One of the widespread and shocking causes of injustices today is racism
In our modern times, the word racism shouldn’t even exist. We should know better than to superficially discriminate against a person because of their race. However, the matter of the fact is that racism does exist and it is a prevalent part of our society. In your life time more than half of you are likely to be subject to racial abuse. Even at school racial stereotypes are candidly thrown about but at some point someone will be hurt by it.
In Twelve Angry men the initial unanimous vote bar juror 8, in favour of condemning the boy was based solely on the presumptions made from incomplete facts and presumptions about the boy’s personality due to the stereotypes associated with the boy’s South American heritage. Juror #10 is openly bitter and prejudiced. He believes that anyone coming from a poor neighbourhood is less than human.
We can see right from the start that the verdict that the defendant is undoubtedly ‘guilty’ is locked in his mind simply because he has a personal grudge against people like the defendant and he separates himself from their culture by using ‘us’ and ‘them’. He believes that their all alike and he knows all about them and how their no good. When he unleashes his bigotry to the others in a speech, the rest of the disturbed jury turn their backs on him disgusted by his outright racism.
Today, one in 4 African-American men between the ages of 20 and 29 are imprisoned, on parole, or under the control of the U. S. criminal justice system in some way – which is more than there are in college. For Latinos, the figure is 1 in 10. For ‘whites’, the number is 1 in 16. A recent study has found that 85% of all black American males will be arrested at least once in their lifetimes. The race of the victim has an impact on sentencing as well.
In Dallas, the rape of a white woman results in an average sentence of 10 years, while the rape of a Latino woman gets 5 years and the rape of a black woman gets 2 years. Nationally, murderers with white victims are up to 4. 3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than murderers with black victims. So you might say, that’s America, we don’t need to worry about racism down under. WRONG!! Late 2004, late one night Mulrunji Doomadgee, a 36 year old local of Palm Island of the coast of QLD was arrested for being drunk and died an hour late in a police cell.
He suffered massive internal injuries, including a ruptured spleen, four broken ribs and a ‘liver that had been ‘almost cleaved in two’ from a huge compressive force. ‘ The officer who arrested him, Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, claimed that Mulrunji had fallen on stairs. A pathologist’s report claimed that the death of was an ‘accident’. Due to this obvious injustice Lex Wotton another Aboriginal man and others set fire to the local police station, court house and police barracks in revolt.
A coroner’s inquest found that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley was responsible for Mulrunji’s death, as the injuries were consistent with a beating. However, a court found Hurley not guilty for manslaughter. He has since been promoted and is an Inspector on the Gold Coast. In comparison Lex Wotton is now facing a life sentence in prison after an all white jury found him guilty of ‘rioting with destruction’. Athough is an extreme example and all cases aren’t as excessive, racism is still prevalent in our society.
