Friday, December 5, 2014

Our Justice System Is Broken- We Must All Do Our Part To Fix It


America has a unique and complex relationship with race.

Before slavery, the idea of "race" in the American sense simply did not exist. Sure, other countries and cultures used intricate power structures to exert control over one another. But we were the first to invent a system based solely upon skin color, which we then used as a tool to keep African Americans in bondage- literally and figuratively- for centuries.

Through the years, we have progressed tremendously from our dark days as slave traders and plantation owners. But although we've taken enormous steps in the right direction, the sins of our past still haunt us.

We ended slavery, but we replaced it with Jim Crow. We ended Jim Crow, but we replaced it with mass incarceration and a two-tier justice system where whites get treated as full citizens of the law and blacks get treated as three-fifths a person.

In each case, we have replaced one injustice with a lesser injustice- it may not be as overt and extreme as its predecessor, but make no mistake, the injustice remains.

We know this to be true because we see it with our own eyes: African Americans keep getting killed by police and the police keep getting away with it.

It's an injustice that should outrage us all.


FIXING A BROKEN SYSTEM

While the tragic deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner are all different in scope and circumstance, almost every American can agree that no one deserves to die for shoplifting cigars, or selling illegal cigarettes, or playing with a toy gun in a park.

The harsh reality is that what happened to Brown, Rice and Garner simply does not happen to white people. Having grown up in a predominantly white area in Western Massachusetts, I've never once heard of anyone being killed by police. But in black communities, it's a nearly routine occurrence.

And this isn't just perception, it's reality.

A recent study found that black male teens are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than their white male counterparts.

In addition, while African Americans only make up 13% of the total population in America, they account for 31% of all victims killed by police during an arrest.

This is the new white privilege: the privilege to never have to worry about being killed by police.


WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

The tragic deaths of Brown, Rice and Garner remind us that we are not the post-racial country we claim- or hope- to be.

We live in two Americas: one for whites, one for blacks. In one America, rich white kids can claim affluenza and escape jail time. In the other America, a black man can be choked to death on camera yet the cop who killed him isn't charged with a crime.

The message it sends is simple: black lives don't matter.

To change our broken justice system, we must have accountability. Police who commit crimes must be charged and brought to trial. Juries must be equal in terms of demographic representation. Police forces must reflect the community they serve.

We must also de-militarize and re-train the police. We must teach them how to de-escalate situations and limit the use of force. We must make body cameras mandatory, not just to hold those accountable who commit crimes, but to reward those who act responsibly.

But the burden of creating a more just society can't just rest on the shoulders of law enforcement. It must be shared by all Americans.

We must stop kidding ourselves that racism is over, or that the victims of run-ins with police somehow deserved to be killed.

We must re-dedicate ourselves to the Civil Rights movement. We must continue to mobilize and take to the streets, apply pressure, peacefully, and petition for change.

We must get back to work forming a more perfect union.

And most of all, we must remember what Martin Luther King Jr once said: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."