In September 2018, I attended a talk at Ithaca College that changed my entire perception of race, incarceration and the criminal system in the United States.
I can remember exactly where I was sitting in Textor 102 when James Forman Jr., author of Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, discussed why he would never call the legal system in the United States a “criminal justice” system. Although that was a novel concept to me at the time, I have since adjusted my own language.
From its foundation, America has had a history of legalizing racism (think slavery and Jim Crow laws, to name the obvious). But even after the Civil Rights movement, racism is still embedded in every area of American life, from education to employment to home ownership.
Today, African Americans are five times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts and constitute 43% of people executed on death row, despite making up only 13.4% of the population of the United States. Black Americans are also 3.2 times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans.
Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. Daniel Prude. Rayshard Brooks. These are names we know for reasons we wish we didn’t: they are just some of the Black Americans who have been killed by police in recent memory. They are more than just headlines or statistics — they are real people with families and stories that were cruelly cut short. And their deaths demonstrate that our system has a long way to go before it can claim to dispense justice.
As a journalism major, I’ve been constantly reminded how much of an impact word choice has on our understanding of the issues and the world around us. This semester, I’ll be reporting on the criminal-legal beat in Ithaca and Tompkins County, covering race, policing, the courts and other areas where —to quote Amanda Gorman — ”the norms and notions of what ‘just’ is isn’t always justice.”
Know a story I should cover? Remember the moment when you started to unlearn what justice looked like? Let me know your thoughts on Twitter by tagging @lizbierlymedia or drop a comment below!