Slavery in an Age of Equality

 

In our current day most of us would say we live in a time with equal rights and opportunity for all. But do we really? When almost one out of every three black males will serve time in prison but their white counterparts having committed offenses and statistically similar rates have a greatly minimized chance of serving time. For the moment let’s focus merely on drug related offenses. On the average it was shown that for African Americans incarcerated there were nearly seven African Americans serving time for drug related charges compared to merely one white male. Now perhaps you are wondering how this affects our society. Well for one, studies have shown that all races use illegal substances at nearly identical rates, so why is it a single portion of our society has a much larger rate of imprisonment. Compared to every other country the United States prison systems have skyrocketed out of control while most other countries have cut back and the United States also boasts a level of incarceration that dwarfs even the most outspoken racist nations during the height of apartheid. This creates a drain on the economy where instead of provided welfare and medical benefits we are funneling yet even more money into our prison systems.

This even affects prisoners after their release when they can be legitimately denied residence and employment not because of race but now because of their criminal track record which is a new way of showing racial discrimination with a new description. Also these men who have now served time are denied the right to vote and to apply for welfare creating more difficult living conditions and greater increasing their chances of recidivism. The other factors show that once an individual is processed through our prison systems it rarely corrects the problem and only furthers to train the individual on how to better themselves as a criminal. So for those of you taking notes we are imprisoning African Americans at unfair levels compared to most other ethnicities and then denying them employment, residency, government assistance and the right to vote upon their release. In my opinion this modern day control is no better than the Jim Crow laws which used to persist in the southern states.

So even if you feel that criminals deserve what is coming to them and they should be denied government benefits does it not seem striking that one population has a higher imprisonment rate when studies have shown that all races use illegal substances at very similar rates. This is undeniable that there is some form of social stigma towards certain races of people who are being unjustly singled out for imprisonment and social control. Even in pictures we view of prisons on shows, media and pictures we can see a dominant prison race that has been created by our own law enforcement with a bias towards African Americans for no reason other than the color of their skin. In an age of proposed equality there still seems to be still a level of social control preventing the advancement of certain races of people which is an issue in dire need of addressing. This also makes sense from an economic position as well given that imprisonment really has a minimal effect on the rate of recurring crime and has a substantially large cost for society. So we as a society are spending a large amount of taxpayer money to imprison people for whom imprisonment has no effect in preventing recurring crimes.