Race and Justice: Writing II, Spring 2010

By Sandra Levkovich

In today’s society, especially living in New York, there are different type of races that you see everyday. When you travel on a train or bus, everyone is mixed, if you take a look around, it is not like it was decades ago. White people don’t sit in the front of the bus and black people dont sit in the back anymore. When you walk the streets , you will walk past many different faces. In fact, just yesterday I saw a white jewish man in a wheelchair being pushed by what seemed to be his friend that was a black man. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the other person if they don’t look like you, but people in today’s society still discriminate.

In Birmingham, Alabama, The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)  announced a major litigation settlement with Tyson Foods for $871,000 on behalf of black workers who alleged that they were racially harassed.  There was racially segregated bathroom facilities for the workers, racial slurs, and a lot of intimidation. The bathrooms even at one point were locked so that when a worker needed to use the facility the key was only given out to the white man. Is this really happening in our country? They employers of Tyson Foods are discriminating just how black people were not allowed to sit anywhere they wanted on the bus.

Even though there was a settlement for this ridiculousbehavior against the company, the treatment should not have existed in the first place. People have no regard to the law against passing judgment against different race. This case is of the many, many more of discriminting and racist acts. I feel as though as one who is racist, is one who thinks he is too good for anyone. If you pass a judgment on someone, you think your better then them. That is not the way it is in life. Everyone deserves a chance at anything and everything that life has to offer. I hope that one day that cases such as the one that happened in Alabama, or even any cases that deals with discrimination and racisim becomes extinct. Martin Luther King Jr even says,  “Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away, and that in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brothergood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”

In “A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice,” Paul Butler gives an insight to some of the positive aspects of hip-hop music and how they can be used to better our justice system.  It is an approach that I personally have never seen, and I do not think many people have taken a similar approach to reforming the justice system.  Because Paul Butler is careful in distinguishing how much of an impact hip-hop can potentially have and how much it currently has as a political force, I feel that many of his points are strong.

One of Butler’s points is that the members of the hip-hop community are mainly black and Hispanic.  These two ethnic groups also make up most of the members of penetentiaries.  Butler suggests that because blacks and Hispanics are most likely to be subject to crimes and most likely to be arrested and incarcerated for them, they come closest to John Rawls ideal law makers.  Rawls was a philosopher who suggested that law is most just when made by people who don’t know how they will fare under it.  This makes perfect sense because if this were the case, the law makers would do their best to make the laws fair.  Butler also does a good job of humanizing inmates and showing that they are not just statistics, nor are they disgusting people that need to be locked up without any consideration for them.

I feel that if Paul Butler’s ideas were taken seriously in a political sense, some improvements in the justice system could take place.  Although I do not agree that “Immanuel Kant and Jay-Z would get along well,” I do agree that all generations have something positive to offer.  I feel that if prominent, not notorious, members of the hip-hop community were included in certain decisions, they could give positive opinions on imroving the justice system because they have had to live through the peril of seeing loved ones labeled as worthless criminals for minimal reasons.

The Metro Atlanta Regional Transit Authority, known as MARTA, announced the change. MARTA recently renamed its train lines with colors – yellow line(northeast south line), red line(north south line), blue line(east west line) and green.
ATLANTA — The “yellow” train line in Atlanta is now going to be called the “gold” line after members of the local Asian community complained that it was racially insensitive.
The yellow line went to Doraville in the northeast suburbs, an area that has a large Asian population.
MARTA CEO Beverly Scott is set to meet with leaders from the Asian community. The leaders said they have been pushing since November to name the train line “gold.”

Helen Kim, with the Center for Pan Asian Community Services, says she is thrilled and that the Asian community feels like their voices have finally been heard. And now the line is called yellow. I think it is similar problem to Churchill’s ‘Let’s Spread the “Fun” Around’. It is very difficult to do business in America because there are a lot of kind of people. However, Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority accepted the opinion of the Asian community and modified the name from yellow to gold. I think their attitude must be prised and Company(including public enterprise) should so their business with consideration of race more from now. Their announce-
Update on Gold Line

The MARTA rail system, including the Doraville line, was renamed last October when MARTA color-coded its entire rail system (which assigned primary colors to each rail line). In February, due to concerns expressed about the Doraville to Airport line being designated the Yellow Line, we changed its name to the Gold Line. Given our current financial challenges, we have developed an economical implementation plan to phase in these changes over time. Our announcements and electronic station signs already reference the Gold Line. Over the next two months, decals will be added to all of our rail maps replacing “yellow” with “gold” and updates will be made to our website, train announcements, rail schedules and station kiosk maps. New rail maps in stations and other printed materials will be updated as part of the implementation of the other system changes, which are anticipated within the next six months.


On March 8, 2010 the New York Times printed out an article that dealt with a court case involving the death of 37 year old Ecuadorean illegal immigrant Marcelo Lucero who died in November 2008. He was beaten to death by 7 teenagers who felt amusement from beating up Hispanic men. It upsets me that it has taken 2 years for them to finally go on trial. But what really takes me over the edge are the people that were asked to come in to be appoint for jury duty. A lot of the people claimed that it would be wrong for them to be apart of the jury of this case because they have a bias against illegal immigrants. My problem with this is that it should not matter what you feel about illegal immigrants due to the fact that a man was killed. As to whether or not these biases were brought up in order to relieve the individuals from jury duty, I don’t know. However, what I do know is that as American citizens it is our job to apart of the jury of peers that the constitution provides us with. I can only hope that there are more people who feel the way I do.



Tamding Sherpa

A song is a story and to write and sing it, is a way of expressing ones story. Paul Butler in his article, ‘Let’s Get Free’ brings us into the hip hop world, where every ‘nobody’ has a story of its own to share. One of the messages Butler tires to convey, of the hip hop singers, that despite the controversial music, the ‘thuggish art’ is crying out a stance against injustice and a passionate call to its fellow prisoners.
Butler uses hip hop as his channel to voice the criminal injustice against American African and Latino men. He tries to unwind the fact and effect of what happens when an American African is sent to prison. He fulminates on the fact that, while the white rich gets away for their crimes, even the smallest of crimes, sends the black man to prison. This not only causes an impartial and bias justice system, but a devastating aftermath. The ‘entire ethnic group’ is affected; the innocent face the consequences as well. Therefore Butler suggests that instead of incarceration, the criminals should be sent to ‘probation or community service.’ Butler also supports his argument by stating that half of the prisoners in the U.S. prisons are all American African, while they make up only 12% of the population. We also learn how every American African understands the injustice they have been laid upon and therefore are sympathetic of those in prison. Apparently most of them or their loved ones have been in prison, leading them to send ‘shout outs’ through songs.
It is a common belief and fact that no body is born evil. Therefore it is completely impossible and foolish for the justice system to carefully scrutinize only one group and send its people to prison for the smallest of crimes. We learn from the article and through hip hop that ‘incarceration is being driven through profit and not public safety’ and that this should be stopped.

I am writing about a current event i found in the New York Times on our justice system. When we are accused of committing a crime or brought to court, we are allowed to use public counsel. This is a constitutional obligation. It is also a way for our government to try to strengthen its fight for equal justice for every American. Right now defense offices across the United States have fallen into chaos. With a lack of finance and an increase in caseloads it is hard to serve justice equally to everyone. The civil legal aid system is said to be in the same condition. “Short on resources, local offices supported by the Legal Services Corporation, the federal agency that provides legal assistance for low-income Americans in civil cases, must turn away about half the eligible individuals who contact them for help with life-altering issues such as child custody or saving their homes from foreclosure.”(An Advocate For Equal Justice, NY Times) It is unacceptable for people to not be able to get representation when the constitution guarantees it. Justice looks like it is declining with the economy being in the state that it is in. On the good side Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. hired Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor and constitutional scholar to help him narrow the gap on the administration of justice. They will be looking for ways to improve indigent legal services. Hopefully they will be able to form some kind of policies or strategies to solve this issue at hand. Everyone deserves to be represented in a court of law and has a right to a fair trial.