An Injustice Anywhere

Justice by definition is "the maintenance or administration of what is just, especially by the impartial adjustment of connecting claims or assignment of merited rewards or punishments. Historically the notion of justice was rooted in concepts of fairness, moral rightness, and equity. In American, however, "justice" and the pursuit of it, has been used as a thin veil to enforce inequity and oppression of people of color.  

There couldn't be more evidence of this deviation from the historical perspective than in today’s criminal justice system.  An overwhelming majority of the people who sit in our prisons are African American. Harsh sentencing laws enacted to stop illegal drug trade resulted in the mass incarceration of black and brown people.   Predominantly black and brown men spend decades behind bars. Upon release they find it nearly impossible to be free from the grasps of the criminal justice system.  As the prison population continues to grow, retaliatory death and violence among drug dealers are remain a major problem in urban areas. Excessive sentencing laws were not enacted in the interest of fairness, but in the interest of perpetual and unrelenting punishment.

For the past year the nation watched a family in Florida relive the details of their son’s murder. Waiting for the wheels of “justice” to turn in their favor, they sat by while the attorneys for his killer put their son, the victim, on trial. They claimed repeatedly that the shooter had “done nothing wrong” and demanded that “justice” be done.  George Zimmerman is a free man today despite having followed, approached, and murdered an unarmed 16 year-old Trayvon Martin.

Contributing to the acquittal was Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law. This law allows people to place value on material possessions and one’s right to possess them, over a person’s right to live and breathe. The defense played on every possible racial stereotype. The defense chose to argue to the all-white jury that Trayvon Martin was a “racist” and a “thug” who “contributed” to his own death by violently attacking George Zimmerman.  But a reasonable evaluation of the circumstances, as true justice demands, would have recognized the life lost and the lack of justification for such.  A truly just society does not allow for the senseless murder of children without consequence.

The verdict has many, including myself, asking, where is the justice for black and brown people in America?  Statistics show that outcomes for black and white defendants in the criminal justice system are vastly different.  Black and brown defendants are disadvantaged compared to whites with regard to the legal-process even in the most fundamental ways like access to an attorney and resources available for defense.  Further, black and brown defendants tend to be sentenced more severely than similarly situated white defendants for less serious crimes. Black defendants convicted of harming white victims suffer harsher penalties than blacks who commit crimes against other blacks or white defendants who harm whites.

Time after time in America injustices are committed at the hands of a system that is supposed to seek fair and equitable solutions. There are many stories like Trayvon’s in our history and many times in history the system has failed all of the people in this country. Maintaining this system only ensured that  injustice lives and breathes for hundreds of years to come. 

AAR