There are many things wrong with the United States “justice” system, and to go over them all would require an entire library of volumes. But one of the more visible problems is the blatant racism that exists in the U.S. injustice system.

“Racial bias operates at every level of the criminal justice system,” write William Thompson and Joseph Hickey. “For example, minorities are suspected and arrested for more crimes than whites. Likewise, minorities face more serious charges and are given more serious penalties and longer sentences than whites for the same crimes.” (Thompson & Hickey, 2000, p. 275)

This institutionalized racism is fostered in everything from the social conditions minorities experience all the way up to the courtroom itself. In his book Locking Up Our Own, James Forman Jr. writes, “From felon disenfranchisement laws that suppress black votes, to exploitive housing practices that strip black wealth, to schools that refuse to educate black children, to win-at-all costs prosecutors who strike blacks from jury pools, to craven politicians who earn votes by preying on racial anxieties, to the unconscious and implicit biases that infect us all, it is impossible to understand American crime policy without appreciating racism’s enduring role….Racism narrowed the options available to black citizens and elected officials in their fight against crime. (Madar, 2017, p. 14)

A 2000 report found that “nationally, in every category of offense, minority-youths were more likely than whites to be waived from juvenile to adult courts” while also noting that nearly two-thirds of those sent to prison for drug offenses are black, “though white users outnumber them more than 5 to 1.” (Cose, 2000, p. 46)

Ta-Nehisi Coates points out that “an opioid epidemic among mostly white people is greeted with calls for compassion and treatment, as all epidemics should be, while a crack epidemic among mostly black people is greeted with scorn and mandatory minimums.” (Coates, 2017, p. 79)

Racism by Police

ATF agents and other law-enforcement officers, at an annual retreat in the Tennessee mountains, had signs that read “Nigger Check Point,” along with Martin Luther King Junior’s face behind a target and O.J. Simpson in a hangman’s noose. (Thompson & Hickey, 2008, p. 275)

American White Supremacists

White supremacists have put out computer games like “Ethnic Cleansing,” which encourages “players to kill blacks, Jews, and Hispanics as they run through gritty ghetto and subway environments.” (Godinez, 2002, 13A)