Ava DuVernay suggests Slavery’s NOT Dead in 13th The recently released Netflix original documentary 13th identifies the issue of race in America and how the government instills fear in the nation in order to provide justice for the people by enforcing a ‘War on Crime.’ This tactic was Nixon’s way of incarcerating blacks during his presidency. Many of the elections beginning with President Truman’s era were a long list of former Presidents that used crime as a platform. Whoever was ‘tougher’ on crime would win the election. An example would be the Bush vs Dukakis election. The Bush vs Dukakis election made an about-face once the Willie Horton case revealed itself. Bush claimed Dukakis was not tough enough on criminals due to his opposition …show more content…
On August 19th, 1989 a 28-year-old woman went for a jog in Central Park. Case outcome from the society and the government resulted in bashing five young minority boys all under the age of sixteen years old. The recent President-Elect, Donald J. Trump, took out a whole page ad explaining why he believes these young men deserved the death penalty before they went to trial. The Central Park jogger rape case allowed the media and law to wrongfully convict five young minority boys because the government would rather put nation-wide fear about blacks and other minorities in the minds of the people rather than allowing justice to be served through evidence. These boys had to waste their lives in prison for a few years and this case possibly ruined these young boys lives because America had such a bad outlook on the minorities in our country. Although, during this time, a lot of crimes were happening in the Central Park. So America was quick to insist that it had to be this particular group of five because, sadly they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily, modern day tools were able to give these young men the tools to prove their innocence, and they were able to tell their story of how America wrongfully accused
“...Much of the recent crime increase threatens the vitality of America’s cities–and thousands of lives–it is not, in itself, the greatest danger in today’s war on cops. The greatest danger lies, rather, in the delegitimation of law and order itself’ (Mac Donald). In the book “The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe,” published in the year of 2016, author Heather Mac Donald provides credible evidence to expand on her viewpoint of our country’s current criminal crisis. In addition to “The War on Cops, Mac Donald has written two other books. Her works “Are Cops Racist?”
The rapist gave her up for dead and when hours later they found her, Meili was senseless, suffering from hypothermia and had serious brain impairment. From the first moment, the New York Police Department was convinced that the perpetrators were already detained in the precinct. The five teenagers denied having any participation in the iniquitous acts that were committed that night. Meanwhile, while hours were passing the five adolescences were questioned, and cornered by the New York City police. The adolescences felt intimidated by the city police, and were illegally question without the consent of a parent and question without an attorney, the central park five ended up recognizing a crime they did not committed, and admitting to a crime that they did not had participation of.
In the beginning of the book, Hayes states, “There are fundamentally two ways you can experience the police in America: as the people you call when there’s a problem, the nice man in uniform who pats a toddler’s head and has an easy smile for the old lady as she buys her coffee. For others, the police are the people who are called on them. They are the ominous knock on the door, the sudden flashlight in the face, the barked orders. Depending on who you are, the sight of an officer can produce either a warm sense of safety and contentment or a plummeting feeling of terror.” (Hayes, 2017, p. 1-2)
The majority of people would never imagine they could be convicted of a crime which they did not commit, but all too often, this is the startling reality. Through the history of the United States and the world, excessively many decisions have been made rashly as a result of fear and bias. Two specific cases in the United States are those of the Red Scare and the West Memphis Three. While both situations did not lead to prosecution and conviction of individuals, both did involve harsh accusations which seemed reasonably based but may not have been. By comparing and contrasting these two events, one can see specific recurring patterns not only in the history of the United States, but in the history of the whole world; by seeing this, hopefully
There are four books that I would like to introduce that contain information and statistics about criminality and African American culture in general. Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David Oshinsky. Which draws from first hand accounts from prison records and oral histories to discuss the conditions that African Americans faced in prisons in Mississippi. Dr Muhammad's book doesn't go in depth into what the conditions were inside the prisons for African Americans and this book shows the brutal conditions African Americans faced. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, by Douglas Blackmon.
In the work The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander raises an issue of present-day racial discrimination, its causes and effects on modern society. She says that when Barack Obama was elected as the first African-American President of the United States, it became a triumph of justice and equality. However, she argues that the “racial caste is alive and well in America” (2010), and provides convincing statistics to support her ideas. She says that “There are more African Americans under correctional control today - in prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began” (2010). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) presents information on its website about racial
As a citizen of America, we call 911 as resolution to protect us all citizens. In 1989, police proved to the people of New York City that they are not the ones who can always solve our problems. The Ken Burns documentary, The Central PAs a citizen of America, we call 911 as resolution to protect us all citizens. In 1989, police proved to the people of New York City that they are not the ones who can always solve our problems. The Ken Burns documentary, The Central Park Five, follows the case of five African-American and Hispanic youths who were falsely imprisoned for a rape and an assault they did not commit.
Angela Davis’ book Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture provides her critique on how today’s democracy is continually weakened by structures of oppression, such as slavery, reconstruction, and lynching. By utilizing her own experience and employing views from historical figures like Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Dubois, Davis examines the chain of racism, sexism, and political oppression. She speaks of the hidden moral and ethical issues that bring difference within people’s social situations. In the “Abolition Democracy” chapter, she describes the relationship between the production of law and violation of law demonstrated in the United States.
In 2010, author Michelle Alexander wrote the truly insightful book, The New Jim Crow. Throughout the book, Alexander displayed that by targeting African American men through the War on Drugs and racial biases within communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system is still functioning as a modern day system of racial control while hiding behind colorblindness. The New Jim Crow is an eye opening account of how African Americans are still being denied the very rights supposedly won from the Civil Rights Movement and makes one think about the modern day racial stigmas African Americans are facing. Although there has been many reforms to America, stigmatization is a still growing problem within the African American community and the lasting
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: The New Press. Michelle Alexander in her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" argues that law enforcement officials routinely racially profile minorities to deny them socially, politically, and economically as was accustomed in the Jim Crow era.
The Central Park Five is a documentary film that was produced by Ken Burns in the year of 2012. This documentary tells the story of five black teenage boys whose lives were changed forever when they were falsely convicted and imprisoned for brutally beating and raping a woman jogging in Central Park on the night of April 19, 1989. By creating this film, the filmmakers allowed the young men to share with the public their own accounts of that horrific night. The film exposed not only police intimidation, but the lack of evidence used to convict the five boys. Through blurbs of different newscast shown in the documentary, the viewer was also able to get a glimpse of how the crime brought about a cultural diversity causing extreme violence to erupt
Is it fair that an African American man is sentenced up to life in prison for possession of drugs when Brock Turner is sentenced to only 14 years, later to be reduced to six months for sexually assaulting an unconscious women. The judiciary system are believed to have a high african american incarceration rate as a result of discrimination. At a presidential debate on Martin Luther King Day, President Barack Obama said that “Blacks and whites are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, and receive very different sentences… for the same crime.” Hillary Clinton said the “disgrace of a criminal-justice system that incarcerates so many more african americans proportionately than whites.”
American history is built on affairs regarding freedom and equality, but negative issues thought to be conquered in the past have also become present day problems. When confronting controversial social, economic, and political topics in America today, the line between fact and opinion blurs. People across the country develop their own views on national issues, based only on personal experience and what the media tells them. Whether it be intention or ignorance, Americans are not supplied with enough information to accurately confront the major, national problems that lie just inside this country’s borders. Americans are unaware of slavery and socioeconomic issues that exist around them, which in turn presents a concern when trying to combat
The documentary film, The Central Park Five, demonstrate the result of people's tendencies to generalize individuals due to their racial group and their economic standing. In this case, five teenage boys were wilding in central park accompanying a group of other boys but the five boys were arrested and then later was suspected of another crime that also takes place at the park that night. They were accused rape of a woman jogging in the park and they gave false confessions to those claims. Come the time of the court hearing, these five teenage boys were already known to the public as a dangerous group. They were found guilty of a crime that they did not commit.
Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.