Prejudice and Racism: All Men are Equal, Unless They Are Black Essay

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Brian is a young African American male who has been pulled over by the police somewhere between twenty and thirty times and accused of committing a crime. The only problem is, he's never so much as jaywalked across a street. Brian is a hardworking, church-going man who is director of lighting at Black Entertainment Television in Washington, D.C. He has a spotless record. That matters little to the D.C. police. Time after time, the cops would pull Brian over to interrogate him for a recent murder, robbery, or assault. He would be yanked out of his car, thrown to the ground, and held until one of them figured out he was the wrong guy. -"Brian Anthony Harris is Not Wanted", by Michael Moore In his 1963 document, "Letter From Birmingham Jail", Martin Luther King Jr. prayed "in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty." To date, his prayers remain unanswered, and the radiant stars he dreamed of seem more remote and dim than ever. It seems impossible, in the wake of the Civil Rights movement of the Sixties, America would not take heed and make strides to erase the lines of inequality dividing its population. It hasn't. Superficial changes in race relations, like the halfhearted integration of schools, the ever-lessening concessions to affirmative action, and the few token minority Court and Cabinet appointments notwithstanding, the status-quo of American life illustrates the continuing failure of King's dream. In the 37 years since Martin Luther King Jr. sat in an Alabama jail cell, more black men have gone to jail than to college, and the black voice in America's democracy has quieted to a whisper. Black Americans are not m... ...anna Huffington. 10/01/00. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2000/10/02/disenfranchised/index.html "Back to the Civil Rights Barricades", by Todd Gitlin. 12/04/00. http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/12/04/democracy/index.html Justice Policy Institute/ Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. Beatty, Holman, and Schiraldi, 2000 Poor Prescription: The Costs of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the United States. Washington DC: The Justice Policy Institute. Accessed 5/20/01. http://www.cjcj.org/drug/drugpr.html "America's One Million Non-Violent Prisoners", by V. Schiraldi, J. Ziedenberg, and J Irwin, PhD.1999. Accessed 5/21/01. http://www.cjcj.org/jpi/onemillion.html United States Department of Justice. Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 1999. Allen J. Beck, Ph.D. Apr, 2000, Accessed 5/20/01. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pubalp2.htm#pjmidyear