Justice: Make it Yours.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” -Martin Luther King Jr. In a country where everyone is supposed to have equal and fair treatment, one cannot help but wonder if the wise words from Doctor King are just as, if not more relevant today than they were decades ago. For years we grow up with the understanding that our justice system is flawless and fair. We are taught that no man or women, regardless of race, wealth or sexual orientation would be treated any differently when it came to justice in our fine country. However, what we have been told growing up has ended up blinded our nation from the harsh reality that is our American “Justice” System. Despite being a system that prides itself on being equal, and having law enforcement officers that are hired in order to “protect and serve” there have been far too many cases of injustice throughout our country. This injustice is targeting mostly one single race of people, and the group of people that are being generalized and targeted by the system is in fact African American or “Black” people. At first, the system was able to cover up the injustice of our system, but now in an era where technology and media are more universal, our justice system is becoming more and more exposed as the harsh reality that it really is. In a system where everyone is supposed to be treated equal, not everyone is.

Right now, the United States faces a rather large issue in regards to mass incarceration. Mass incarceration is pretty much a self-explanatory phrase. The word Mass meaning “a lot of” or “much of” while the word incarceration means to “imprison” “lock up” or even to “shut up”. So this term, Mass incarceration, ultimately means that we as a nation have a serious issue with locking people up in jail and imprisoning them. Currently, the issue goes much deeper than just the absurdity in regards to the number of people we have in jail, but rather to the number of African American people that are in jail. As it stands, the generalization of our justice system towards people of color is extremely negative and is further creating a much larger problem. Right now in a system where everyone is supposed to be “Innocent until proven Guilty” the members of the black community are faced with the harsh reality of “Guilty until proven Innocent”.

The book Just Mercy A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson the reader is able to go in depth further into the world of the justice system and see just how corrupt our beloved system really is. “The collateral consequences of mass incarceration have been equally profound. We ban poor women, and inevitably, their children from receiving food stamps and public housing if they have prior drug convictions”. (Stevenson 16) Stevenson goes in depth even further to the larger problem at hand. Due to the fact that mass incarceration towards people of color is becoming such a huge issue, it is affecting the lives of their children, inevitably putting young children who are majority African American, into a system that is set up for them to lose. In a country where everyone is supposed to have an equal opportunity to succeed, how is it fair that we let a group of people try and survive with such a large disadvantage? The time is now or never for our country to rise up against the system and create justice for all, giving everyone an equal opportunity to survive in these United States.

Throughout his book, Bryan Stevenson makes many references to the social identity that has cultivated for himself, he actually prides himself on the work that he has put into making an identity for himself and is not afraid to be proud of who he is. Stevenson is an African American lawyer who attended Harvard Law school, and who is currently a professor at the New York University School of Law. Needless to say, Mr. Stevenson is quite the educated man, and has put in the work to show for it.“I discovered that the law school offered an unusual one-month intensive course on race and poverty litigation taught by Betsy Bartholet, a law professor who had worked as an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense fund.” (Stevenson 5). Yet, despite Stevenson being highly educated, most likely more so that the majority of law enforcement officers, he still faced an abundance of negative experiences at the hands of the criminal justice system. In one passage in his book, Stevenson describes a scenario in which he is innocently sitting his car minding his own business, but yet is still able to garner suspicion from law enforcement officers.

This assumption of suspicion grows even larger when numerous officers aggressively approach Stevenson’s car, harassing him and going through all of his belongings. Stevenson is fully aware of his rights, yet because of the stigma towards members of the black community, he does absolutely nothing and just sits still, knowing that any action he may make could result in harm to himself at the hands of law enforcement. He claimed that if were younger and more reactant to what was happening around him that he probably would have run, yet of course being a young African American male, running would have been an extremely unsafe option. The issue of mass incarceration towards members of the black community is huge, because of this negative stigma and generalization, a man who was completely innocent, was racially profiled as someone that is a criminal with “little to no education”. These negative generalizations come at the hand of our very our law enforcement officers and are a prime example of the injustice that clouds our country.

Stevenson has created an identity for himself, despite growing up in a system that was against an African American man succeeding. Now as a social activists leader, Stevenson goes about his life trying to help others create their own identities in hopes that step by step he can change our justice system for the better. Stevenson is on his own path to help create a system that does not display a lack of disadvantage towards any race, but rather one that encourages the successfulness of men and women of all colors of life. Yet this path will not be easy, as Stevenson has faced many constraints and will most likely continue to face more. In our own community, these constraints are all around us, children at such a young age are already predisposed to the negative discourse that our country is going through. No child should have to feel like they are growing up in a system that wants them to fail. At my own community partner, the teachers and faculty work hard to make sure that student of all backgrounds has an equal opportunity to succeed regardless of race. Thus creating a small platform for young minds that there are systems that want them to succeed. Once the rest of our country is on board is when we will finally obtain the justice for members of the Black community that they desperately need.