Jada Childs
Ms.Duquette
ACP US History
1 May 2018
From the Chains of Slavery to Bars of Prison
The United States legal system is based on the Constitution and designed to afford citizens rights and freedoms yet all citizens are not treated equally. In particular, racial minorities, especially African Americans are not treated equal within the legal system. Since 1619, when a Dutch ship carried twenty Africans to a British colony in Virginia, blacks’ have been shackled both literally and figuratively in the way they are viewed and treated. Even with the abolishment of slavery in 1865 and subsequent creation of amendments granting blacks’ basic civil rights, the legal system was used to reduce Black freedom with Jim Crow laws and the black codes. As blacks’ have continued to fight for their civil rights and equal treatment under the law, the legal system has continued to allow for policies that target Blacks and Black communities disproportionately such as the War on Drugs and racial profiling leading to mass incarceration or the “new Jim Crow.” This has created a recurring pattern that has limited blacks’ ability to succeed, and leaves them tangled up with the law. Although slavery has long been abolished, the racially biased roots of the legal system have branched out through black codes and Jim Crow laws to contemporary racial profiling and racial disparities in arrest and sentencing, resulting in the continued oppression of Blacks under the law.
On September 17, 1787 the Constitution of the United States established America's National Government, which guaranteed basic human rights to citizens. Yet this concept of equality clearly did not include blacks since it was about a century before slavery was abolished, and Blacks were seen as having a legal presence. Consequently, the American government was run by white males who thought of blacks as less than human. In an article written in 1975 called, “White Racism, Black Crime, and American Justice”, Robert Staples, a criminologist, argued that “the legal system was made by white men to protect white interests and keep blacks down” (“The Color of Justice”). The Constitution once acknowledged blacks as only 3/5thof a human, hence, any legal system based on this premise is not just a system that needs to be fixed, but a system that was never justified from its establishment. While the government professed to be against slavery by implementing the death penalty for anyone that was caught selling, buying or trading slaves, W.E.B Du Bois, a civil rights activist “found that even after the death penalty was instituted in America for trading slaves, very few Whites were convicted, let alone executed for slave trading. He found that many White Americans believed the punishment of death was too severe a punishment to impose on someone engaging in the slave trade, therefore, White offenders were often found not guilty of the offense” (Jones). The government sets the precedent for what is morally right or wrong, therefore if they fail to enforce a law, it allows others to ignore the law as well. These early racial dynamics of slavery and the legal system had a profound impact on whites and blacks, playing a key role in the usage of laws and punishments on blacks.
After slavery was abolished in 1865 by the 13th amendment, blacks were supposed to have equal rights, yet many states began enacting restrictions to limit the freedom of blacks. Starting with the black codes which replaced the slave codes that existed during slavery in the South, these laws were intended to “penalize African Americans for offenses such as vagrancy and prevented them from testifying against White Americans, serving on juries, and voting” (Jones). This established a hypocrisy and duality within the legal system, where blacks were supposedly given full rights, yet then informal and formal codes were enacted and enforced by the police to limit blacks’ ability to work and live. Furthermore, as a result of white supremacy in the United States, white crimes against blacks were often not charged or settled with minimal punishment. Yet, blacks were charged harshly for minor infractions, faced with biased juries and judges, and subjected to strict punishments. For example, in the South, Blacks were terrorized during the time of lynching laws. Ida B. Wells, an African American journalist, studied the lynching of African Americans, which she argued showed a complete devaluement of blacks. She reported that “African Americans were often shot, hanged, or burned to death for minor offenses such as testifying in court, disrespecting Whites, and failing to repay debts” (Jones). Along with black codes and lynchings, Jim Crow Laws started in 1877, and lasted all the way to the Civil Rights movement. These laws legalized and enforced segregation of every single aspect of people’s daily lives, including schools, parks, restaurants, buses, trains, and virtually every space. This greatly affected the education blacks’ were able to receive, the jobs blacks were able to hold, and the quality of life in black communities. It allowed the government to build up the white communities, by spending money on advancing white-only schools, and ensuring they had the best teachers and facilities. This left black communities and schools at a great disadvantage, with poorly trained teachers, inferior facilities and little resources. The government would continue to use these forms of social control to keep the social hierarchy of white superiority and black inferiority, supporting the idea that a black life is less valuable than a white life. For example, Johnson created a Hierarchy of Homicide Seriousness to show the “historical devalued status of African Americans in the criminal justice system by noting that crimes are considered "most serious" when there is a White victim and Black offender” (Jones). Fast forwarding into present day, even though the black codes, legal lynching and Jim Crow laws have been removed, the legal system still has a foundation based on racism, which influences contemporary policies.
In contemporary United States, African Americans make up 13% of the population but account for 40% of all prison inmates, and 42% of all prisoners sent to the death penalty in 2010. Questionably blacks make up for almost a third of those arrested in 2010. This disproportionate incarceration has been called “the new Jim Crow” by sociologist Michelle Alexander, who argues that police target black communities especially in terms of the “war on drugs” and courts give blacks harsher sentences for the same crimes (The New Jim Crow). Mass incarceration of blacks is a result of many factors, including racial profiling by police, which is “the use of race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed an offense” (Oxford Dictionaries). In Maryland, “7 percent of traffic-code violators were black, but 72 percent of those stopped and searched were black” (“The Color of Justice”). These type of stops result in blacks obtaining a criminal record more rapidly than whites. Police officers also racially profile in other interactions with citizens, such as the stop-and-frisk policy used in minority communities in large cities. For example, in New York City, in black neighborhoods, black individuals can be stopped and frisked by the police without any probable cause, a traumatizing event that most young men of color have encountered. According to information provided by the NYPD “When whites were stopped, only 8% were frisked. When blacks and Latinos are stopped 85% were frisked…” (Quigley 2010). Once African Americans are arrested they are 33% more likely to be held in prison for long periods, even years, while awaiting trial. For example, a young black NYC teen Kalief Browder spent three years on Rikers Island prison awaiting trial for allegedly stealing a backpack before he was eventually released without being being charged, amidst allegations of severe abuse he suffered within the prison.(Gonnerman 2015). When facing a trial, 80% of blacks have to rely on a public defender for their lawyer, someone who is paid less and expected to work more hours. With the prosecution being paid exceedingly more, most times the defendant will plead guilty or be convicted even when they are innocent. Blacks also “receive sentences that are 10% longer than white offenders for the same crimes” (Quigley 2010). A prime example of this racial discrepancy is the distinctly different sentences given to two college athletes convicted of rape, arguably due to their racial differences. Cory Batey, a black, 19 year old football player at Vanderbilt raped an unconscious girl. They had security cameras, and cell phone cameras clearly outlining the assault, and he was sentenced to a minimum sentence of 15-25 years in prison. Yet, Brock Turner, a white, 19 year old swimmer at Stanford, raped an unconscious girl as well. Witnesses caught him in the act of raping the girl, but he was sentenced to serve 6 months in jail for the same crime. Two young adults who committed the same horrible crime, but received very different convictions. Undoubtedly, the color of their skin determined the severity of their punishments. The endeavor doesn’t end there, when they’re released from prison:
they're relegated to a permanent second-class status, stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement — like the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to be free of legal discrimination and employment, and access to education and public benefits. Many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again, once you've been branded a felon. (“Legal Scholar: Jim Crow Still Exists In America”)
This is not only causing mass incarceration, but it is further damaging their ability to succeed in the world after they are released. In 2012, there were “more African-Americans under correctional control — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began” (“Legal Scholar: Jim Crow Still Exists In America”), exhibiting how the legal system is gradually reverting back to historical times. Not only has this lead to mass incarceration, and unfair treatment, blacks make up 25% of the people killed by police officers. Even though blacks only make up 13% of the population, they are three times more likely to be shot and killed by police officers than a white person. This demonstrates the lingering racism, and racial profiling which plagues our legal system, through all parts from police to prosecutors to prison and beyond. Furthermore, it results in life and death decisions of an individual. Our justice system continues to be a racialized system of control, where blacks are repeatedly treated as inferior to whites.
From slavery to Jim Crow to racial profiling, it is evident that our criminal justice system is not broken, but rather it is operating just as those who created it, intended it to function. Slavery has long been abolished, yet African Americans are still faced with a legal system that values their lives less based on race. The justice system was created by white males without any recognition that blacks were even fully human and this inequality continues today through the legal system and the documented differential treatment by race. Today this inequality and racism still runs through the justice system in new forms. The more things change the more they stay the same.