Intersectionality

After being provided the materials from class I would say I felt more inspired to attempt to live out life by properly using multiple lenses when viewing others around me so that I can become more consciously aware of what they might be going through as an individual and how their lives differ from mine. When talking specifically about the prison system I would say that I had a general idea of how unbalanced our police system was, especially after the incident with George Floyd. Because of that incident I made sure to read what I could about what happened and similar situations like George's. However, getting the numbers in class really adds perspective on the severity of imbalance in the prison system and provides a whole new perspective on how it needs to be fixed.  Since police forces were originally created to recapture escaped slaves the system it self was ineveitably built off the imprisonment of colored minorities. As hard as it is to say, some of those values still make themselves present today in the fact that colored people will find themselves in prison more often than their white counterparts. This happens due to the inherent bias in laws that specifically target vulnerable groups. The Fair Fight Initiative highlights this saying, "Instead of rehabilitation and empathy, our criminal justice system inflicts more pain and suffering, disproportionately affecting already-vulnerable populations." (Fari Fight Initiative, 2022). When talking about individual responsibility while making the argument about systemic racial disparities it's hard to refute. Reasons being that many black families will have members be absent due to the fact that they have been incarcerated. Children then grow up without a father or a mother and are not raised properly in some cases. This creates a cycle that has been fueled by this system for years. Not to mention there are some cases where colored families are well off and still experience unfair treatment from police officers even though they are doing nothing wrong. It addresses how colored people on both sides of the economic spectrum are treated unfairly and disproves many of the false claims people make about mass incarceration being a "culture thing" or that it is the "lack of parents" in the household that causes these large numbers in mass incarceration. What comes from mass incarceration is that many colored kids will grow up in an environment that will lead them to the same fate as their parents who were unjustly imprisoned which prevents them from moving anywhere economically which will further continue this unjust cycle of policing. Another downside is the right to vote. An article from the Equal Justice Initiative states, "More than 4.5 million Americans can’t vote because of a past conviction". (EJI, 2020). To fix this problem it would take a reworking of not only the police force, but of some active laws that unfairly target minorities. Doing so would receive a lot of push back and is a lot easier said than done, but would be at least a start in the right direction.


Equal Justice Initiative. (2020, March 16). Criminal justice reform. Equal Justice Initiative. Retrieved February 27, 2022, from https://eji.org/criminal-justice-reform/

Fair Fight Initiative. (2022). The history, causes, and facts on mass incarceration. Fair Fight Initiative. Retrieved February 27, 2022, from https://www.fairfightinitiative.org/the-history-causes-and-facts-on-mass-incarceration/


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