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Racial Injustice In America

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Racial Injustice: Racial Profiling and Bias and How it Affects Us
“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” - Eric Holder. Principle rights of U.S. citizens of different color and origin are being violated due to racial injustice; this issue is widespread, affecting many aspects of the U.S., including law enforcement, the targeted individuals, and the courts.
Racially biased law enforcement here in the U.S. is one of many problems stemming from racial injustice here in the U.S. According to a study conducted by Kenneth Jost, African Americans are twice as likely as whites to be stopped by police, and …show more content…
pag.). Of the 1.6 million citizens stopped in New York City (NYC), over half were African American and one-third were Hispanic; only nine percent were white (Jost n. pag.). The New York City Police Department credits these stops with the slight decrease in crime rates, although many officials outside the city believe the police department has gone too far when it comes to race-based stops (Jost n. pag.). African Americans are not the only group that are targeted by law enforcement, immigrants and Hispanics are the second most watched racial profiling issue (Jost n. pag.). The Sheriff Department in Phoenix, Arizona, targeted Latinos without adequate cause, which led to reform and new workers in the that department. (Jost n. pag.). Although officials around the country still try to deny racial profiling in law enforcement, overwhelming evidence and statistics suggest otherwise (Jost n. pag.). Alternately, some …show more content…
courts are also affected by racial bias and injustice. There are not many African Americans who have positions of power in the criminal justice system; this makes courts overwhelmingly white (Alcindor n.pag.). Failure of a white prosecutor to indict the police officer responsible for the shooting and killing of Michael Brown concerned many U.S. citizens, who feared that African Americans were being stripped of their fundamental constitutional rights (Alcindor n. pag.). Situations like this have led to African Americans winning elections over previous prosecutors who had been criticized for being racially biased, even though African American candidates for positions in courts are difficult to come by (Alcindor n. pag.). Justice groups and U.S. citizens are trying to remedy the disproportionately small number of African American prosecutors, as well as other positions of power, in the criminal justice system (Alcindor n. pag.). These new efforts are in response to what some justice groups and U.S. citizens felt was an inadequate response from current district attorneys and prosecutors when it comes to racial bias (Alcindor n. pag.). Although these efforts face difficult demographic and institutional objectives that keep offices of prosecutors white, there are high hopes of success in these efforts (Alcindor n. pag.). A judge in NYC has ruled that racial profiling situations predominantly targeting those of color or in predominately minority areas violated rights,

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