ethical implications in Racial discrimination
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Ethical Implications
Racial discrimination is a contentious issue in the United States that has lead to crimes against the inferior races. The most affected race in the United States is the African Americans who are also known as Negroes. Hate crimes against them and injustices done to them by the public and the judicial system including the police can not go unnoticed. Racial discrimination has major ethical implications in the society and is the root of many crimes and social problems present in our societies today. In this essay, the crimes and injustices against African Americans will be discussed at length with reference to a story highlighted in the New York Times that involved the death of African American children after a bombing in the church. I will seek to support the statement “African Americans are not fairly treated in the society due to their racial difference.”
In the story highlighted in the New York Times “Birmingham Bomb Kills 4 Negro Girls in Church; Riots Flare; 2 Boys Slain”, a bomb destroyed a Negro church where four Negro girls were killed and others injured during the riots that erupted after the incidence. During the riots that followed, two boys were shot dead; five whites and one Negro were brutally injured. The governor was pressurized by the local government to deploy the police, the sheriff’s deputies including other law enforcers to maintain peace. They patrolled African American neighborhoods in a bid to maintain peace and calm down the riots. Most blacks were captured and no white could be seen wandering the streets. In my own opinion, I can honestly say that the blacks had a right to be angry due to the bombing of the church and the killing of innocent children. However, the action they took to take the riots to the streets was not a sober one because it led to more deaths especially African Americans. At this point, the issue was to stop the riots and not catch the perpetrators involved in the bombings.
Bombing of a church and the killing of innocent children is a crime that should not go unpunished in accordance to the law. In this situation the African Americans felt discriminated against and worse yet, felt as if the person responsible was out to deny them their freedom to worship by bombing the church. They also felt that the crime was not treated with the seriousness it deserved and the police were deployed only when riots erupt where five whites were seriously injured.
During the riots, the police shot at angry demonstrators who were throwing stones at them in the end two boys aged sixteen and thirteen were shot and killed by the police who claimed that they were in a group of people throwing stones at them and also at the whites who were driving by. The sheriff later confessed that there was no specific reason for the killings, but it was possible that it was linked to the racial disorder that was threatening in the country. He offered a reward of $5000 for the detention and conviction of the perpetrators, but till to date no one has been arrested. In fact, none of the bombings against African American property has been solved since the Second World War. Justice for the blacks does not prevail where racial discrimination against them has been an issue of contention for decades now. Most cases are closed by the police department before they can be investigated.
The same thing happened in after the assassination of Martin Luther King. During the riots, many African Americans lost their lives and the government deployed troops in order to contain the situation. Most blacks were shot by the police while others were viciously beaten and left to die. They fact that martin Luther King had been killed was not the issue that the police were ready to deal with because up to date the killers of Martin Luther King have not been arrested. It is therefore certain to say that, when it comes to blacks, justice is delayed and at the end it is denied.
Approximately 11% of African Americans make up the total population in the United States. They are oppressed, enslaved and discriminated against and this has been their position in the society for a long time now. Most of them are unemployed and those who are employed receive minimum wages almost half of those earned by the whites doing almost the same or even less jobs. In other states, they are not allowed to go to the same schools, go to the same church or even share the same buses with the whites. African Americans are beaten up and killed willingly by the United States authority at various levels.
Conclusively, the blacks are oppressed by the whites who are the superior race in the United States. The majorities of them are unemployed and are not allowed to go to the same schools, share the same buses or train or even go to the same churches as the whites. This has been the case since the Second World War and nothing has been done to ease this social injustice that has severe ethical implications. If African Americans are going to feel as though the matter or treated as equals with whites, then it has to begin by giving justice to those blacks that were deeply hurt by the death of Martin Luther King and other injustices that led to the death, injury and destruction of property.
Works Cited
Sitton Claude. “Birmingham Bomb Kills 4 Negro Girls in Church; Riots Flare; 2
Boys Slain.” The New York Times. September 15, 1963
