3, in 2010 there were 4,849 white offenders convicted of murder and 5,770 black offenders convicted of murder. Considering African Americans make up only 13.1% of the American population, these numbers are astonishing.