Freedom can be defined as many things. It is the right to live and work without prohibitions. It may also be defined as the access to equality and to the same living conditions that everyone is entitled to. Basically, freedom is the ability to choose without having to live with the choices that have been made by other people. The people of colour who live in the United States have had a long history of trying to gain freedom. While most US citizens live and work in freedom, the majority of coloured people do not feel free yet. Violence against them is on an all time high. At the same time, opportunities are more easily available to the people who belong to the majority or higher density population.
The struggle began decades ago when the fight to end slavery began. In the pre emancipation days, people with black skin were simply known as negros. This paved way for the post slavery stage when the emancipated slaves were now called colored. This phase in history saw the term colored expanded to include all other non Caucasian inhabitants of America. Currently, the term a person of colour describes Hispanic people , Asian, Native American and Americans of African descent. Sadly, people of colour always find themselves on the wrong side of the law.
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According to the Federal Bureau of Prison, 41.9 % of inmates are colored inmates. This data was last updated in October of 2018. The largest percentage of this is the African Americans who occupy 38.1% of the prison. This statistics may not seem alarming but it is worrying when it is noted that the population of the US minority groups stands at only 27.6% of the entire US population. To put in into perspective, it should be noted that less than a third of the country's racial groups occupy over 40 % of the incarcerated population. As though this was not bad enough, further information shows African Americans who only make up 12% of the population occupy 38. 1% of inmates. This is a worrying trend that points to the imbalance of justice for people of colour (Olson, 2016).
Incarceration is the new slavery that subdued the people of colour. Their freedom is taken away more easily than any other people who supposedly live under the same rules and laws. The average colored black man reports that it is dangerous to walk around after dark in some neighbourhoods for fear of being profiled as a criminal. This had led to untold wrongeful arrests that lead to wrongeful prosecution and subsequently wrongeful incarceration. The justice system is not bit more kind to the colored folk. It is reported that colored offenders get the worst of the court appointed advocates. These same advocates do not have sufficient resources to dedicate themselves to each defendant. They gave huge case loads and limited time to explore the merit of each case. The end result is that an individual who is wrongly accused gets into prison and serves an unfairly harsh sentence because the odds were stacked against him. This is the epitome of modern day slavery. Surprisingly, it does not start here. The people of colour are disadvantaged right from the beginning (Rodriguez et al., 2015).
Neighbourhoods that are considered predominantly as minority homes do not get the same infrastructure as the majority. The traditional public schools get substandard lunches, poor infrastructure and inadequate teaching support. Those who attend schools in majority dominant areas often become marginalised and sidelined for opportunities such as scholarships, special programs and accelerated learning opportunities. The minorities are also punished more severely than others for the same misdemeanors. This instills fear and a feeling of segregation from a very young age. As though this were not bad enough, the students who come from low income parents are viewed with suspicion. This is despite the fact that many of their parents qualify for better income. However, they are denied the opportunity because of the color of their skin. Others go through life in mediocre positions because their ethnicity cannot pave way for promotion or any form of elevation. These grim circumstances predispose a percentage of the youth to crime. The other percentage is wrongly accused. Either way, a majority end up living a life not worthy of their efforts. This amount of injustice robs the United States of its title as the land of opportunity.
Reparations schemes have been suggested as the way to make up for past wrongdoing. The schemes list compensation of individuals or communities for activities that took place against their people. This compensation is allocated with direct reference to the number of people who were affected and the specific event that harmed them. The awards range from apologies of the government to the tribes to cash awards if as little as 375 dollars upto 37000 dollars. The reparations are supposed to remedy current relationships by ammending the wrongs of the past. The exercises are also intended to restore good standing and compensate for the injustice in the past (Posner &Vermeule, 2003). Minority groups deserve reparations that restore what was stolen from their ancestors. Fair compensation for any suffering will give the survivors a sense of justice. It will also put the reconciliation journey on the right track. However, reparations without any plausible change in the current circumstances are not genuine. They only acts as a means of opening old wounds while forming new scars.
The government continues to abuse the personal freedom of its minority groups. The uniformed men such as the regular police are allowed to use excess force on this population because they are deemed to be a violent population. The people go through some form of oppression when they go through any altercation with the police. These who are unfortunate enough to be arrested go through additional harassment. They suffer from coercion where sometimes they are forced to confess to crimes they did not commit. People of colour have come to accept the circumstances that face them. Many cooperate with the police and other oppressors because they simply want to get over and done with the threats (Wach, 2016). These are considered traitors within the communities because they go down without a fight. Compliance and acceptance of reparations is seen as acceptance of the status quo. This is the ultimate betrayal and surrender of their freedom.
This raises the same question that was posed at the beginning of the paper. Is there real freedom for the coloured people in America? To what extent can freedom be described? Will the people be free when they can walk anywhere without the worry of a racial slur? Is real freedom attainable only when the colored man has access to the same living conditions and opportunities as any other member of the majority population? At the end of the day, freedom is hard to define for the coloured citizens of the United States. It is even harder to decide whether the state of freedom today is better than the state of freedom over the past years. In summation, the sad truth is that the US is not the land of the free for all.
References
Colby, S. L., " Ortman, J. M. (2017). Projections of the size and composition of the US population: 2014 to 2060: Population estimates and projections.
Olson, J. C. (2016). Race and punishment in American prisons. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory , 26 (4), 758-768.
Posner, E. A., & Vermeule, A. (2003). Reparations for slavery and other historical injustices. Colum. L. Rev. , 103 , 689. Retrieved from doi:10.2307/1123721
Rodriguez, J. M., Geronimus, A. T., Bound, J., & Dorling, D. (2015). Black lives matter: Differential mortality and the racial composition of the US electorate, 1970–2004. Social Science " Medicine , 136 , 193-199.
Wach, A. L. (2016). A United States of Injustice
