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Racism; a barbaric, inhumane, cerebral pattern. It has had a cultural presence in America for over three hundred years. It targets African Americans in countless forms and its justification lies within The Constitution, the law, and most importantly, the criminal justice system (C.J.S.). The C.J.S. portrays African Americans as rapists, criminals, and most severely as animals. It is the C.J.S. that is responsible for the immense oppression that African Americans have had to endure since their first step on American soil. There is no longer slavery, but is there freedom for African Americans? No. The criminal justice system has transitioned African Americans from slaves to criminals based on a mindset of bigotry that has been a part of American civilization for hundreds of years. “Violence is as American as cherry pie.” (Jamil Al-Amin)

Section 1: The 13th Amendment’s Transitional Slavery

Following the Civil War, the 13th Amendment was constitutionalized in 1865 and gave African Americans nationwide their liberation from slavery. However, as most laws do, the amendment has a loophole that has continued to be exploited to today. The amendment states that, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States...” This means that slavery is allowed as punishment for a crime. The technicality that exists in the statement regarding criminals as slaves was the outlet for not only slavery to press forth, but for racism and bigotry to continue to have a place in American civilization. Following the passing of the amendment on January 31st, African Americans were hunted down by law enforcement for petty crimes such as loitering, and the nation saw its first incline in the prison population. Hundreds of African Americans were left homeless after gaining their freedom. Vagrancy was yet another petty ‘crime’ that landed hundreds of African Americans in prison. The freedom of African American citizens was shortly lived. The arrival of a different type of slavery led to the mythology of black criminology which still lingers in our country today.

When the film A Birth of A Nation came out in 1915, the portrayal of African Americans as corrupt animals only furthered itself into American society. It was truly the birth of a new age of apartheid. In a particular scene in the film, a young, white girl is confronted by a ‘dangerous black male’ seeking to rape her. The actress throws herself off a cliff as she would rather die than be raped by such ‘filth’. This image was striking and had a huge, lasting impact on how our society views not only African Americans but specifically African American males. Although the film falsifies the truth by depicting all African American males as rapists, it is proven that more white men rape African American girls than African American men rape white girls. In the film, leaders and followers of the Ku Klux Klan are seen as the heroes and ‘show the black rapist the justice he deserves’. Although the Klan was still prevalent at the time, the film’s depiction of their heroism contributed to an extensive spike in the number of followers in the terrorist organization. The KKK were the heroes of the South and they terrorized, lynched, and murdered the African American community. Although more heavily discouraged today, the Klan is still a prevalent organization in America. The most dangerous aspect about the Klan is that its members are hidden amongst us as our neighbors, policemen, and politicians. It was the film, A Birth of a Nation, that helped the KKK to blossom and what spread the vile idea that African Americans are nothing but criminals.

Section 2: The Civil Rights Movement: A Dawn in African American Criminalization

The Civil Rights era again roused a new age in the criminalization of African American citizens. The prison population grew immensely as African Americans were seen as enemies of the state for advocating for their liberty and justice. The formation of the NAACP was the spark that lit the flame for the African American fight against second class citizenship. Before the Civil Rights Movement (C.R.M.), it was the NAACP that organized an advocation association for African Americans. The NAACP was formed when ten prominent leaders, later nicknamed the talented tenth, allied with one another and began to lobby and fight against segregation. The group not only contained African American reformers but even white citizens who were outraged by segregation. The NAACP was the first well-formed African American organization to grapple with the United States’ court system. Although their main lobbying focused on job opportunities for African Americans, they also fought against segregation. Their modern ethics included the concept that “the spirit of the abolitionists, of Lincoln and Lovejoy, must be revived and we must come to treat [African Americans] on a plane of absolute political and social equality.” It was a radical idea at the time, but it is what encouraged and created advancement towards the C.R.M. Founder of the NAACP, William English Walling, lobbied with the organization for parts of the 1933 legislation passed by F.D.R., the New Deal. The measure gave the African American community more federal support for their causes, but it still allowed a fair amount of discrimination to continue. After investigating a race riot in Illinois, Walling wrote an article entitle The Race War in the North, which helped gain support for not only the African American community but also, the NAACP. The continual work on legislation and reporting on violence by the NAACP, in addition to an obvious unrest in the African American community, is what helped to lead the nation’s oppressed into the C.R.M. This is when the community’s building advancement for equal rights landed them in prisons. It was the dawn of a new age of criminalization and renewal of racism condoned by the government.

Today, the atrocities inflicted upon African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement are widely known and our nation while not altogether apologetic, recognizes the barbarity of it. However, widely unknown and unremembered are the events that followed the C.R.M. during Nixon’s and Reagan's presidency. President Nixon’s “law and order” movement was on the surface a war on crime and drugs but in reality was a backlash movement against the C.R.M. John Ehrlichman, staff member of the Nixon presidency, came clean in recent years about the true intentions of “law and order.” Ehrlichman was quoted saying, “...the Nixon White House... had [an enemy]:... black people... We knew we couldn't’ make it legal to be… against… black but by getting the public to associate… blacks with heroin and then criminalizing [them] heavily, we could disrupt [their community]. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying...? Of course we did.” This image presented all over the media is what began the age of black criminalization that we know all too well today. The entire African American community was depicted in countless forms as drug users and dealers, rapists, and thugs. The depiction however is not an image that has altogether become irrelevant in our society and many continue to wrongly see African Americans in this false light. After the Nixon presidency, presidents Reagan and even Clinton led the continuation of the crack down on African Americans. Reagan began a mass incarceration movement referred to as “The War on Drugs.” It was focused on arresting anyone with involvement in the then booming crack cocaine industry. Crack did and still has a larger influence in the African American community because it is cheaper than powdered cocaine. While many white people use cocaine, it is the African Americans who are targeted, arrested, and condemned. After Reagan’s mass incarceration movement, it was president Bill Clinton that took “law and order” to a whole new level. Clinton completely changed the court system and created laws such as the “3 strikes” policy and “mandatory minimums”. These laws made and still make it nearly impossible for criminals to be rehabilitated back into society. The whole point of a prison system is to reintegrate criminals back into society as productive, law abiding members, but these laws simply insure a lifetime of punishment with no chance of redemption. Through these presidencies, the African American community faced a continual onslaught of militarization of police that has continued on to our modern C.J.S.

Section 3: Modern Apartheid and Police Brutality

In 2017, our modern age, African Americans still have to struggle to fight against not only the C.J.S. and police brutality, but also they are forced to face the truth that they can at any time be victims of a police shooting. Our government is comprised of a C.J.S. that condones and ignores public, racist violence. This “... refers to structural and physical violence initiated, perpetuated, and justified by the government.” A well-known example of an unjustified police shooting of an African American is the Michael Brown shooting. Brown was seen having a verbal disagreement with two police officers and before he and the boy that was with him knew it, the scene dramatically intensified as one of the officers “fired his weapon out the window of the [police] vehicle.” Instinctively, the two boys ran from the gunfire, but the officers pursued them. Brown was shot down, but Officer Wilson continued to fire and shot Michael a total of six times; twice in the head leaving the boy dead on the scene. Brown’s family hired a private forensic pathologist (outside of the police forensic scientist), Shawn Parcells, who after examining Michael’s body, theorized that at least two of the gunshot wounds occurred after the teen had raised his arms in surrender. He was 18 years old, a newly graduate about to begin his life. Whether or not Brown actually committed a crime is irrelevant. He wasn’t murdered for his crime, he was murdered because he is black and our government condones this sort of blatant racism, which takes hundreds of names every year. Names such as Keith Childress, Bettie Jones, Tiara Thomas, and hundreds of others. Trayvon Martin is yet another case of police brutality. At age seventeen, Martin was murdered. On February 26, 2012, Martin was walking home to his family when George Zimmerman shot him because the boy “looked suspicious.” He was heard crying, “help me” as Zimmerman brutally killed him. The C.J.S. protected Martin’s murderer under a law known as “Stand Your Ground.” Laws such as this are written by an organization called A.L.E.C., which continue to persecute African Americans and leave them rotting in cells.

Today, the main battle for African American citizens is against organizations like A.L.E.C. who are responsible for creating laws that are meant to target and criminalize their community. A.L.E.C. is a lobbying organization that composes laws like “Stand Your Ground” and feeds legislatures, often with support of Republican groups, laws that are specifically designed to incarcerate the African American community. Their gain in targeting African Americans is that they, along with the monopolistic companies that support them, make trillions off of the prison system, modern G.P.S. systems (ankle bracelets), and parole and bail companies. Their legislation pushes for African Americans to wind up in jail so that they can make money off of them. In many instances they control huge parts of the government and all the while profit off of bigotry and racism. There only goal is personal gain and the organization has no real interest in the C.J.S. or protecting American citizens. It is our modern form of “Law and Order” and it has completely corrupted our local and state government systems.

The C.J.S. has metamorphosed our country from a land of freedom and hope to a place of fear and discrimination. Because of the C.J.S., African Americans have gone from slaves of the people to slaves of the government and it is due to a mentality of racism that has been passed down for generations. This concept and system that the C.J.S. condones has developed from the distorted images of Birth of a Nation. It has come from the civil rights era when African Americans were enemies of the state. It has blossomed from political movements like “Law and Order” and the “War on Drugs.” It has developed from the laws that are meant to condemn criminals rather than rehabilitate them. And now, it has turned into a system that condones the terrorization of the African American community. Mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters are shot by the very people who are supposed to be keeping us safe. They are wrongly sentenced and convicted; sometimes for crimes they didn’t even commit. It is an escalation and cycle that is not being broken but reshaped and reformed. The government is not only not breaking the chain of this cycle but they are condoning it and adding links. If change is to occur, it is up to the common American to lobby for change. It is within the power of every single American to make a difference and give the African American community the respect, love, and empathy that they deserve. Will you make a difference?

Works Cited

13th. Ava DuVernay. Netflix. 2106. Web.