There is a new civil rights movement afoot in America. Domestically there is turmoil, New York is tense, cities nationally are tense, and heavy handed policing is one expression of the many ills facing American society at the moment. The status quo makes it so that countries compete, businesses compete, and people compete. America is competition; competition over jobs, housing, healthcare, energy. This is not an accident. This is how they are designed and designed to work by lawmakers and politicians.

Winning competition means shiny things and happiness, made possible through a healthy bank balance. But what about losing? The civil rights movement has become active again after a period of dormancy. They are responding to the unfairly tilted playing field.

Losing the competition means that life is no picnic. Old prejudices die hard, and race is still a significant factor in determining whether a person is a winner or a loser in the U.S. Black people are disproportionately affected by many of the laws in the U.S. Speaking in an interview with Townhall, Rand Paul tells of a teenager from Philadelphia who was arrested for selling $40 worth of drugs, the police took his family home, forcing them onto the street—for $40 of drugs.

“…There is an undercurrent of unease in our country. In many of our cities, in many of our urban black populations, there is high unemployment, there is poverty, but there is also the sense, some of it justified maybe some of it not, but the sense that they are not being treated the same as white individuals,” remarked Rand Paul to Townhall.

Black Americans are quantitatively poorer than white Americans. The median household income was almost half that of white households, $34,500 compared to $58,000 and unemployment is twice that for black people, according to The Guardian. Race is a visible marker in American society. The Twitter hashtag #blacklivesmatter has a litany of examples of how people are discriminated against based on their race in everyday scenarios. From traffic violations to security guards tailing them, the economic connotations of black Americans are that they’re thieves or too poor to be somewhere, doing something.

We have to ask whether the freedoms and liberties in America are being evenly applied. The new civil rights movement is here, what do you think? Join the discussion below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Written by Abezier Coppe

(Photo courtesy of The All-Nite Images, Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

Comments

comments