Hi there. This is my first real discussion thread, so if it comes out lopsided, I’ll work on a new one and come back later. I hope that there isn't another thread out there that covers this one, and I looked but I didn't see one. In case you’re wondering, I’m 14, one half black, and one half white. Apparently, there is some Native American in there somewhere, but I’m not really Native American, and I do not claim to understand their experience in America whatsoever and I do not know what it is like to be one at all. But anyway, I think that lately, people have been saying racism is not a problem. But I think that it is, and a very serious one at that. I point to the criminal justice system, which a lot of people apparently don’t think has any racial problems.
“The survey, which was mostly conducted before the shooting of NYPD Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in New York over the weekend, found similar results on perceptions of the justice system as a whole. While 41% of Americans say the criminal justice system treats blacks fairly, far more whites - 50% - see equity. Among non-whites, that figure drops to just 21%. Two-thirds of non-whites said that the criminal justice system favors whites over blacks.”
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/22/politics/ ... e-justice/
But it definitely seems to have problems.
“Prison sentences of black men were nearly 20% longer than those of white men for similar crimes in recent years, an analysis by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241 ... 3789858002
http://www.vox.com/2014/7/1/5850830/war ... minorities
“Approximately 12%-13% of the American population is African-American, but they make up 40% of the almost 2.1 million male inmates in jail or prison (U.S. Department of Justice, 2009).[1]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics ... ican_males
There are also many issues with racial profiling.
“For every 10,000 residents, about 3,400 more black people are stopped than whites, and 360 more Latinos are stopped than whites. Stopped blacks are 127% more likely to be frisked -- and stopped Latinos are 43% more likely to be frisked -- than stopped whites. Stopped blacks are 76% more likely to be searched, and stopped Latinos are 16% more likely to be searched than stopped whites.
Stopped blacks are 29% more likely to be arrested, and stopped Latinos are 32% more likely to be arrested than stopped whites.
Now consider this: Although stopped blacks were 127% more likely to be frisked than stopped whites, they were 42.3% less likely to be found with a weapon after they were frisked, 25% less likely to be found with drugs and 33% less likely to be found with other contraband. We found similar patterns for Latinos.
Not only did we find that African Americans and Latinos were subjected to more stops, frisks, searches and arrests than whites, we also found that these additional police actions aren't because of the fact that people of color live in higher-crime areas or because they more often carry drugs or weapons, or any other legitimate reason that we can discern from the rich set of data we examined.”
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/23 ... oe-ayres23
And, with the advent of DNA technology, tons of people were exonerated. The vast majority of the wrongfully convicted were black.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content ... onwide.php
A few other links to consider:
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues ... ed-states/
http://www.sentencingproject.org/templa ... cfm?id=122
After looking through this, I’d say race is still a pretty serious problem in the US, and not talking about it won’t solve anything, just make it worse. I think people are touchy and uncomfortable when it comes to talking about race, because there’s a chance they could be called racist, and a racist is something that society at large generally says is bad, although I think tons of people are still racist. But this wouldn’t be much of a thread if I didn’t ask: what do you think? What racist experiences have you gone through?
EDIT:
Let me revise this, so people can post a little bit more.
A problem, but how serious a problem? Who do you think is its source? How ingrained is it? Are you a racist? (I want a little more than the generic statement, 'yes, it's a problem')
