Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System

    

In the Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System article by David Cole, he argues the points about the inequality of race and class in the criminal justice system, providing that white defendants have more power in the court room than such as being able to afford a Lawyer, having a jury composed of members of their own race and their faces aren't seen as image associated with crime and the black defendants are poor and a member of racial minority. Cole stated “My claim is not simply that we have ignored inequality’s effect within the criminal justice system, nor that we have tried but failed to achieve equality there. Rather, I contend that our criminal justice system affirmatively depends on inequality.”
In the O.J. Simpson case where he was prosecuted for the deaths of his ex-wife and her male friend, the split screen image captures in a moment the division between Black and White people as 3/4 of black students at the Howard Law School supports O.J. Simpson throughout the whole trial as oppose to students at the George Washington University Law School sit shocked in silence as they watched the same scene.

The lingering effects of slavery for contributing to the breakdown of the black family, for example: the rise of single-parent families headed by females ("matriarchy"). The lack of a father in the home led to poor socialization of young black males, e.g., inability to deal with authority; and that matriarchy severely reduced the esteem of men as the family "breadwinner". Black people are seen as very arrogant, defensive and loud, but I believe this image is steered from time of slavery, the way in which they were socialized, oppressed by the whites, and as a result they become rebellious. The criminal justice system for one does not make it better for people of color, because they plaster this image on black people.

Statistics have shown that more than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their thirties, 1 in every 10 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the "war on drugs," in which two-thirds of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color.