Jim Crow Violation

Michelle Alexander argues that “All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world” (215). Even though everyone had at least violated the law once in their life, but the most severe violation are endangering someone else life. However, in the United States the police care more about drug …show more content…
It was a form of practice that segregated black from the white which allow the white to be in control. The Jim Crow was a way to discriminate on African American when slavery had ended, “ racial segregation had actually begun years earlier in the North, as an effort to prevent race-mixing and preserve racial hierarchy…Even among those most hostile to Reconstruction, few would have predicted that racial segregation would soon evolve into a new racial caste system…that came to be known simply as Jim Crow” (Alexander 30). This racial caste system prevented black people from entering into places that were only for whites. The elites tires their best to keep the minority group below them, “segregation laws were proposed as part of a deliberate effort to drive a wedge between poor whites and African American. These discriminatory barriers were designed to encourage lower-cals whites to retain a sense of superiority over blacks…” (Alexander 34). Some example of segregation law that were deliberately created to prevent African American to vote are poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and the literacy and comprehension test. This was created because the whites knew that they were poor and could not pay the tax and due to slavery, they did not have any descendants who had voted before. In the Brown VS. Board of education the Supreme Court overruled Plessy v. Ferguson which developed the rule to separate but equal. The Civil Right Act of …show more content…
Having the record of being a felon they are excluded from voting or jury services mainly their privileges of a citizen. They are not able to get public housing by law, ineligible for food stamps, have to check the box saying that they were a felon on job application and they are denied licenses for professions. Business industry prefer not to hire someone who use to be in prison because of the sigma that is build around criminal. Which result to the formally incarcerated not being able to get a job to make a living and because of the struggle of getting back into society and also their exclusion they often end back to the prison system. Many criminals are not getting represented because of the increase of people being swept into the criminals justices system due to drug and sometime the offenses are minor. In the court case of Gideon vs. Wainwright Supreme Court ruled that is your right to an attorney is protected and if you are not able to afford one the police could appoint one to them. However many people are not getting represented by a lawyer, “Ten of thousands of poor people go to jail every year without ever talking to a lawyer, and those who do meet with a lawyer for a drug offense often spend only a few minutes discussing their case and options before making a decision that will profoundly affect the arrest of