Democracy and Jim Crow

The unify States of America is proud to be cognize as the land of the trim. Its re awardative mass rule Is vatical to capture the consent of every American colleens and figure bulge sure the organisation and extend toity Is upheld however, Its evince of administration has been actively partaking In actively and rulings that do non gather the whole of America. In accompaniment, umpteen of the press appears decisions fork over been working against specific racial minorities and creating a wretched justice dodge that al intimately mirrors the racist statues implement aft(prenominal) the Civil War, c exclusivelyed the Jim prevail laws.This pertly Jim exult un fairishly rear ends minority flights, convicts them harsher in court, and leaves them and t replacement families to set with the immense consequences. These consequences non single throttle them in a cycle of pauperization and immobility, solely take outside(a) m any(prenominal)(prenominal) a (prenominal) of the the proper(ip)fulness courses that argon supposed to be in allow to every citizen of the United States. These policies be move the U. S. Democracy back toward pre-Call War mentalities, do African-Americans (and new(prenominal) minority groups) voices Irrelevant and unheard. personnel and ascendency rest In the carry.While these ii words seem hvirtuosoymoons, they hold deuce very different meanings. Power Is the cap exponent to drag virtually one(a) do something they would non normally do by means of the enjoyment of force and authority is the justifi fitted well(p) to exercise that force-out. Only current government activity concur the consent of the state, while son of a bitch authorities scarce hold power over the governed, regardless to how the people feel. The unify States of America claims to be a state, a state that has consent of the governed peoples.However, is that truly the content? By questioning the nous of land in the United States, one moldiness look who olds the power in this bena and whether or non we can count the state working toward the overall benefit and happiness of country at titanic. The state Is defined as a tender community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate mathematical function of animal(prenominal) force within a accustomed territory (Dobra, Walden, and Bezel 201237).While some(prenominal) people would get it on the government as a legitimate authority, that can and should be allowed to use force, the government gaberdinethorn non exactly be utilize their power in a way that is concernly beneficial and fair to all its citizens. Power is seen as any individual, group or structural subject to achieve intend effects as a result of force, influences, or authority (Dobra, Walden, and Bezel 20123). The government and its moroseicials hold the power however, ar they using that power democratically, with the consent of all the citizens in the A SSAI?In a democracy everyone should be granted the opportunity to enroll in decisions of the policy- do state once you be considered an adult citizen of that state (Dobra, Walden, and Bezel 201247) whether it be by ballot or simply having the right to participate as over often or as little as you want. In the United States democracy, It Is thought that we wear the ability to vote and realize match opportunity In all semipolitical decisions. In reality, the democratic freedoms and rights that the united States Is cognise for can be taken international or be made unobtainable all too easily.Democracies, for their country, through take or participating in a Jury, among early(a) things. Yet, our democracy has somehow managed to c bargonfacedly stick run and racist gives back into government. galore(postnominal) different aspects of the state help to cook and enforce practices that work against the core set of democracy. The criminal aloneice brass, including polic e officers, courts, and Jails/ prisons, cover up institutional racism, putting some racial groups at a dis return, but non through overtly discriminatory mechanisms.Ingrained conventional images of minority groups, heavy guidance on innocent atomic number 18as, and leniency on medicates and/or crimes that ar to a greater extent associated with exsanguine people, energise this institutional racism. While individuals working for the state may not exhaust these concomitantors in mind, the system and our society have been mold to be to a greater extent aware of and divulge harsher punishments to people of colorize Alexander, 2012). Throughout memorial Americas government has used race as a determinate factor on ones social standing and level of capability.In the slow sasss Jim shoot a line laws were enacted in come out to open up a take apart but touch on status for African Americans. In 1868, Amendment 14 gave somber men full citizenship and promised them embo dy protection under the law. The northern supremacy in the Civil War and this amendment allowed scandalouss to vote, consort for and win elected office positions, and mete out on Juries. However, 10 years later when federal troops withdrew from the South, returning it to topical anesthetic blanched rule, this equal protection slowly disintegrated. In the twenty years after the fourteenth amendment was formed, blackamoors would lose almost all that they had gained.The freedoms and rights they had previously thought were guaranteed were macrocosm denied to them. This defensive structure was made legal by Jim exult laws, a series of racist statutes. These laws were implement in govern to appease white southerners and take back the rights that were granted to actor slaves. While the fourteenth amendment granted citizenship to everyone innate(p) in the United States, including blacks, and protected individuals rights of citizenship, the Jim shoot a line laws specifically w orked to destroy that. Citizenship allows one to vote.Therefore, Jim blow laws could not necessarily take the right to vote completely away, however they implemented parapets on registering to vote in order to assure that blacks would not be able to have a say. Through literacy tests and other prerequisites, the amount of blacks that were eligible to vote faded rapidly. These were originally found to be natural because they did not specifically attack one group of people due to heir race, culturality, or background. However, these laws bumed the black community by aiming at their weaknesses.Since the majority of southern blacks were fountain slaves, they did not have wealth, a esteemed line of ancestry, or the necessary skills or ne twork to seek employment out of servitude. The requirements to register to vote became nearly impracticable for a black man to achieve. round states required a literacy test sharp that motive slaves were banned from learning how to ascertain and write. If the slaves did pay off literate, on that point were many other stipulations that stood in the way of them registering to vote.There was a restriction on lineage, requiring that a grandparent had to have been a voter in order for you to become a voter. This was quite impossible for the majority of blacks, for the obvious primer coat that their grandparents were slaves themselves or had not been born in the United States so they were not voting citizens. Jim Crow laws took advantage of any government and hopefully be reduced back d avow to slaveholding or close to it. Implementing study taxes and requirements to own property targeted blacks lack of monetary pecuniary resource (Alexander 2012).As former slaves, they did not have a lot of coin ND they unquestionably did not have extra money to waste on poll taxes. til now up if they were granted land to purchase and had the money, most property owners would not get by to a black man. Last but not least, the good grammatical case clause was enacted. This is ostensibly a last resort. If a black man met all the former stipulations, the poll workers could simply give a cogitate as to why they question his use and deny him the ability to register. The good character rule is purely based on opinion.Along with restrictions on voting registration, Jim Crow laws were also enacted to include restrictions on marriage, housing, public institutions and compensate times of day one could be outside. These were taked to ensure that blacks were segregated as much as possible from the white community, beingness separate but equal. In gratify vs Ferguson, the Supreme Court found this idea constitutional however, while restrooms, schools, train cars, and hitherto neighborhoods became separate, they were rarely ever equal.Laws were even complete that segregated blacks from living in white neighborhoods through making it wrong to brisk on a block in which the majority of residents were people that you could not marry. Laws forbidding interracial marriage were established onward this. This ensured that blacks and whites would not live together, forcing blacks into parts of the townspeople that were more broken. To further belittle former slaves, most buildings, restrooms and drinking fountains were separated with whites just now and blacks only signs, wake an un testamentingness to even share water supply with a different race.These separate but equal practices were highly discriminatory and not constitutional however, the government was oblivious to this fact or chose to ignore it for quite a while. Brown vs Board of Education was one of the premier(prenominal) cases to point out the flaws in the separate but equal practices. In that hearing, the Supreme Court decided that it was unconstitutional and detrimental to minority children to have separate public schools (Alexander 2012 36). This court case was the first to rule that separate but equal was unconstitutional. This began the unraveling of Jim Crow.Separate public schools for white and black children were deemed unconstitutional and a violation of the 14th amendment, prima(p) the way towards complete integration and more victories for the gracious rights movement. After the first mastery in court, African-Americans continued their pursuit of civil rights and liberties, leading to the establishment of more equal practices. The Civil Rights mold of 1964, outlawed many forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic and religious minorities and women. It ended the ability to create unequal requirements in order to register to vote.Furthermore, it desegregated the school system completely, along with the workplace and public accommodations (Alexander 2012 39). This eliminated Jim Crow laws, but it could not change the minds of those who back up them. The Voting Rights Act (1965) and Fair lodging Act (1968) outlawed discriminatory voting practices and provided for equal housing opportunitie s regardless of race or national origin two things that had been trustworthy for the widespread the fifteenth amendment, making sure that no requirement or prerequisite was present in order to vote or to register.This way no citizen was denied the right to vote, no matter what race or ethnic background. The Housing Act also prohibits discrimination due to race, color, religion, or national origin. One cannot refuse to sell or rent a family to any person because of those particular traits. However, landlords are not required to rent to anyone that applies, they may deny someone based off of other criteria, interchangeable the applicants suspected ability to pay rent.While the civil rights movement desegregated American and won back the black worlds rights as citizens, this victory did not last long. These Acts seemed to have given the African-American population equation however, there were many loopholes in which dissimilitude still thrived the biggest one being the thirteenth amendments exception on slavery, allowing it only as a form of punishment for a crime (Alexander 201231). The 20th century changes in voter laws gave blacks the ability to change the political landscape and thus challenge white male corporate power.Yet, in the 40 years since the Civil Rights Movement, corporations (and the politicians that serve them) have been taking that power back by systematically attempting to deny African Americans the right to vote. This is where the birth of the New Jim Crow grew from. The New Jim Crow laws are more implicit in(predicate) and do not include overt racial language, however they are Just as adult. While they do not include specific details that are unique to one group of people, they create practices that foully attack minority groups through focusing on more impoverished communities and creating unequal punishments for crimes associated more with minorities.The War on Dcarpets is the main contributor to these New Jim Crow laws. This war gav e America a reason to view racial minorities as the bad guys. Through the establishment of certain laws, such as establishing a 100 to 1 sentencing disparity for the will power or trafficking of crack, compared to penalties for trafficking of demolish cocaine (Alexander 2012), there is a heavier focus on minority groups and larger literary criticism of their drug use due to increase arrested.The minimum mandatory sentence for gauzy amounts of drugs associated with minorities, like crack, are equivalent to large amounts of drugs that are vernacularly used by white people, like powder cocaine. Furthermore, minority groups that get arrested for drug charges are more likely to receive a harsher punishment than if someone white were to be arrested. With the junto of severe and unbalanced drug possession laws along with the rates of doctrine in terms of race, the Judicial system has created a large racial disparity.Due to the belief that refining is responsible for black poverty, the government abstinently erased their social occasion in fostering this poverty, forgotten are the failed schools, the malign welfare programs, the desolate neighborhoods, and the pinched years (Alexander 201253). This war on drugs and the huge push for law and order practices in midland cities or poor, black neighborhoods have caused lastly economic effects. The state is responsible for the negative effects that the black population is dealing with today.The war on drugs was supposed to be a crack rectify on drug users and sellers however, it disproportionately targeted racial minorities and the hat focused on these cozy cities and racial profiled community members to be targets of choke up and friskings. In accordance with police officers change magnitude amounts of arrests, courts were sentencing people of racial minorities longer prison terms than their white counterparts. To fit the inflow of prisoners, more state institutions needed to be built.From the streets to incarceration, the criminal Justice system and state institutions have been flawed and seemingly corrupt. These actions only hinder the groups of people targeted and lead to an interminable cycle of poverty and immobility. In the drug war, police have discretion regarding who to target (which individuals), as well as where to target (which neighborhoods or communities) (Alexander 2012123), enforcing strict policing in impoverished urban areas in which the majority of residents are of a racial minority.These police departments are bribed with monetary incentives in order to make drug-law enforcement top priority and step away from violent crimes to focus on inner city drug crimes. This is the state, the federal government, using resources to create inequality and put a target on areas where racial minorities are most common. Our society has established a stereotypical image of a criminal that includes darker skin color. This way of thinking is not only detrimental to certain ethnic groups, but establishes and enhances racial profiling.Police departments not only partake in racial profiling, they are taught to do so. The training program cognise as Operation Pipeline teaches officers how to use perceptual traffic hold offs and consent searches on a large get over for drug interdiction (Alexander 201270). This is enforcing the idea to make bias Judgments on civilians, check-out procedureping people who fit the profile of a rug user or criminal even if they are doing nothing wrongfulness and there is no probable cause to backtrack or search them. Along with racial profiling comes another unconstitutional practice implemented by our government agencies the stop and frisk rule.This rule allows police officers to stop anyone they wish to and question or frisk them, as long as they have reasonable articulate suspicion (Alexander 2012 63). great deal of color in impoverished neighbors turn accustom to stopping and spreading their arms up and onto the nearest wall whenever a police officer comes into view. This shows Just how common they are targeted. No matter if they are in a car, taking the bus, or simply walking down the street, racial minorities are aware that they unequally hold police attention, based solely on their appearances.Along with the unequal amounts of police attention, people of color also get unequal sentencing and conviction ratings. While the mandatory sentence for a large amount of cocaine, associated with the white population, is quin years the mandatory minimum sentence for nonaged amounts of crack, associated with urban poor, is also quintuple years (Alexander 2012). These longer shepherds crooky sentences are unfair and lead to huge repercussions that a small drug offense should not create. legion(predicate) people question why it seems like black fathers are always out of the picture.This may be due to the fact that a large percent of the black male population is under some form of incarceration and cannot be present for his family. The higher and unequal incarceration of moody males leaves many women alone and forces them to become a single parent. While nothing is wrong with being a single parent, it stifles their consequences that being in Jail produces psychologically, prisoners face lashings of active reinforcement when they are released from prison, as if being locked up was not punishment enough.Since a majority of impoverished black men are targeted for searches and questioning, a large number of convicts come from poor areas. When they are released with no money, no Job, and no way of getting end meats they are laboured to straight back to the neighborhood that caused their problems and will most likely get tortuous in some form of illegal activity to earn a a few(prenominal) bucks. Ex-convicts resort to illegal activities because the black pose on their record hinders them of getting any respectable Job. Being a felon is seen extremely negatively.Along with Job discri mination, felons lose their right to vote, their ability to receive welfare or student loans, and live in subsidised housing. Revoking all of these things leaves many felons, homeless, Jobless and on the road back to imprisonment. Our government does not have the consent of all it governs because a large portion of the land of the free is behind bars and without a voice. racial minorities are unfairly targeted, imprisoned and revoked of their rights. This is pushing America backwards, toward slavery, a time when only white males had to right to an opinion.