h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One thing that has always bothered me about discrimination is the way blacks are treated by the "justice" system, especially black men in their 20s. They are ALL treated as if they are dangerous, murderous gangster drug-dealers. Statistics all rattle on about how the majority of serious crimes are committed by blacks of this category. But I think the problem is a problem of perception. Blacks have routinely been discriminated against by whites, that is a given fact. But what has arisen out of it is a vicious cycle. Blacks are forced to live in crime-ridden areas and not much is expected of them. They are not given proper education, nor is education even a high priortiy for most of them. Instead, they see no choice but to turn to crime as a means of living. It is the white man's fault that blacks turn to crime. But I do not believe that blacks commit the majority of crimes. Especially in terms of rape, I believe blacks get an unfair rap. There is nothing to support this myth. The worst part of the whole mess is the death penalty, which is one of the reasons I'm against it. Black men are more likely to be sentenced to die than white men for the same crimes. There is a disproportionate amount of blacks on death row, that does not reflect their relative percentage of the general population. This needs to be corrected. I do not believe blacks commit the majority of capital crimes--it wouldn't be possible (I mean, they ARE a minority for a reason--there's less of them than whites!). It burns me how much blacks are treated as less than human by most whites. The problem with whites is they don't realize they are doing it. They think they're treating their "black brother" as they should be (AKA patronizingly and as potential criminals). To solve this problem, we (whites) need to change our attitudes. We need to talk openly about racism, within and without the justice system. We need to recognize that blacks are humans just like us whites, but also that they have a seperate culture and heritage from us. For the blacks' parts, I think they need to place more importance on education and breaking out of the vicious cycle. Maybe I'm way off on this whole thing, but that's the view that I offer. Perhaps this dialog will help expose this problem to the general public. Something needs to change, however, we cannot stop at just talking about it, but working actively to correct this problem.