Black Ghetto In America

In the United States, there is in place a system of oppression that every Black citizen must live with every day of their lives. In this system, they are socially characterized as being everything that is wrong with society. In the system, Black people are considered poor, uneducated, and criminal—all things that the American society fights against. Since their importation to the new land, Blacks have been considered to be an inferior race in the country. Over the years, this idea has manifested through laws and practices that have multigenerational effects on its targets. Because of these policies and with the consent of the majority of the population, the United States has maintained a system of oppression that has lasted after the end …show more content…
In this system, “neighborhoods were ranked and color-coded, and the D-rated ones—shunned for their ‘inharmonious’ racial groups— were typically outlined in red.” By not lending to Blacks, the Government-sponsored companies created the idea of the “black ghetto” and “white suburbia.” Riddled with drugs, crime, and poverty, the idea of the “black ghetto” strengthens the claim that Black people are inferior because the neighborhoods where they live are dilapidated and dangerous. In “white suburbia,” the idea of a house with a picket-fence, low crime, and middle class America furthers this claim of Black inferiority by showing the stark contrast of White and Black …show more content…
The criminalization of the Black race is another way to maintain the superiority of White Americans. At birth, Black people are considered a threat, this is the reason that “George Zimmerman did not have to ever have a bad encounter with another individual Black man to see Trayvon Martin as dangerous.”This same mindset is why Civil Rights leaders were imprisoned. Even when protestors like Martin Luther King, Jr. practiced peaceful protests, he was wrong because “if [Blacks] conducted themselves in an orderly way, they will not have to worry about police brutality.” The ability to attribute crime to the Black race is what lead to the mass incarceration of African Americans. As of today, Black people are incarcerated at higher rates for misdemeanor offenses and often receive harsher sentences than their white counterparts.Throughout the years, the U.S. Government and the society have actually benefitted economically from waging a war on Blacks through the rhetoric of “law and order.” An example of this type of attribution of crime is the “War on Drugs” during the Reagan administration. During the administration, police enforcement took advantage of the racial coding system that allowed them to incarcerate Blacks through the guise of crime. In essence, “by waging a war on drug users and dealers, Reagan made good on his promise to crack down on the racially defined ‘others’— the undeserving.”,