Bryan Stevenson's 'Just Mercy'

In the great country of the United States, most citizens of this society see what they want to see but never the reality of the criminal justice system. Bryan Stevenson’s book, “Just Mercy”, is his own perspective of what it is really like being a lawyer for wrongly convicted people in hopes of reform in the criminal justice system. After the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in 2012, many citizens countrywide was outraged at the fact that Zimmerman was not imprisoned for murdering an innocent seventeen year old. This sparked the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter movement. This movement alone brought attention to the inequality and violence against African-Americans internationally. Since then, many incidents happened to African-Americans …show more content…
Although Stevenson’s book focuses on the crimes of the southern part of the U.S, he points out the injustice system of our country and emphasizes racial discrimination and poverty, children being sent to adult prisons, and his client Walter McMillan. Ever since the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, the discrimination against black people has risen. Yes, the case has ended the segregation of black and white students, but some white people believe they have supremacy over the blacks, thus joining the Ku Klux Klan hate group. The discrimination against colored people from the police is absolutely horrific. I believe the police are here to protect the community and save us from any danger when called upon, but the fact they are taught to profile and stereotype people in the police academy sickens me. I know not all police are bad, but they are responsible for the majority of colored people in prison (Conley 2015, p. 354). Stevenson talked about a time when a SWAT team surrounded him for listening to the radio in his car …show more content…
340). Being in the environment where people don’t see much success in moving from the lower class to the middle class, many people lose hope and turn to other forms of unproductivity that is considered dangerous like selling drugs or students dropping out of school to join gangs. He also states that with residential segregation it inflicts poverty through a “culture of segregation” which insinuates that the ghetto was constructed by white people to keep blacks out of the white territory (as cited in Massey & Denton, 1993, p. 352). Redlining is illegal now, but it has left its mark on many big cities. For example, it has come to my attention that around downtown in many big cities, it has become urbanized and there are suburbs on the outskirts of the city where most white people live. In my opinion, the city grows based on who’s on the city council, because that’s where the taxes of the residents goes to to further improve the city like new roads, parks, or shopping places. They figure out the best place to get more money and automatically assume that only wealthy white people will in the area to shop. They never focus on the poverty side of the city and try to move to without them leaving