The New Jim Crow Reflection Essay

        The United States has a long and notorious history of treating African Americans as an underclass. The systems through which our country has repressed African Americans have changed and evolved throughout time. Today, many Americans pride themselves of living in a country where all people are equal under the rule of law; however, this is most definitely not the case. The legal institution in the United States has carefully crafted both statutory and common law that treats African Americans as an underclass with unequal protection. The result is that African Americans are disproportionally targeted by law enforcement and disproportionately incarcerated when compared to their white counterparts.

        The amount evidence supporting the disproportionate incarceration rates of African Americans is overwhelming. Three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses are either black or Latino. This would seem just if blacks and Latinos made up of three-fourths of all drug users. However, numerous studies have proved this statistic wrong. Studies have found that people of all races use drugs at similar rates. In fact, some studies find that white people use drugs the most frequently. In 2002, the National Institute on Drug Abuse published a study that concluded that white youth use cocaine, crack cocaine, and heroin at seven to eight times the amount that black youth use these drugs. That study also reported that white youth aged 12-17 are more than a third more likely to deal drugs that their African American counterparts.

        This colorblind and unequal criminal justice system accomplishes its goals by granting law enforcement extraordinary discretion. A survey in the 1995 Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education asked participants to “close their eyes and imagine a typical drug user.” Ninety-five percent of people envisioned a black drug user rather than one who was of a different race. However, studies in 1995 report that only 15 percent of African Americans were drug users. There is no reason to believe that law enforcement officers and the criminal justice system are not subject to this racial bias when searching for and arresting drug users.