American Justice System Not Colorblind - Veronica Nichols

The protests that have rocked the US in recent weeks have brought light to the fact that the United States today is in no way post-racial. To start, the US jails its people at a much higher rate then any other country in  the world. According to the american civil liberties union one in every 31 adults is under some sort of correction. Also an alarming fact is that black americans are jailed at a much higher rate then white americans. This is mostly because of the supposed "war on drugs" although statistically white people and black people use drugs at roughly the same rate black people are arrested for drug use at a much higher rate. In 2010 the arrests for marijuana were 716 arrests per 100,000 black residents and 192 arrests per 100,000 white residents. Extremely disproportionate numbers. Although there are not any national numbers on racial profiling it is extremely clear that black residents have a much higher rate of encounters with the police and that those encounters progress farther criminally. But the injustice doesn't just stop with our police system it extends into the judicial system also. Not everyone who stands in front of a judge is sentenced equally and not every case is prosecuted equally. Killings involving a white perpetrator and black victim are more likely to be deemed justified then killings involving a black perpetrator and white victim . Almost half of all the people serving life sentences in the US are black, despite being a minority. Because of these facts Black americans justifiably have much less confidence in the police and in the system at large.

These facts really show what's messed up in our society today. Just like in the years after slavery the African American community in our country seems to be at a disadvantage. The country never really got to the equality they think they got to. Like the black codes and Jim Crow laws then meant to disadvantage African Americans the judicial system is acting in a similarly disadvantageous way.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/12/11/no-justice-is-not-colorblind