Ryan Metzger - Final Thoughts - Why Does Systemic Racism Exist? And How Do We Solve It?

 Ryan Metzger - 4/1/2021

Final Thoughts - Why Does Systemic Racism Exist? And How Do We Solve It?

 

    To start this blog I am going to show you two different pictures, one of them is from Chicago in 1919, and the other is in Baltimore in 2015.

Red Summer in Chicago: The Race Riots of 1919 (Bates)

Riots in Baltimore After The Killing of Freddie Gray: 2015 (Lee)

    Nearly a century later, and with a new era of "Jim Crow Laws", what has changed? And more importantly, is systemic racism worse now in 2021 than it was more than a century before in 1919?

  The answer to that question is starting to become grimmer as America seems to drift further apart every day. Considering that over 592,000 Black people were incarcerated as of 2007 (Gramlich), I don't think America has come very far, if not gone backward.

  Time and time again in American history, we have seen the systemic oppression of Black people. First, it was slavery, then it was the Jim Crow Laws, and now it is the War on Drugs. No matter the name or disguise of the legislation, they all have one simple goal, to keep the Black community below the White community. 

  The New Jim Crow has introduced me to so many new concepts and racial injustices I would have never seen or heard about if I had not read the book. That is one reason I thoroughly enjoyed the book till the end, there was always a new concept or piece of legislation to understand the effects of, and when more people understand the true effects of things, we know how to solve them.

  So how do we solve systemic racism? Well, there is no simple answer, and certainly, no objective answer that will eliminate racism and racial disparity. But just because there is no definite solution, doesn't mean that there are no good solutions. 

  A good start to equalizing our societies is through changing drug laws and providing stimulus to Black communities that need help the most. As radical of an idea as many may see this, legalizing drugs all together may be one of the most efficient ways of stopping activities like racial profiling, and could vastly help put an end to drug overdoses. Yes, it may sound ridiculous to legalize things like Heroin, but countries like Portugal have taken this approach, and it worked fantastically. Portugal opened drug-using sanctuaries throughout the country where addicts could go up to a station and have a doctor help them use a safe amount, and in a safe way. Since this has happened, Portugal overdoses have dropped dramatically, and so have their HIV numbers (Ferreira). Taking this approach in the U.S. would kill two birds in one stone. It would eliminate the racially motivated drug war that puts thousands of Black people in prison each year, and it would help an enormous amount of the population get help for drug addiction. Not only doing this, but releasing the hundreds of thousands of people jailed for drug-related offenses would bring back so many missing Black fathers to their communities and families that desperately need them.

  The second thing that should be done is providing stimulus checks to underserved Black communities, and rebuild their education systems. No longer would these communities have kids selling crack on the street corner to make enough money to eat because there would be no need to engage in an illegal activity just to simply survive. Doing this would also allow the kids to focus much more on their schooling and education which will set them on a much brighter and expansive future.

  Though many out there, even far-left Democrats would think a plan like this was way too radical to support, if our country ran off of statistics and facts instead of opinions, problems like drug abuse and systemic racism would be radically different. And who knows, if they had adopted this strategy forty years ago, maybe we would not even be having this conversation, and maybe we would not be worried about other eternal problems like global warming. But obviously, this has not happened, and we have continued to take the same approach as always, just patching things up with a band-aid, and that has come back to bite us countless times. In this case, the police are the band-aid, and what we need is systemic change, not a police force that will shove guns down the throats of those who object to them.

  Well, here we are, the end of my blogs. I hope you have enjoyed these, and I hope I have made you think about the current status of racism in America, and how we should solve it. In the end, questioning is how you start to decouple the fallacies and fraud of systems meant to oppress. It is time to start questioning the way that our country works, and it is past time for action.

Ryan M.

Works Cited