Prisoners are prisoners, they should not be pre-judged just because of their race, but because of what crime they have committed. However, sometimes the government does not stay unbiased when coming to punishing people.
Marshall Mercy wrote an essay called The Criminal Justice System and Poor Blacks. It emphasizes on how most blacks are still not equally treated as other races in court and in prison. In the beginning of his essay, she mentions how in history, a black man has always lived up to a white man’s words and has always been in low rank (of class). Mercy then goes on about how, even today, not all African Americans have the same just treatment as everyone else. She states that blacks still have to reach for the “pursuit of equality, liberty, and justice”.
I agree with Mercy’s belief that the reason why blacks are the majority in prison is because of their income rate or the environment they grew up in. It is not a person’s race that defines the reason why they are in jail. It is because of the fact that the person broke the law. However, as Mercy mentions in her essay, what happens if a black man and a white man commits the same crime and is poor? Well, the answer to that is that the black man is prone to getting a harsher punishment than the white man. However, when there is a difference in income rates, the black man can be saved. For instance, if there was a wealthy black man who hired an expert lawyer as a defendant versus an average white man, then it is up to how well the lawyer can defend the man. Since the black man has money, the court would not be so harsh on his case. If the lawyer does well, the judge cannot deny his right of being free from blame. In the end, it is just the money that places you in positions like these.
Mercy’s essay is short and straight to the point. From my perspective, I feel that her writing is persuasive in the most clear and concise way. She uses historical facts to prove her point of how African Americans were being degraded by other races. I definitely agree with the idea that historical damages done to African Americans effected the rate of poverty within the black community today.
The media even shows that a majority are black.
