It is true that when people of color are disproportionately arrested by police and incarcerated, this also causes disadvantages in other areas of life like family life, healthcare, academia, employment, and social life. Thus, there should be some targets to bring change and betterment. Mentioned can be some of the targeted places to bring improvement.
The foremost should be controlling the police stops and arrests. It mainly includes managing sites for suspect demeanor, offense severity, presence of witnesses, evidence at the crime scene, prior record of the suspect, and so forth. It has been mainly found that minorities are arrested more than white suspects. In fact, in the white neighborhoods in many states, traffic stops were more likely to include stops of Black drivers than White drivers, often by White police officers (Rojek et al., 2012).
Moreover, Black people suffer more through pretrial detention, plea offers, and incarceration than Whites. These punishment outcomes are strong for Blacks charged with violent crimes. Following the disproportionate incarceration of people of color, youngsters have been dropped out of schools at a comparatively higher rate. Post incarceration time becomes challenging for many; employment is a significant determinant.
In the healthcare sector, racism is more dominating where racial and ethnic minorities face disproportionate barriers resulting in poor quality of care. These barriers have a more significant effect on communities of color than whites. The non-availability of medical centers in areas with Black populations increases travel time for emergency care that would cause increased mortality rates for this population (Hsia and Shen, 2011). It could be due to the healthcare providers holding implicit bias.
On the other side, educational institutes are still largely discriminated against by race and ethnicity. Persistent racial segregation poses detrimental effects on the academic and social performance of students of color. These students are segregated and punished with higher severity. This issue is widespread and has significant consequences that extend beyond the school settings. Disparate school expulsion and suspensions affect students’ academic achievements, limiting employment opportunities. Ultimately disparate discipline contributes to the overrepresentation of students of color in the juvenile justice system.
Furthermore, employment and workplace discrimination was outlawed by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but racial discrimination has been consistent. It also contributes to the Black-White wage gap. Therefore, the impact of racial discrimination has been unsurprising in different aspects of life. Several steps can be taken to minimize racial discrimination in the various systems. Effective measures would probably reduce barriers and help prevailing equity and justice in society. Also, equality in employment would help combat racial discrimination, which can be performed by increasing punitive monetary fines against discriminatory employers.
References
Hsia, R. Y., and Shen, Y. (2011). Rising closures of hospital trauma centers disproportionately burden vulnerable populations. Health Affairs, 30(10). https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2011.0510
Rojek, J., Rosenfeld, R., and Decker, S. (2012). Policing race: The racial stratification of searches in police traffic stops. Criminology, 50(4), 993–1024. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2012.00285.x