“The death penalty has been one of many examples where racial discrimination has played out. You can see it in the simple fact that someone convicted of the same crime is more likely to face the death penalty if they are Black.”
– Pete Buttigieg
Since this country’s inception, African-Americans have suffered more inhumane and insidious forms of mistreatment and discrimination than any other race or culture represented in these United States.
Our forefathers were forced into slavery for the sake of building wealth for the majority; and in the name of Making America Great.
With the abolishment of slavery came a more sophisticated form of oppression – Jim Crow laws. This era in Black history only existed to establish a pattern of legalized bondage of which Black folks would still be controlled and discriminated against.
Continuing through the Civil Rights period, each century brought on a more subtle way to control and undermine the advancement of Blacks in America.
What slavery was to Our ancestors on yesterday, is what mass incarceration and the slaughter of innocent Blacks is to Our race today – The Black Epidemic.
But, first let’s be clear on just what an “epidemic” actually is. According to Webster, “epidemic” defined is, something which affects or tends to affect a “disproportionately large number of individuals within a population, community or region at the same time, excessively prevalent.”
The American Civil Liberties Union reveals that at least one in three African-American boys born today can be expected to go to prison in his lifetime.
As it is, the American prison system costs $80 billion a year, proving to be quite a lucrative business for investors – with innocent Black men and women serving as the single most-precious commodities’.
Perhaps, the saddest reality about this phenomenon rests in the fact that it was all done by design. What has become in my opinion, The Black Epidemic, stemmed from a tactful plan which was set into motion decades ago as a modern form of slavery and oppression for Africans living in America. Guilty or not, if a Black man or woman even looks like he or she might be thinking about something- then imprisonment it is.
To add insult to injury, even once it has been found that a Black person has been found innocent of a crime and having been unjustly incarcerated, it still takes the judicial system longer to rectify the situation and clear their names in comparison to innocent Whites.
In 2017, the National Registry of Exonerations concluded, “Blacks wrongfully convicted of murder, for example, spent an average of three more years in prison before being released than Whites who were cleared.” It’s the Black Epidemic.
Simply put, locking up innocent Black folks and sentencing them to death has become a natural part of American society. Wrongfully convicted cases involving Black people are so common and widespread that once it’s noised in mainstream media, it’s treated like just another walk in the park.
The point is, it’s so redundant that people aren’t even shocked anymore – now that’s what you call an epidemic – The Black Epidemic, that is…
Thus, I will close with the words of a REAL American CRIMINAL, Charles Manson. “Just because you’re convicted in a court room doesn’t mean you’re guilty of something.”
