The Reality of Justice and Equality for Black America

The Reality of Justice and Equality for Black America

Is America ready for change, or is America just stringing Black America along like they’ve done over the past 400 years?President Joe Biden is making a lot of promises to Black America, but there are a couple of things that the people have forgotten. As senator of Delaware, Joe Biden drafted the 1994 crime bill that contributed to the mass incarceration of black Americans. The crime bill gave longer sentences and tougher punishments for crimes committed. Bill Clinton, who was president at the time, signed the biggest crime bill in American history. This bill declared war on Black America in so many ways. In an interview, Joe Biden was asked if he was ashamed of drafting the crime bill and he said, “Not at all” with no remorse. Now that he has become president, the million-dollar question is, will he fulfill all the things that he told Black America he was going to do.

For ages, white supremacy has used politics to terrorize and justify the lynching and torture of black people. Most of the lynching took place when black men were accused of some type of sexual assault or if they were trying to compete with white people economically. Even when black people were given the right to vote there were laws put in place to suppress their votes and African American people still participate in voting with the hope that a president is going to come along and make justice and equality a reality for them, but the results remain the same.

“The meaning of insanity is when a person does the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” (Albert Einstein) Biden hasn’t been in office a hundred days yet, and already he’s having problems with his commitment to increasing the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour. He recently told CBS News that “I don’t think it’s going to survive,” referring to the minimum wage increase. The other problem he’s also facing is the fight against racial injustice. There have been many presidents that have said the same thing, and nothing has changed for black citizens. The real question is, what is it going to take for Black America to wake up and realize that they are being lied to. Millions of Black people get out to vote for change, and the outcome still is the same. According to CNN, Biden said,” Those eight minutes and 46 seconds that took George Floyd’s life opened the eyes of millions of Americans and millions of people all over, the world. It was the knee on the neck of justice, and it wouldn’t be forgotten.”

This statement made by Biden, clearly says that he saw this was the murder of an innocent man. So, why hasn’t Trump or Biden stepped in to make sure that every police officer that kills an innocent person is convicted for murder? What kind of investigation is needed when you can see the murder taking place with your own eyes? When situations like this occur, it clearly shows that America has no intention of granting African Americans rights and equality. This comes down to the 13th amendment. It states that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude would be acceptable, except for punishment if a crime has been committed. President Andrew Johnson used the black code, which let former Confederate states limit the freedom of African Americans and still have the power to use them for cheap or free labor. Not long after that, the Jim Crow Laws were put in place to heavily discriminated against black people. Even though they were freed from slavery, they still had to depend on former slave owners for work. The landowners loaned the slaves tools to work the lands, and they were charged for using them. The cost for using the tools usually ended up being more than what they were being paid to do the job, this was called sharecropping.

During the reconstruction era, President Andrew Johnson ordered all the land under federal control to be returned to its earlier owners. They were forced to sign contracts with planters and if they didn’t, they would be evicted from the land they occupied and were forced off the land by army troops. Laws were created to protect the interest and the agenda of white supremacy, and their ideology still stands to this very day. The murder of George Floyd is a prime example of white supremacy. The entire world saw how Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, and there is nothing that’s going to be done about it, but why? There is a law called qualified immunity. This law protects police officers from ever being charged with a crime against the people. This is unfair and unjust to African Americans because it affects them the most. Acting and former presidents in the United States knew about this law and kept it hidden from the public, and now people are beginning to demand the government to abolish it. Ice cream makers (Ben and Jerry) are talking about starting an organization to push the issue to abolish qualified immunity. The Supreme Court created this doctrine in 1967, at the height of the Civil Rights movement and it hasn’t changed.

In 2020, police have killed over 1,000 people. Nearly a quarter of those people were black and 99% of those deaths resulted in no charges against the police. So why is the government and its followers saying they are losing the country? Losing the country to whom, Black people have been considered a threat to the country, when they were the ones that were enslaved, and till this very day are having their civil rights violated and being killed? There was a time where a white woman could just say that a black man looked at her the wrong way, and he would be hung for it. America has always displayed its’ hatred towards blacks form slavery up until now. Is this the great America that President Trump was speaking of? Black people never got to see the greatness of America because when they began to see greatness and having their towns and businesses, white supremacists burned them down to the ground. Throughout history, there has never been justice for blacks in America. Despite the efforts, the struggle to achieve full equality and guarantee civil rights for Black Americans has continued well into the 21st century, and since black people don’t have ownership of anything, what’s left for them to do? If no one can see how black people have been treated and discriminated against in America, they are just as guilty by looking over the situation and pretending that it’s not happening.