Racism in America and Its Solutions

Racism in America is all we read, whenever we talk about US history. Racism in America is not a new fact, in fact, it has always been there in the history of America since the 1860s. There is much in the past that has hindered towards reaching the sense of equality among African-Americans and White people, although white people have become much more accepting, but the wounds of the past are still fresh even today.

The statistics from last 5-year data, stated in the article of Goyette (2014) makes us think that there is still injustice in the society regarding black men. Black person serves 19.5% more sentence than the white person committing the crime. The child poverty is about 40% in African-American and the US is on the second in the list of child poverty country.

The US prisons are overcrowded with black people committing minor crimes like drug possession, although, now the states are clearly thinking about its drug policy. Almost 70% of the African-American society are still struggling to make ends meet daily and are below poverty line.

Moreover, The Ferguson incident is not so old, where a black male was shot by Policeman for apparently no reason. The history of America is filled with such incidents, for example, the murder of their two leaders, Tupac Shakur and Dr. King (Williamson, 2016). Lastly, according to states, nearly a third of population of America is of colored people and yet, nearly two third of these people are behind bars.

Moreover, it is said that out of three black people, one will go to jail in sometime of his life. (Noman, 2016). Therefore, racism in America has been the social problem and is still affecting black people even now, in terms of inequality, police brutality, incarceration and education etc. and it needs to be addressed.

Credible Sources

1. Noman, N. (2016). Racism in America Today Is Alive and Well — And These Stats Prove It. Mic.

The article talks about the racism in America examples along with their facts and figures. The article continues to talk about the police brutality, incarceration, wages/poverty etc. about the African-American. This article is a credible source because, it provides statistics with references. This article is based on the research carried out by different department, hence, it is not entirely biased.

2. Goyette, B. (2014). 15 Charts That Show The U.S. Isn’t Over Racism. The Huffington Post.

The article talks about the unfair behavior of American society with black people in terms of education, neighborhood, racial discrimination, incarceration, job opportunities etc. along with the charts and statistics. Hence, it is a credible source because it includes data from dependable departments of research and there are links provided with each chart to visit the original chart site.

Non-Credible Source

3. Williamson, M. (2016). Race and Repentance in America. The Huffington Post.

This article talks about the history of America and whites’ contributions to the racism in America that still exists in the society. This articles covers a lot of facts about history and recent incidents that are happening in America. However, the article seems more biased because the author didn’t provide any sources for the data he quoted in his article, which made this article a non-credible source. Although, there are some quite known facts integrated in this article

4. Marcus, L. (2016). Articles: The Myth of Racist America. Americanthinker.com

This article talks about the myths of racist America, a creative article written by black person, Mr. Marcus, who deliberately denies racism in America by saying that such racism is just for politicians to gain power. Where the article is interesting to read, the author of this article conveys his personal thoughts and agenda, without providing any references and statistics to prove his arguments and therefore, the source is non-credible.

Peer-Reviewed Article

5. Jee-Lyn García, J. & Sharif, M. (2015). Black Lives Matter: A Commentary on Racism and Public Health.

The article is based on the behavior of healthcare professionals towards African-Americans. The study includes personals and data that provide support to such argument that healthcare professionals treat people differently based on their ethnicity/race. This study provides a much closer view at the persisting racial problem residing in America in healthcare department. The source is credible

6. Kressin, N., Raymond, K., & Manze, M. (2008). Perceptions of Race/Ethnicity-Based Discrimination: A Review of Measures and Evaluation of Their Usefulness for the Health Care Setting.

This article, where focuses on the unjust legalized system towards black people, also focuses on the effects of racism in the colored people. The study shows that how racism in America, in society affects a colored person in terms of his health. The study is based on a research that how racism in America can have chronic effects on colored person like panic attacks, depression, OCD etc. The source is credible

Rhetoric Devices

Stereotype, Repetition, Rhetorical Analogies

Repetition: This rhetoric device has always been used to describe the racial problems that still exists in America. In almost every article related to African-American, the history of slavery and the segregation of blacks and whites are repeated again and again. Moreover, in Cinema, much of the black people roles in the movies are related to drug dealers, as described in the article (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/18/women-gay-ethnic-stereotypes-in-film). These facts stated above has always proved to be a hindrance towards solving this issue of racism in America.

The other article  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/civil-rights-act-anniversary-racism-charts_n_5521104.html) clearly states that white people use more drugs than black people and yet, black people are imprisoned more than white people. These sorts of portrayal and repetition of flawed concepts are quite misleading and that’s why, there is still increasing cause of hate crimes based on racism in America.

Stereotype: The above stated example of drug use is quite a good example of Stereotype. Often black people are referred to drug dealers, mafia and gangs, which is the total opposite of the reality. Moreover, black people are often portrayed as conservative and narrow minded, as they have a short boundary, where they spend their lives according to their small set of rules.

Furthermore, black people are often mistaken as convicts, a severe stereotype in legal as well as common public, due to which there are incidents like hate crimes and police brutality as stated in article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marianne-williamson/race-repentance-and-repar_b_5689876.html). Rhetorical Analogies as blacks are given the same respect and rights as white people by saying that the president of America is a black person.

Argumentative Essay

Racism in America is a known fact. Most often we hear about the police brutality issues and incarceration issues regarding African-American in the news. There are many solutions that can surely work in exterminating racism in American society with the help of government and American people.

The first possible solution towards solving racism in America towards African-American is by providing decent paying jobs. As described by Crone (2013) that, “black people are more likely to end up in below-poverty level, minimum wage jobs that typically have no health care or retirement benefits, they have a minimum wage job of $7.25 an hour will earn a worker $15,080 a year if he or she works all 52 weeks per year, but he or she will still be $8,770 below the poverty level, which is $23,850 for a family of four” (p. 91), it is evident that there should be decent paying jobs created for black people so that they can support their family and their children can get good education, so that, they’ll be able to live a healthy and successful life.

Second possible solution is to minimize the penalty on non-serious crimes. As Goyette (2014) states in her article that black men serve sentence 19.5% more than white men committing the same crime. Also, she states that white men hold more drug than black men. In case of such revelations, there is a need to modify the legal system.

Many states have legalized marijuana for recreational use and medical use, this should provide much more relief to black people in case of imprisonment and also in turns, will help with the prison crowded issues faced by the government. As Williamson (2014) states that every 1 in every 3 black person would go to prison at some point of his life.

So, states need to rethink its certain laws and strategy towards crimes, so such differences could be exterminated, the difference in treatment and other discrimination based behavior. A good example would be to end biasness in the movies where black people are portrayed as drug dealers or Mafia. This would end much of the racial discrimination in the society and blacks would feel the sense of equity in the society.

Third possible solution is the tax system. As Crone (2013) suggests that the African-American majority works on low wages and there is a need for progressive tax system (p.108), this progressive tax would greatly strengthen the position of black in the society. This will give them much benefits, such as, moving upward, fulfilling their daily necessities, getting good education, having a retirement fund that is not used on healthcare, their health insurance and much more benefits that the blacks will enjoy due to the progressive tax.

This sort of tax would strengthen not only blacks, but the public infrastructures and institutes that are there to help everyone but fails to do so, due to the lack of funds. These funds would provide these public institutes with power to help everyone in the society. The tax where rich people pay more tax and poor people pay less tax could be the possible solution to end the racial discrimination because then, all people in society would be stable and above the poverty line and have equal power and rights due to same socio-economic status.

The people would say that blacks do have equal rights and these sorts of arguments are made to gain political power by politicians as the current president of America is a black person, Barack Obama. The problem is that, the problem didn’t happen yesterday but it is engraved in the history, the civil war and the era before that, blacks weren’t given the same opportunities as the white men do and now, when they are given rights, they still have a long way to go due to such long gap in development.

Black men were slaves and hence, couldn’t accumulate such wealth and afford much of the great schools to make themselves better and upwardly mobile. However, there are exceptions but the majority of the black people still face these issues like poverty, police brutality and imprisonment such as stated by Goyette (2014). Jee-Lyn García & Sharif, (2015) as well as Kressin, Raymond, & Manze, (2008) states that the blacks are discriminated in society and healthcare sector and it affects their social as well as health life, causing them chronic problems like depression, panic attacks and OCDs.

By providing equal opportunities, decent paying jobs, rethinking the current laws on crime and progressive tax system could we really hope to exterminate racism in America towards black people in the society. Think of all the history of America, it’s true that black have suffered great losses in the past and therefore, they couldn’t make up for such loss in such short amount of years, hence, our government and American people together can end this racism in America by changing the way we think and do things, by changing the cinema biasness and people biasness about equality. Only then we could really hope to see the change and it’s not impossible.

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Work Cited

• Crone, J. (2016). How Can We Solve Our Social Problems? (3rd ed., pp. 1-57). USA: SagePublications, Inc. Retrieved from https://store.kobobooks.com/
• Goyette, B. (2014). 15 Charts That Show The U.S. Isn’t Over Racism. The Huffington Post. Retrieved 15 August 20226, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/civil-rights-act-anniversary-racism-charts_n_5521104.html
• Jee-Lyn García, J. & Sharif, M. (2015). Black Lives Matter: A Commentary on Racism and Public Health. American Journal Of Public Health, 105(8), e27-e30. http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2015.302706
• Kressin, N., Raymond, K., & Manze, M. (2008). Perceptions of Race/Ethnicity-Based Discrimination: A Review of Measures and Evaluation of Their Usefulness for the Health Care Setting. Journal Of Health Care For The Poor And Underserved, 19(3), 697-730. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hpu.0.0041
• Marcus, L. (2016). Articles: The Myth of Racist America. com. Retrieved 15 August 2022, from http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/12/the_myth_of_racist_america.html
• Noman, N. (2016). Racism in America Today Is Alive and Well — And These Stats Prove It. Mic. Retrieved 7 December 2016, from https://mic.com/articles/140107/racism-in-america-today-is-alive-and-well-and-these-stats-prove-it#.q4e9GpCCg
• Williamson, M. (2016). Race and Repentance in America. The Huffington Post. Retrieved 15 August 2022, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marianne-williamson/race-repentance-and-repar_b_5689876.html