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Racial discrimination in the US justice system
Racial discrimination in the US justice system
Racial discrimination in the US justice system
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The Supreme Court has decided many controversial cases over the years, but the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford and the 1944 case of Korematsu v. United States stand out as grave miscarriages of justice. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, Dred Scott, an enslaved man, tried to sue for his freedom, along with the freedom of his wife and two children (Konkoly, 2006-a). However, the Court ruled that blacks were not citizens under the United States Constitution and, therefore, could not sue (Konkoly, 2006-a). In a similar case of racial injustice, Fred Korematsu, a Japanese-American man, was arrested and convicted for refusing to leave his home and enter an internment camp during World War II (Konkoly, 2006-b). Though Korematsu later appealed his conviction, the Supreme Court upheld it in a vote of 6-3 (Konkoly, 2006-b). Close analysis of the assenting and dissenting opinions in Dred Scott v. Sandford and Korematsu v. United States suggests that racism played a major role in the Supreme Court’s final rulings. This is significant because the rulings not only stripped the plaintiffs of their citizenship and civil liberties, but also revealed that the highest Court in the land is capable of egregious errors in judgment, particularly …show more content…
In fact, Dred Scott v. Sandford and Korematsu v. United States serve as terrifying reminders that the Court does not always get it “right.” Sometimes, Supreme Court Justices make decisions that hurt the very people they are sworn to protect. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, for instance, the Court not only rejected black citizenship, but also preserved slavery. Similarly, the Supreme Court condoned the persecution and imprisonment of its Japanese-American community. One can only hope the Supreme Court has learned from its mistakes, that it has developed strategies to prevent its members’ personal biases from obstructing justice, particularly when it comes to
...e to breach Supreme Court sovereignty would render the different minorities, residing in the United States, helpless to further governmental legislature justifying racial discrimination. In their struggle to preserve racial inequality segregationists immorally resorted to using violence against children. Through “a sharp realisation of the shameful discrimination directed at small children” the world perceived an inconsistency in a nation that preached freedom for all, though denied the very same right to its children. Ernest Green and the other eight students “learned unmistakably that they possessed irresistible power” during the crisis but only if they realised it and united against discrimination and racism.
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. "Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs: Racism in America Today."International Socialist Review Online November-December.32 (2003): n. pag.ISReview.org. International Socialist Organization. Web. 07 Dec. 2013. .
The court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson created nationwide controversy in the United States due to the fact that its outcome would ultimately affect every citizen of our country. On Tuesday, June 7th, 1892, Mr. Homer Plessy purchased a first class ticket on the East Louisiana Railroad for a trip from New Orleans to Covington. He then entered a passenger car and took a vacant seat in a coach where white passengers were also sitting. There was another coach assigned to people who weren’t of the white race, but this railroad was a common carrier and was not authorized to discriminate passengers based off of their race. (“Plessy vs. Ferguson, syllabus”).Mr. Plessy was a “Creole of Color”, a person who traces their heritage back to some of the Caribbean, French, and Spanish who settled into Louisiana before it was part of the US (“The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow”). Even though Plessy was only one eighth African American, and could pass for a full white man, still he was threatened to be penalized and ejected from the train if he did not vacate to the non-white coach (“Plessy vs. Ferguson, syllabus). In ...
The Impact of the Dred Scott Case on the United States The Dred Scott Case had a huge impact on the United States as it is today. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments have called it the worst Supreme Court decision ever rendered and was later overturned. The Dred Scott Decision was a key case regarding the issue of slavery; the case started as a slave seeking his rightful freedom and mushroomed into a whole lot more. 65
In summary, Korematsu v. United States (1944), opinion can be seen as one of great historical importance. The reason it is so important is because of the differences in the Judges racial classifications, and personal values. Another important factor in this case is the requirements of military requirement and the Fifth Amendment of equal protection. This case shows the importance of interpreting the Constitution and the different ways that the Constitution can be interpreted depending upon a persons own political backgrounds and beliefs.
“The New Jim Crow” is an article by Michelle Alexander, published by the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. Michelle is a professor at the Ohio State Moritz college of criminal law as well as a civil rights advocate. Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law is part of the world’s top education system, is accredited by the American Bar Association, and is a long-time member of the American Law association. The goal of “The New Jim Crow” is to inform the public about the issues of race in our country, especially our legal system. The article is written in plain English, so the common person can fully understand it, but it also remains very professional. Throughout the article, Alexander provides factual information about racial issues in our country. She relates them back to the Jim Crow era and explains how the large social problem affects individual lives of people of color all over the country. By doing this, Alexander appeals to the reader’s ethos, logos, and pathos, forming a persuasive essay that shifts the understanding and opinions of all readers.
The Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) ‘equal but separate’ decision robbed it of its meaning and confirmed this wasn’t the case as the court indicated this ruling did not violate black citizenship and did not imply superior and inferior treatment ,but it indeed did as it openly permitted racial discrimination in a landmark decision of a 8-1 majority ruling, it being said was controversial, as white schools and facilities received near to more than double funding than black facilities negatively contradicted the movement previous efforts on equality and maintaining that oppression on
The Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court in March 1857 was one of the major steps
“Simple Justice” was written by Richard Kluger and reviews the history of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation, and African America’s century-long struggle for equality under law. It began with the inequities of slavery to freedom bells to the forcing of integration in schools and the roots of laws with affect on African Americans. This story reveals the hate caused the disparagement of African Americans in America over three hundred years. I learned how African Americans were ultimately acknowledged by their simple justice. The American version of the holocaust was presented in the story. In 1954 the different between how segregation and slavery were not in fashion when compared with dishonesty of how educating African American are separate from Caucasian was justified by the various branches of government.
The Supreme Court is perhaps most well known for the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. By declaring that segregation in schools was unconstitutional, Kevern Verney says a ‘direct reversal of the Plessy … ruling’1 58 years earlier was affected. It was Plessy which gave southern states the authority to continue persecuting African-Americans for the next sixty years. The first positive aspect of Brown was was the actual integration of white and black students in schools. Unfortunately, this was not carried out to a suitable degree, with many local authorities feeling no obligation to change the status quo. The Supreme Court did issue a second ruling, the so called Brown 2, in 1955. This forwarded the idea that integration should proceed 'with all deliberate speed', but James T. Patterson tells us even by 1964 ‘only an estimated 1.2% of black children ... attended public schools with white children’2. This demonstrates that, although the Supreme Court was working for Civil Rights, it was still unable to force change. Rathbone agrees, saying the Supreme Court ‘did not do enough to ensure compliance’3. However, Patterson goes on to say that ‘the case did have some impact’4. He explains how the ruling, although often ignored, acted ‘relatively quickly in most of the boarder s...
Such precedent setting decisions are usually derived from the social, economic, political, and legal philosophy of the majority of the Justices who make up the Court, and also represent a segment of the American population at a given time in history. Seldom has a Supreme Court decision sliced so deeply into the basic fabric that composes the tapestry and direction of American law or instigated such profound changes in cherished rights, values, and personal prerogatives of individuals: the right to privacy, the structure of the family, the status of medical technology and its impact upon law and life, and the authority of state governments to protect the lives of their citizens.(3-4)
The United States is a racialized society, with racism deeply embedded into its history. The most renowned display of racism in the United States is the enslavement of Africans by white people. This is one of the many instances that highlights the government’s implementation of institutional racism, which has been experienced by people of many different races. In this documentary, American citizenship, the Federal Housing Administration, and real estate appear to be the focal portrayals of institutional racism. For hundreds of years, being white was essential to gaining American citizenship. In 1922, Ozawa, a Japanese businessman attempted to gain citizenship. However, the Supreme Court denied his request, stating that he was scientifically classified as Mongolian, not white. Three months later, a South Asian man, Thind, proved to the Court that he was white because he was scientifically classified as Caucasian, and therefore
Johnson v. M’Intosh and Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock have been compared to Dredd Scott v. Sandford in the way they categorized a certain group of people as “inferior” and allowed them to be subjugated to the “tyranny of the majority”. As stated by Echo-Hawk, Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock in particular “turned on patently racist notions of white supremacy, and refused to address claims of the plaintiff” (Echo-Hawk 164).
The history of the United States is littered with exclusionary methods that create complex webs of structural racism that have persisted from the times of indentured servitude and slavery to the modern day. During the 1970s specifically the practice of redlining was in full swing, and many people of color were forced to work unskilled or semi-skilled jobs due to widespread workplace discrimination. These structures serve to create obstacles to the success of minorities, those not traditionally considered to be ‘white’. Generations of people of color have been affected as they are continually denied access to better education, higher paying jobs, and even legal citizenship. One particular example is Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose memoir My Beloved World details her experiences as the first generation daughter of working class Puerto Rican immigrants. Rather than being seen for her vast accomplishments in high school, at Princeton University, and as a United States Supreme Court Justice, she has had to battle assumptions made about her character and the path to her success that cause her to be racialized as lazy and therefore unworthy of achievement; assumptions that are solely based on her race, class, and gender. Despite the promises made by the United States to provide equal opportunities for all its citizens, many minorities are still subject to the ideology that they are lazy, undeserving, poor, and inferior purely because of their race, as shown in Sonia Sotomayor’s interactions with her school nurse and a shopkeeper in an upscale store. Regardless, members of these historically disparaged minorities reveal contradictions as they strive to overcome the racism they must face every day yet are still faced with discrimination in ...
In 1803, the decision in Marbury v Madison held that the Supreme Court had the ability to practice the process of judicial review. With this ruling, the Court gave itself the power to deem legislation constitutional or unconstitutional. With this bolstered power, the Supreme Court made numerous landmark decisions throughout the 19th and during the first half of the 20th centuries. The Supreme Court’s power of judicial review played an integral role in shaping post-bellum racial laws and attitudes. In the cases of Plessey v. Ferguson and Brown v. The Board of Education the Supreme Court invoked judicial review to assess racial segregation policies as they related to the 14th Amendment. Both Plessey and Brown are landmark cases because they reflected the social climate of their respective time periods, because both cases had immediate impact upon civil rights law and everyday life in America, and because both cases affected basic interpretation of the Constitution.