Brayan Barreto

FIQWS 10115 JPOE

DB#3

11/11/19

                      What is my dilemma    

The Bronx had ups and down through their history from the 1900-1990 century. In my community ( Bronx third ave ) there’s unsecured ness and oppression between cops and people of color. By oppression I mean people who take advantage of another person’s life. Unsecured ness come from the lack of protection and who to trust in  the community. Therefore, socioeconomic status and ethnicity tend to be a major role for an increase of incarceration in jail systems from unprotected, uncertified laws and unfair cases which affects those who are around. 

My community has faced corruption due to the status of the area. The environment looks (poverty) portrays whether people would find the place safe or not safe which brings the concept of unsecured ness. This led to the idea of “ The Broken Window Theory, “ it’s about cracking down on petty crimes in the most dangerous areas that police feel suspicious about which makes positive or negative changes to the community. The theory is sometimes played in my community. For instance, Eric Klinenberg state, “ Motivation for “ zero tolerance “ policing, wherinn officers monitor petty crimes, such as graffiti, loitering, public intoxication, and even panhandling, and courts severely punish those convicted of committing them.( Klinenberg ) ‘’ This connect to my community ( bronx third ave ) because  not many people care about the projects, especially since the area is seen so poorly, uncontrollable. the cops, violence, and crimes rise making the community be tough. In addition, the cops would be targeting minorities, which inflicts people in the communities to have less confidence in trust and unfair social justice since officers are arresting those who they believe are doing something unpleasant. 

Furthermore, this connects to the ‘’ Letter from a Birmingham Jail “ from Martin Luther King Jr. because unfair justice tends to happen when people of different ethnicity are belittled by those who have more power in the society. The ‘’ Letter from a Birmingham Jail “ is about the issue of injustice occurring in the justice system. For example, Luther writes down “ We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. “ This quote disputes the idea that people of color ( different ethnicity ) are mainly targeted due to segregation occurring in the south during 1929. This is significant because problems from 1929 are still happening today due to the fact that there’s not much confrontation toward an unfair issue or advocating of a problem that was misjudged to those individuals of different ethnicity. This connects to the idea of socioeconomic status and ethnicity because people of color have limited power which cause them to not take direct action due to some recidivism and be a prey since there isn’t worth that much toward the society economically. 

People of different ethnicity tend to be the main prey for incarcerated in the justice system from the unprotected and uncertified  laws and repercussions from the jail system. In the article of ‘’Mass incarceration and the ‘new Jim Crow’: An interview with Michelle Alexander, “ the authors elaborated on the idea that law enforcement cause families from people of color to be split which make the young children to see life difficult and are impacted by not having a role model. For example, “ [P]sychological impact, the emotional impact, the level of grief and suffering, it’s beyond description. “ This reveals that  children are the ones mostly impacted from having to deal with tragedy at an early age which cause them to thrive with anything to make their families be in good condition. This led to the cycle of being involved in the bad activity and being incarcerated. As this keeps happening the percentage of people of color increases in the jail system which results in the unavailability of doing something later in their life. This connects to the idea that incarceration, socioeconomic status and ethnicity because those who were felons aren’t valuable and live in poverty areas. 

In my community, ordinary people had been victims of scapegoat from a case that wasn’t their responsibility. As a young kid, I have seen people in my neighborhood frisk and stop by just standing in an area for a few minutes. There was this one time that I was walking home with a group of friends and I saw a man (hispanic= dominican) who I was familiar with being held accountable by two aggressive cops for staying in a spot for 6 minutes just because the cops felt suspicious. This causes me to feel some type of way toward the cops and my friends were surprised by the action taken by the cops decision. After the man was released we ran and asked if he’s fine and he told me nah because now he doesn’t know who to trust and would have the trauma of this situation. This incident made me come up with some solutions which were to have people not stay at a spot for a long time, whenever a cop approaches, stay calm and integrate them with some questions about their actions taken, and don’t make the cops repeat themselves many times because this could lead them to be aggressive.

Overall, corruption, unjustice and discrimination makes socioeconomic status for people of color to be bad and supremacy often tend to destroy life of other people. Today there’s still cases where cops over did a decision which causes a person to live. That’s why we should focus more on the way cops and other individuals handle a situation. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources Cited 

Klinenberg Eric, “ The Other Side Of Broken Windows. “, The New Yorker, August 28. 2018

Redeem from

Martin Luther King JR. ( August 1963 ), “ Letter from Birmingham Jail. “ Used in November 8, 2019, The Atlantic Monthly 

Volume 212. No 2: pages 78-88 

Stopford, Annie and Smith, Llewellyn ( Dec. 2014), “ Mass incarceration and the ‘new Jim Crow’: An interview with Michelle Alexander.” 

Volume 19 issue 4, p379-391