The Veil of Acceptance and Equality

The United States has come a long way from Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes (Please click the links to learn more), and openly praised and practiced racism.  For example, all public schools are integrated, even though the best schools are zoned for only wealthy families to attend.  Let's see, what else?  It is no longer legal to discriminate against serving persons at restaurants.  Employers cannot discriminate against hiring potential employees based on race, although according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, blacks have always had the highest unemployment rates among the races.  The biggest example of America's progress is the one and only President Barack Obama, though, he is only half black...

Take a look at the chart below (Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics)

The data is pretty self explanatory.  The reddish color indicates black males.  It is alarming to know that the amount of imprisoned black males is almost triple the amount of the second highest ethnicity.  Why is this occurring?  Are black males violent, aggressive, uncivilized, barbaric, and therefore need to be locked up in order to protect the larger society?  Black males are regular people underneath the stereotypes.  Unfortunately, they get the shortest sticks handed to them from birth.  In my opinion, the treatment of blacks(especially black males) in this country is based on fear passed down through generations.  In fact, I believe that the rampant ownership of firearms in the U.S. stems from the time when blacks were emancipated, and their previous owners began to fear justice being served them.  So they manufactured and bought tons of weapons to keep angry and impoverished blacks away from them.  As the free black population began to grow, they couldn't hang enough of them to get rid of them, so they began building prisons to house them, and it continues today...

Let's be honest...many black males are in fact committing crimes, despite the fact that they are profiled whether or not they did anything wrong.  So why is this happening?  Well, what group of people were barred from owning land and earning wages for their labor in this country?  That's right!  Blacks.  We all know that the home economic environment in which one grows up sets the basis for where one starts their own livelihood, in general.  If your ancestors were not able to pass anything of real value down through generations, either because they had nothing because they were not considered persons, or because of legal discrimination, how can you expect to all of a sudden to be living decently? The answer is that you cannot, so you in turn begin to commit petty crimes to feed that rumble in your stomach, and the stomach's of your hungry family.  In your efforts to survive in a world that has been trained to see you through the eyes of Birth of A Nation (Click here to learn more), you get handcuffed and placed in prison.  And the wheels on the bus go round and round...

Many want to believe that blacks are accepted and equal in America, but is it really just a mirage?