We Need to Know Our Rights!!!

We as people need to become more knowledgeable of the governments control of the American public. In the book The New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander talks about how police works around one of the rules the founding fathers set out. The 4 Amendment is right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person's or thing to be seized. The Fourth Amendment gives a person the ability to avoid police searches. The text states, "Courts and scholars agree that the Fourth Amendment governs all searchers and seizures by the police and that the amendment was adopted in response to the English practice of conducting arbitrary searches under general warrants to uncover seditious libels."   Later the Supreme Court had began to unravel the protection for Americans. In the early 1980s a series of Fourth Amendment rights have been broken. The police had found a new tactic to use undermined the Fourth Amendment. In which the police goes by as long as the person gives consent, the police officer can stop, interrogate, and search a person for any reason or no reason at all. Police use the same tactic today to target African American men especially on the War on Drugs. Its hard as black man walking the streets of Philly. When a cop car drives around you the only thing you want to do is get out of dodge. As for me when I see law enforcement I try to avoid walking on the same street as them because it seems like they always want to target us. There have been a few times I heard of my friends being pinned down to a police car for no reason. My friend submitted there rights to the police officer when they didn't even know they have the right to tell law enforcement no they can't search them. Once they gave the officers consent it was too late. I believe that African Americans especially in the poor neighborhoods should be educated on the rights that they obtain.

White Supremacy

In Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow she talks about the War on drugs. In June 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants.

Many people believe that the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) was injecting crack into the ghettos across the nation. In response to the public outcry about people theories the CIA conducted an internal investigation of its role in Central America related to the drug trade.  The CIA claimed that they were not involved with the inner-city crack cocaine trade. The CIA later negated charges that CIA officials knew that their Nicaraguan allies were dealing drugs. But, the report said that the CIA, in a number of cases, didn't bother to look into allegations about narcotics there Nicaraguan allies were dealing. I believe that this is pretty interesting that the CIA had no clue that there ally was trafficking drugs in America. By far the US government is one of the most strongest and intelligent civilization. So, I don’t settle for CIA not knowing anything about the Nicaraguans trafficking drugs throughout America without them noticing. Even though the government might not have been as technology savvy as it is today doesn’t mean that they didn’t have a great technology back then.

Many other people consider that the War on Drugs was another strategy of white supremacy. There have been many other strategies used to hurt the African American community. Such as the epidemic of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. African Americans  were heavenly depicted as a people who mainly carried the HIV/AIDS  virus. But back to the War on Drugs many anti- white supremacist believe that this is a strategy used to annihilate the race African Americans.

Below is a link about the Drug dealer known as the real "Rick Ross":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-kLt9l2cQg

Discrimination At It's Finest!

In the book White Like Me, the author Tim Wise brings up the topic of discrimination during hurricane Katrina in 2009. On August 29, 2005, hurricane Katrina was one of the most deadliest and destructive tropical storms that ever hit America. Facts have shown that hurricane Katrina was recorded to be sixth strongest hurricane to ever hit the Atlantic coast. There were about 1,833 people who died in the hurricane and floods. Many residents of New Orleans were unable to evacuate the city before the hurricane. During hurricane Katrina there were many people stranded on rooftops throughout the city and living for days in the Astrodome. The living conditions were terrible for the people stranded in New Orleans.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans poor blacks and other minorities were hit the most because they did not own cars or have any type of money to leave the city.  Also many people did not know how severe Hurricane Katrina was going to hit the city, so people decided to stay and most of them lost their lives.  People were looting from stores and the media had a field day in replaying the same exact footage of African Americans looting a store from different angles just to show the rest of the country that black people are nothing, but violent savages. In the text Wise states, "They also showed us endless footage of looters, though it was often the same footage or six incidents shown from different angles, giving the impression to a public already inclined to think the worst of lower-income black folks that theft was more common than it really was. (218)" Blacks were then targeted by being called sub-human scum, vermin, slime, and referred to as animals.

The African Americans in New Orleans were disproportionately poor. It is the result of centuries of concerted decision-making by political actors at the local, state, and national levels, which leads all the way back to the days of slavery and continuing up to our current political moment. Classism played certain role in during the hurricane. All of the impoverished areas of the city were flooded and destroyed.  The wealthiest districts weren't even flooded as bad or flooded at all. I believe if elite whites would have lived in those areas deemed as impoverished in New Orleans the government would have fixed the levees and protected them in any disaster.  But because it was poor minorities living in this particular space they just didn't care. I strongly believe that it wasn't any accident that certain neighborhoods in New Orleans suffered the most damaged from the flooding.