From the day we are born we are all separated into factions, labeled and assessed based on aspects of our life we can’t control. From the moment we enter this world even if we don’t know what’s happening we are being judge. Whether its race, gender, sexuality, hair color even, there are assumptions and biases that were created in our society. Like a corrupt hierarchy of how smart, trustworthy, or valuable you are. Today I want to shed a light on the injustices and biases that can be found in terms of how individuals are judged based on their race in our society. Being an African American myself, I’ve seen and been on the receiving end of assumptions ad injustices that I will highlight. In the history of the United States there have been individuals who fought to abolish and destroy this unfair treatment. Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Rosa Parks to name a few examples, witness and dealt with firsthand this unfair treatment.
With all the diversity and equality in our nation, it was met with Racism, Violence, and Police Brutality. This prompted the Black Lives Matter Movement. The Black Lives Matter Movement started with the untimely death of Trayvon Martin. Trayvon Martin was a seventeen-year-old African American child who was shot and killed by twenty-eight-year-old George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch coordinator who tailed martin after racially profiling him. Soon after he was acquitted of charges. From there similar cases began popping up.
There was one major thing all these cases had in common is that these citizens were all racially profiled which undoubtedly led to their death. Racial Profiling is defined as “The Discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual’s race. Ethnicity, religion or national origin.” From Trayvon Martin being perused solely because he was an African American male, to Tamir Rice who was simply holding a toy gun. Race somehow has intertwined itself into our everyday society as a way to judge an offend people. In the cases of these citizens who were taken before their time race became a guilty sentence in an innocent situation. Undoubtedly there seems to be an issue with our justice system. There also seems to be a negative correlation between race and our justice system that definitely needs to be addressed and discussed in order for there to be a change made.