Racial Discrimination In America

As a young African-American male once I became a teenager I was hit with some of the things my parents would call real world issues. One of these many issues being racism and stereotyping. I was told by my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles that because of what your skin looks like you will be judged and treated differently on occasion. Only being around thirteen the seriousness my parents and relatives took on the topic shocked me. Being sheltered in a home with two parents, two siblings and growing up in a nice town and going to nice schools the idea of racism never really hit me as that big of a problem. Don’t get me wrong I heard and learned about slavery and the civil rights movements in school and from my relatives, and about the …show more content…
I’m still sheltered in the opinion of my own and multiple of my friends and family, but I understand more of the real world. Over these past years I’ve had the topic of racial tensions and discrimination revisit me. Over the past years I’ve seen the trend of racial crimes. From the cases of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, all these deaths very unfortunate, but having a similar theme of Black citizens dead. This I believe caused a new surge of urgency for my parents to revisit this race issue. However, this time I was able to understand my parents a little bit more, but I was also able to compose questions of my own for my parents. One of these questions being “what if this didn’t happen just because he was black, what if he only did this because he was being violent.” When I look back at the case of Michael Brown I see a black teen who was unfortunately killed after robbing a convenience store and shoving the store clerk and then moving towards Officer Wilson once he was confronted with his crime, before fatal shots were …show more content…
I have no problem with people bringing up the fact that a crime could be because of race, but when people disregard other facts around cases like these it befuddles me. This revolving cycle of this happened because he/she was arrested/harassed/ killed or whatever due to their race is used to frequently. Recently in The NFL Tom Brady a white quarterback was suspended for 4 games for allegedly breaking NFL rules, but later he was found innocent and his penalty was revoked. It didn’t take long before Brandon Marshall a Black wide receiver to say that if this were another Black quarterback using Cam Newton as an example the suspension would have been upheld. The idea of a judge ruling against someone in this day in age because of their skin color for a meager four football games doesn’t seem plausible to me. When the race card is used for small issues like a football suspension, where evidence pointed to the reversal of the penalty, the race card is diminished because we find a way no matter what to use that