I truly do understand why you believe that and trust me, I am angry about our prison system. However, I do not believe it is solely based on racism. I live in a primarily black neighborhood and the police drive through my neighborhood every day. I've lived here over a decade. My home has been christened with lead and I've witnessed prostitutes being dropped off in front of my house late at night. My husband grew up in a neighborhood where dead bodies were found in the park across the street from his house. Yet, neither of us have ever seen police just randomly stopping the numerous black people walking around just to harass them.
Racism does exist today, but not on the scale people want to believe based on the media hype. Prejudices exist and rightfully so. Living in my neighborhood, you can bet I have to make constant prejudice assumptions in order to make sure I keep my family safe. Most of the people around me would never, ever harm our family in any way, but there are certain people who, if not held back by the threat of jail/prison time, would do my family a great deal of harm. With the multitude of kids in this neighborhood with absent fathers, there are quite a few older teenage kids I never turn my back to. Am I wrong for being prejudice towards them? Should I ask them to babysit my kids? Be honest.
As an INFJ, I have strongly desired to reach out to these kids and have tried. I have found elementary and middle school kids are reachable, but high school and older are a very tough reach. Very tough. Police know this, too, and it is NOT their fault these kids almost always have absent fathers and choose to run with the wrong crowd, doing things to harm others, and going to jail for it as a result. I'm not a fan of our current prison system, especially the war on drugs, but I'm not going to say there is an injustice somewhere when there is none. The injustice lies squarely in the hands of families who have dropped the ball in raising their children to respect themselves and others. There is hardly any racism in that when it's their own people doing it to them.
There isn't an easy answer to this problem when most people are complacent to watch TV, browse the internet, consume worthless stuff, and otherwise just not give two carps about the people around them. It saddens me, but unfortunately, there isn't much I can do about it, because the powers that be will squash anyone who tries, unless the whole nation rises up against them. Good luck with that.
