Frederick Douglass: The Dehumanization Of The Criminal Justice System

In recent years police brutality against unarmed African American males have been a common headline in the news. Unfortunately, with every tragedy it seems as if another one follows shortly after. According to the Businesses insider, “Since 2005, just 11 cops have have been convicted of fatally shooting somebody while on duty even though thousands of people have died from police-involved shootings...54 officers charged in connection with the fatal shootings, only 11 have been convicted, according to the analysis from the Washington Post and Bowling Green State University...Thirty-three of the 49 victims were black, and 43 of the officers were white, the study found”(Gorman). More importantly, with every death of an unarmed black man, tensions …show more content…
Douglass admonitory tone to assert “...that killing ...any colored person ...is not treated as a crime, either by the courts or the community”(Douglass 68) to emphasize the sense of invisibility the sense of invisibility white southerners had due to the lack of accountability in the southern criminal justice system. AS a result of the lack of the accountability the criminal justice system put on white southerners created a society where whites were seen as superior to blacks. The social structure within society creates a dehumanizing environment for slaves because white southerners did not have to fear the repercussions of their …show more content…
Frederick Douglass and many African-Americans today believe that the killing of a black person is not treated as a crime in the criminal justice system. During Fredrick Douglass Era colored people were getting killed all the time and we are not investigated for the atrocities they committed. Similarly, recent years the American public has seen countless deaths of unarmed African americans like Freddy Gray and Michael Brown killed by caucasian police officers go unpunished .In today’s society an increasing amount of African Americans believe the lives of black males are not valued in the American criminal justice system due to the growing amount of police officers have not been indicted for the murders they committed. The American criminal justice system has shown the black community that it values police officers more than black lives.Since police officers are not indicted for the atrocities they commit it is logical for the black community to conclude that police officers do not fear the ramifications of their action because data has shown that most police officers do not receive formal indictments after committing these