Fox News debuted an article on the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman case on March 23, 2012, titled Geraldo Rivera: Trayvon Martin Would be Alive. This article allowed for Rivera the opportunity to analyze the circumstances that surrounded the Trayvon Martin’s case. Rivera argues that if Trayvon Martin was not wearing a hoodie on the night that he was murdered he would be alive today. Rivera supports his claims by explaining how the overall culture of the ghetto produced these types of results. He even goes so far to claim that Trayvon Martin’s death was not attributed to his skin color, but because he was wearing a hoodie late at night. Comments such as “ghetto” and “ghetto wannabe wise-ass” are the words to describe the clothing and the …show more content…
Crime, Citizenship, and the Court’s analyzation of Incarceration, Inequality, and Imagining Alternatives have revealed the prevalent racial profiling that exists in the African American community. Bruce Western emphasizes the prominent levels of incarceration in minority neighborhoods elaborating on the negative effects that these rates have on families, communities, and lifestyles. He reiterates that “incarceration deepens inequality because its negative social and economic effects are concentrated in the poorest communities” (Western, 297). When we analyze Fox News media portrayals of Martin, we could begin to understand why African Americans change their methods of transportation, clothing, and routines. These men adapt to the reality of racial profiling in fear that one day, they may contribute to the high incarceration rates within their communities. A good example of this fear is Peter’s story. Peter is an African American male who decides “to get from place to place by mass transit and walking” because he is in fear that “riding a car with friends might get him arrested” (Western, 299). Hence, the constant fear of racial profiling based on clothing or the paranoia of getting stopped for walking or riding in a car with friends serves as an overarching theme of the social …show more content…
Males like Martin, are constantly profiled to be threatening or dangerous, which makes males that look like Martin more likely to switch their behaviors, so they do not get involved in altercations or contribute to the high incarceration rates facing the minority communities. In turn, the concept of racial profiling and mass incarceration in the black community is alive and problematic in combating the biological social construct of
An most common legal court case that has encouraged my decision to pursue a career in law was the Trayvon Martin v.s. George Zimmerman case. This case was about an 17-year-old African American young male adult was shot by George Zimmerman in "self defense". This happened on February 26th, 2012 at night when Trayvon was walking home and Zimmerman called the cops saying it looked like he was up to no good. To sum it up, Trayvon was fatally shot by Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, in Sanford, Florida. This case was basically related in the racism category due to profiling and stereotypes.
This book talks about how African American and Latino young men in Oakland, California are most likely to targeted by police. The author Victor M. Rios, who once was a gang member and juvenile delinquent, but turned his life around. Explains how youth of color in his hometown are harassed, profiled, watched, and disciplined at young ages by authorities. Even though they have not committed any crimes. It took him three-year study to calculate is data and present it. For this observation, Rios used 40 African American and Latino young men in Oakland.
Even though the death of Trayvon Martin has become a well-known tragedy throughout the states, there have been some positive outcomes. The controversy of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case revolved around Zimmerman's alleged act of racism and his claim of self-defense. According to George Zimmerman, it all started when
According to West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, a study in Maryland revealed that “70 percent of those stopped and searched on a stretch of I-95 were African American- despite the fact that they represented only 17 percent of drivers on the road.” In light of this confounding statistic, it can be seen that racism and racial profiling was, and still is, an issue in society. Even so, in his essay “Just Walk on By”, Brent Staples apprises of his story as a young, black man growing up in a large city and him facing racial profiling on the city streets. Furthermore, Staples shows his message that many people are willing to judge a person and assume what that person might have done and will do by their outside appearance by using a strong sense of Pathos and showing his persona through his own portrayal of his experience.
In his essay “Arrested Development: The Conservative Case Against Racial Profiling” published in the New Republic on September 10, 2001, professor James Forman Jr. illustrates his disagreement with racial profiling. Forman Jr. is a professor at Yale Law School. He teaches Constitutional Law and seminars on race and the criminal justice system. In his piece, Forman primary goal is to create understanding about the effectiveness of racial profiling and how this affects the black community especially youths. Forman achieves this by appealing to a liberal audience.
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.
We live in a society where ethnic minorities are target for every minimal action and/or crimes, which is a cause to be sentenced up to 50 years in jail. African Americans and Latinos are the ethnic minorities with highest policing crimes. In chapter two of Michelle Alexander’s book, The Lockdown, we are exposed to the different “crimes” that affects African American and Latino minorities. The criminal justice system is a topic discussed in this chapter that argues the inequality that people of color as well as other Americans are exposed to not knowing their rights. Incarceration rates, unreasonable suspicions, and pre-texts used by officers are things that play a huge role in encountering the criminal justice system, which affects the way
Henry A. Giroux is one of the primary scholars of today’s society. In his work, Giroux primarily focuses on the economic and social issues that exist in the United States. His article “Hoodie Politics: Trayvon Martin and Racist Violence in Post-Racial America” is informative and insightful because Giroux provides the audience with valuable information regarding the matter. The controversial case of the killing of Trayvon Martin led to much racial tension that rapidly spread across the US in 2012. Although I find Giroux to be somewhat biased with his material, his article “Hoodie Politics: Trayvon Martin and Racist Violence in Post-Racial America” contains numerous suitable arguments that I can come to an agreement with.
Michelle Alexander, similarly, points out the same truth that African American men are targeted substantially by the criminal justice system due to the long history leading to racial bias and mass incarceration within her text “The New Jim Crow”. Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Michelle Alexander’s text exhibit the brutality and social injustice that the African American community experiences, which ultimately expedites the mass incarceration of African American men, reflecting the current flawed prison system in the U.S. The American prison system is flawed in numerous ways as both King and Alexander points out. A significant flaw that was identified is the injustice of specifically targeting African American men for crimes due to the racial stereotypes formed as a result of racial formation. Racial formation is the accumulation of racial identities and categories that are formed, reconstructed, and abrogated throughout history.
Racial or any profiling compiles behavioral characteristics associated with particular criminal actions, creating an original form of a yet unknown people who might be more likely than others to perpetrate the crime. The serial killer profiling was generated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which use crime scene evidence that implies the character of the perpetrator and helps narrow the scope of analysis. It was based on lengthy interviews with 33 convicted killers, an actual grounding like to the drug carrier sketch of Operation Pipeline (below). Racial profiling results when a complicated set of factors (which can include race) including a particular criminal profile are torn away in practice, transformed into an unjustified reduction: “Minorities are more prone to have drugs or commit additional crimes than are whites.”
“African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population.” The majority group of this statistic are people who come from african american backgrounds. The fact that black people are to make up nearly half of the prison population alone, really conveys the rate at which they are being arrested. Black men are often victims of racial profiling by police. They are targeted by police officers, and security guards, and are accused of crimes unrelated to them, simply on the basis of their skin color.
Alexander focuses on how African American communities have become more vulnerable to the arrests. Authorities will target these communities even though this is not where the crime is happening. Lastly, many people are labeled ‘felons’ for life, even though they have only committed one victimless crime. Michelle Alexander summarizes her opinion by saying, “We have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it.” Even though America has taken many small steps to move forward from segregation, black individuals are locked up behind bars and will struggle for the rest of their lives to escape from the ‘felon’ title.
Trayvon Benjamin Martin, born February 5, 1995, was an African- American high school student he was shot and killed on February 26, 2012, two houses down from his own. Trayvon was 17 when he died. Trayvon martin was walking home from the store 7 eleven on the night he was shot and killed. Trayvon carried a bag of skittles and an Arizona tea he was dressed in a black hoodie and was completely unarmed. Trayvon was heading back home to his father’s house that he had been staying with while he was suspended from school.
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.
Synthesis Research Paper Everyday growing up as a young black male we have a target on our back. Society was set out for black males not to succeed in life. I would always hear my dad talk about how police in his younger days would roam around the town looking for people to arrest or get into an altercation with. As a young boy growing up I couldn’t believe some of the things he said was happening. However as I got older I would frequently hear about someone getting killed by the police force.