I was in high school when I finally saw the racial issues that still taint this “Great Nation”. I was born in Montreal, Canada and for the first half of my life I could honestly say that I never experienced one racist encounter and I was one of the handful of black kids in my school. It wasn’t till I came to New York City that I learned all these negative stigmas about my people. Why are minorities in big cities treated as if we are all dangerous and hostile humans? In this blog post I look into the history of criminalizing blacks and how this is still in effect in our current lives.
After reading one of James Baldwin’s articles titled A Letter to my Nephew , I learned that blacks in America have always dealt with advisories. During slavery whites used the idea of blacks being inhumane to justify slavery. After slavery, whites used the legal system to suppress blacks from equal opportunities. This innate sense to prevail over one another is nothing new to the human history. Europeans used to use the idea of “white man’s burden” to justify conquering and damaging the lives of others. In our time, the injustices against minorities could be seen in the now deemed unconstitutional “stop and frisk” program. This law gave police officers the right to “randomly” stop and search civilians if a cop had the belief that an individual MIGHT be up to no good and of course knowing our nation’s history, one particular group of people would be the main targets of this law. This is a clear violation of the fourth amendment so I don’t know how stop and frisk was able to be conducted in the first place but okay. One brave NYPD office named Michael Birch is currently suing the NYPD because he claims he was unfairly punished for not stopping enough minorities. His proof behind this suit? A recording from his commanding officer accusing young black and Hispanics males as being the sole perpetrators of crimes in the city.
While it is easy to say that minorities are more likely to commit crimes and use our nation’s inmate population to justify that, blacks and Hispanics have undoubtedly been the targets of social injustices in this country for long. Studies have shown that minorities will face harsher punishments for the same crime as their white counterpart, so of course people of color will make up a majority of our nation’s inmate population even though whites commit crimes at the same rate.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-recorded-boss-blasting-not-stopping-minorities-article-1.2710345
I used to live up north by the Montreal border and I have been told that Canadians are a lot more friendlier. I am happy to hear and am fascinated by the fact that you had never experienced any racial profiling or negative encounters regarding your race and/or culture while living there. Why do you think "blacks" face a stigma in the U.S. and not in Canada? Is it because Canadians are raised to be "friendlier" and more accepting?
ReplyDeleteI like the part of your blog about Michael Birch. Young black and Hispanic males are labeled as the group to partake in criminal behavior. Similarly to my paper, I discussed that in Florida, blacks and Hispanics are blamed for committing crimes when in fact, whites had the highest rate of doing so. I cannot speak for NYC stats since I haven't done the research but I thought it was interesting and perhaps white crime is actually higher in NYC too.
I used to live up north by the Montreal border and I have been told that Canadians are a lot more friendlier. I am happy to hear and am fascinated by the fact that you had never experienced any racial profiling or negative encounters regarding your race and/or culture while living there. Why do you think "blacks" face a stigma in the U.S. and not in Canada? Is it because Canadians are raised to be "friendlier" and more accepting?
ReplyDeleteI like the part of your blog about Michael Birch. Young black and Hispanic males are labeled as the group to partake in criminal behavior. Similarly to my paper, I discussed that in Florida, blacks and Hispanics are blamed for committing crimes when in fact, whites had the highest rate of doing so. I cannot speak for NYC stats since I haven't done the research but I thought it was interesting and perhaps white crime is actually higher in NYC too.
I know that throughout the years of slavery slaves fled the southern states in America to go to the northern staes and Canada. Did the slaves that reached Canada receive better treatment than the slaves who fled to the northern states in America? Did slavery occur at all in Canada? I wonder if Canada's relationship with people of African descent has been better than the United States and that's why Canada treats their citizens of African descent better.
ReplyDelete- Carlos McArthur
That's very interesting that in Canada you didn't encounter any racist encounters. Since I've never left the country, I know nothing else. I take a mass media course this semester as well, and we talked about how race is portrayed in the media. An example is the difference between Brock Turner and Corey Batey. Brock Turner was the White swimmer from Stanford University that raped a girl while she was unconscious. The picture released in the media was him smiling in a suit, and it took a long period of time for his mug shot to come out. He received a very short sentence compared to a Black man named Corey Batey who committed nearly the same crime. Batey's picture circulating the news was his mugshot. His sentence was much more harsh than that of Brock Turner's. This proves that Blacks and Latinos do receive much worse punishments than Whites. It seems crazy that it's 2016 and people are still treated like ths.
ReplyDeleteI like the comparison that you made between Canada and NYC, do you think due to the long history of racism in NYC that stereotypes are just set in stone for the minorities that are there? Also have you thought that maybe there isn't more blacks and Hispanics in jail, but they are portrayed by the media to be? Because any time i see some news about major drug busts or crime in the media it involves minorities as the central focus even though there are in many cases the same amount of whites that were involved.
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