A Dark Testament to Our Two Americas

When a twenty-three year old Latino was stopped for what police called “a routine pedestrian stop," no one imagined the tragedy that would ensue from this seemingly innocuous encounter.

According to a police spokesperson, the young man was being patted down when he inexplicably decided to make a run for it. He wasn’t a suspect for anything, nor was he found to be in possession of any contraband. Only he knows why he took off, but one could easily assume that, like so many others in our oppressed inner-cities, he simply got tired of being picked on by the police. And though it isn’t a crime to run from the police, unless, of course, you’re a suspect in a crime, the penalty for his passive resistance, unfortunately, was death.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that these types of bloody occurrences happen with a dreadful frequency in our inner-cities—almost exclusively so.

Police cruisers deployed to patrol the city streets are commonly used to “occupy” select neighborhoods, and as a result the citizens in them become hapless subjects to profiling, discrimination, and distressing illegal street searches; searches that result in extremely disproportionate arrests and imprisonment of minorities and the poor, primarily for illegal drugs.

Yet we see the elite—Tinseltown celebrities, athletes, and politicians—addicted and entangled in a voracious web of illegal drug habits. However, these are comfortably guided through the bright and colorful doors of rehabilitation centers while minorities and the poor are chained and escorted through the unforgiving gates of penitentiaries, too often never to be released.

For America’s elite, rehabilitation is a foregone conclusion. For America’s poor, prison is a foregone conclusion; as if to say the poor are somehow genetically incapable of rehabilitation.

Yet there was a day, not long ago, when the elite, our elected officials, said women could not hold jobs or public office or even own property. Women were labeled incompetent. They said Blacks, Latinos and other minorities were subhuman. For the most part, American society has overcome these retarded lines of thought. Yet, discrimination in so many other forms persists.

Still, after the enormous achievements of first lady Betty Ford, civil rights leader and humanist Coretta Scott King, and Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, isn’t it about time we advance our thinking about nonviolent addicted prisoners? I mean, considering the great contributions of others given a fair shot, like humanitarian Oprah Winfrey, journalist Helen Thomas, and Sally K. Ride, the first American female in space, can we really afford not to give these misplaced people a chance, perhaps even the same opportunity the affluent routinely get?

Time and time again our elected leadership has been proven very wrong and now, like no other, presents the greatest moral opportunity for society to prove them wrong again, and build yet another link to close this immoral divide of our two Americas.

Sources:
Mia Lee, KTLA News, Ch. 5, May 16, 2005, (Re: Latino youth, aka: Jessie Ramirez).