Racism and the Criminal Justice System

Tor aaaresslng tne economic crlsls wnlcn Tlrst appeared In tne m10 ana late slxtl In other to restore sagging business profits, and then the welfare of working people had to be sacrificed. Another criminal Justice crackdown has become, intentionally or otherwise, a way to manage rising inequality and surplus populations. And the poor people where the one that suffered the situation throughout this process of economic restructuring, particularly poor people of color.

Thus it is poor people of color who make up the bulk of American prison. Also, equality was one of the roblems that blacks suffered during Jim Crow laws and it was what white American fears most. Not until February 17, 1919, when thousands of African American soldiers fresh from victory in the Ardennes offensive marched triumphantly up Fifth Avenue, through Manhattan’s cheering crows toa Harlem homecoming. This was because they had lived up to their end of the bargain with America.

So they expected the full rights of Citizenship, nothing less, only a year earlier, while they fought in France. Jim Crow and other hated laws that stigmatized African Americans had been reaffirmed. But this civil rights moment was not to be. Instead the euphoria of victory evaporated to be replaced by the worst spate of anti-Black violence; labeled the Red Summer, the riots and lynchings would last from April to November 1919, claiming hundreds of lives, and leave thousands homeless.

Mostly Blacks where the victims, at least twenty seven major riots and mob actions immobilized the nation’s capital and cities large and small, including Chicago, Omaha, Knoxville, Charleston, and the delta town of Elaine, Arkansas, but something happened that whites had not expected. Emboldened by the war, whether from experience in the trenches or not the factory loor, or in the cotton fields of the rural south, blacks fought back; picking up any weapon that was at hand, their retaliation against armed mobs was swift.

It was the first stirrings of the civil rights movement that would change America forever. Bibliography Mcwhirter Cameron. “Red summer”. New York: Herny Holet, 2011. Parenti Christian. “Lockdown America”. New York: Verso, 2008. Heard Alex. “The Eyes of Willie Mcgee”. Mississippi: Jim Leeson, 2010. Loury C. Glenn. “Race Incarceration and American Values”. Boston: Pamela S. Karlan, Tommie Shelby, and Loic Wacquant, 2008.