Legacy of Slavery

What? Events from the past regarding racial violence are very similar to today’s events. These events can’t be separated because they fit into the same category of racial inequity. Times may be different but society’s actions remain the same. In Just Mercy, Stevenson describes his meetings with his first death row inmates and how he recognized a lot of them as the same type of people that he interacted with when he was growing up. At one point, Stevenson writes, “Some states permanently strip people with criminal convictions of the right to vote as a result in several southern states just enfranchisement among African-American men has reached levels unseen since before the Voting Rights Act of 1965“ (Stevenson 16). This is an example of how our society has the same thinking now as it did in the past. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was an act aiming to overcome racial discrimination in voting. Before this act was published, it prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote. However, up until this point in history, African-Americans could not vote or had to prove their literacy with a test. Literacy tests were used to stop African Americans from voting since the government in the South knew that most of them were illiterate. A very similar thing is happening now in our society. According to the NAACP, black and LatinX populations make up roughly 34% of the American population but they make up 56% of the incarcerated population. The NAACP also reports that African Americans are 5 times more likely to be arrested than whites. A huge number of African-American and LatinX people are in prison, and once they are released, depending on what state they are in, they are stripped of their right to vote, and there is no literacy test to gain that right back. Stevenson’s book and these facts from today show that you can’t separate what happened in history from today because the same racial inequity is occurring.

In Stevenson’s interview, he also draws conclusions between historical racial discrimination and today. Stevenson basically describes how capital punishment and the death penalty is just a socially accepted form of lynching. He states that in the past, “people were not lynched because of a crime, but because they had committed some social transgression” meaning they did something that wasn’t illegal but was socially unacceptable. Stevenson then goes on to discuss how this is similar to the capital punishment because most of the death row inmates, “were innocent and certainly [had not] been reliably tried in a way that you could impose that kind of punishment”. The history of lynching in education is swept under the rug in a way. It is mentioned but not investigated thoroughly in classrooms so many people, as they get older and vote, say yes to capital punishment because they think that murderers should be killed for killing another but the fact of the matter is that many people on death row do not deserve to be there.

The video discusses how the school to prison pipeline works. It states that throughout the last several years, officers on campuses and school discipline have gone up dramatically even though school crime rates have actually decreased. This is because little things like talking back are receiving harsh punishment and contributing to this statistic. Resource officers are a way for schools, “to basically outsource discipline to the police”. According to the video, schools with officers have 5 times more arrests for disorderly conduct than schools without officers. This is how schools contribute to the school to prison pipeline. A school is more likely to have a campus officer if the student body is more than 50%. If there were not negative preconceived notions about black people this would not be the case. Students at these schools are most likely to be arrested but most won’t actually have any charges held against them. The video states that 1 in 6 students in the US are black but 1 in 3 students arrested are black, meaning more black students are being arrested than white students even though there are fewer black students. In the interview, Stevenson mentioned that “we have a legal system that treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent” which relates to the fact that black and white students are sent to the principal’s office at similar rates but black students are more likely to receive a serious punishment. Since the minorities, unfortunately, end up being in the lower class, even if someone is innocent their chances of being arrested and/or receiving a serious punishment is more likely than a white, rich guilty person.

So What? In the interview and book, Stevenson discusses what it means to be a person of color in America. Stevenson describes in his book the time 2 officers were hostile with him and did an illegal search of his car when he was just sitting listening to the radio in his car. He describes asking them why they were doing this and that he lived a few doors down. When the SWAT officers said he should be happy they were letting him go and didn’t apologize he was urged to file a complaint to the police department. He didn’t want to tell them that he was a civil rights attorney and was investigating police misconduct cases because it shouldn’t matter if he was educated or not. This story is another example of police thinking innocent black people are extremely threatening. Just like Kenny’s story and the TSA story from the Ted Talk video the other week, these people are pulled aside and questioned in an aggressive manner when they were simply living their lives. They were not committing crimes or doing anything illegal. Anybody who is a minority is still viewed as a threat in the eyes of society even when the person is simply going about their day. This goes back to what I said in a previous critical reflection about how anything different is considered strange and unacceptable. Society acts like everyone is equal but people’s voices are finally getting through to say that racial discrimination and inequality are very much prevalent. All stereotypes, negative and positive, about a certain minority are put on a person of that color and are often associated as a threat to another’s safety when this simply isn’t true. These people aren’t even given the chance to show who they truly are because we simply slap a label on them and decide they are dangerous just because they look a certain way. There is no evidence supporting that people of color are even dangerous and deserve in any way the treatment society constantly puts them through. They have been discriminated against our entire nation’s history and not once as a whole have we stepped back to think why we feel this way when these people have provided us no reason to see them the way we do. I overheard one of the students in the ESL class say that when his father first came here that he was accused of being in the cartel because he was Mexican and was then deported even though he had no prior criminal history so the student had to travel here to try and make money for his family back in Mexico. His father had no chance of proving himself and was labeled dangerous when he was simply trying to provide for his family. Stevenson discusses that being a person of color in American today means you constantly have to fight for things that are taken for granted by others and you have to be careful even when you are doing nothing because it could be seen as dangerous because of the way you look and not believed even when you are telling the truth. In his interview, Stevenson said, “I want a world where no black person has to be presumed dangerous and guilty. I want a world where my children and grandchildren and nephews and nieces are not having to navigate all of the obstacles that I’ve had to navigate. But we cannot get there if we’re unwilling to have enough hope, enough belief, enough faith that if we tell the truth, we can get to something that looks like justice”. To make this change people need to take action on the things they believe in and then maybe we can begin to make small strides in one of our world's biggest problems.

Now What? My community partner is Canal Alliance ESL. I have been talking to the other aide in my classroom who has volunteered there for a while and is very knowledgeable about Canal Alliance. She explained to me that the Canal and San Rafael was kind of a sanctuary city and that many undocumented immigrants live in these areas. She explained that people come here because they can 5–10 times more money doing their same job than they can back home. The majority of the people here think they will work for a few years in America and then go back home and buy a house and start a business but that doesn’t become reality for the majority of the people. They end up meeting someone and having a family here so their kids are US citizens but the parents are not or one spouse is undocumented and the other one isn’t. It then becomes very hard for the people who have moved here because they just want to keep their family together but are always in constant fear of ICE and deportation. She said that families who are undocumented who have been in the US for years and have teenage children can’t just pick up and go back to their home country. Their children speak English and are in school and have friends here in American. They know that their children will get a better education here than back home so they decide to risk it and stay. She even shared a personal story about how she married an undocumented man and got married in Mexico. She then went to the US to get his papers started but it was taking too long so they decided that he should come to the US as well but he ended up getting arrested and deported and was never able to come back. She said that it was really heartbreaking and sad because their son had to grow up without a father and that she could relate to the fear and sadness that the families in the Canal experience. I have noticed great strength in the students in the class I help with. In the face of all this fear, they are willing to do all the steps to become successful. They are learning English class and working so hard to have more opportunities that they won’t be simply given because of how our society is constructed. They have the amazing strength to function even with this looming fear that their dreams could be absolutely obliterated and could be forced to return home and can never come back. They risk getting caught so they can help their families and themselves have a better life.