Ethnicity and Justice in the United States

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The problem of misjudgment based on ethnic stereotypes and the prejudice towards the representatives of specific races and ethnicities, which occurs in courts of the United States, seems to have become infamously common. Despite the recent attempts at introducing cultural sensitivity into the state and private organizations, as well as the incorporation of the multiculturalism concept into the framework of global companies’ operation, the American justice system retains its suspicion towards the people belonging to the ethnicities that are other than American.

As a result, misjudgments occur disturbingly regularly in the course of the court proceedings. Despite the numerous attempts taken for addressing the issue, the problem has not lost its topicality yet, which calls for the reinforcement of the ethical principles that the present-day legal system is based on, as well as the rearrangement of the existing approaches to treating racial and ethnic minorities.

Although the unceasing fight for equality, which has been going in the United States since the Civil War, has brought a range of fruitful results, the effects of the equity movements are still somewhat lackluster, especially when considering the attitudes towards the representatives of racial and ethnic minorities in the realm of the legal environment. According to the recent evidence, prejudice towards ethnic minorities takes place in courtrooms quite often in the 21^st century. Although, from the legal perspective, all parties taking part in the court proceedings must have equal rights and privileges, in reality, the ethnicity of the people involved often define the outcome of the proceedings as favorable for the representative of the majority of the U.S. population, whereas minorities are often misjudged based on their ethnicity.

The ostensibly inept approach, which is adopted towards treating the members of other ethnic communities in a range of the U.S. courtrooms, is clearly a reason for concern. A range of recent cases, some of them reaching the level of an internationally infamous scandal, while others being swept under the rug, showcase the problems of the present-day justice system. Specifically, the case of United States vs. Booker (Ulmer, Light & Kramer, 2011), which enhanced the model discriminating against the Black community representatives, deserves to be mentioned.

The explanation for the specified phenomenon to occur is, in fact, rather simple. It would be wrong to claim that the accusation of the people belonging to different races occurs on purpose in most cases; quite on the contrary, a suggestion the opposite will make more sense, as the jury displaying racially insensitive behavior and providing no other basis for sentencing the accused does not make any sense in the environment of the democratic principles, which are established in the U.S. Constitution.

Instead, the race of the defendant and, therefore, the ambiguity that it creates factors in as a side piece of information that serves as the trigger for the jury to pass the verdict, according to the existing researches on the subject: “Jurors are especially affected when the race is a non-salient factor of the case” (Malavanti, Johnson, Rowatt & Weaver, 2012, p. 3). More importantly, according to Malvanati et al. (2012), when the race issue factors into the study in a very obvious manner and makes a major part of the problem under discussion, it is most likely to be disregarded: “these attempts are guided by later- stage, explicit processes. For example, white jurors are likely to resist (or at least, to give the appearance of resisting) explicitly racial factors when the race is salient” (Malvanati et al., 2012).

Though the explanation provided above does not excuse the instances of accusations based solely on the racial identity of the defendant, it does provide extensive information on the mechanism of racial profiling in courts. It should be noted, though, that a range of theorists explains the specified phenomenon as the manifestation of the pervasiveness of social and ethnic stereotypes, which have become quite common in the United States over the past few years: “The application of negative stereotypes to minority ethnic groups has come to be an acceptable approach to understanding bias” (Espinoza & Willis-Esqueda, 2014, p. 2).

Seeing that the process of stereotyping is gaining new momentum in modern American culture, the threat of stereotypes invading the realm of courtrooms and affecting the decisions made by the jury is becoming increasingly more palpable.

One must admit that the reasons for the specified phenomenon to occur are attributed to the environment in which the minorities in question live. Specifically, extremely high crime rates within the areas that are populated by African Americans, Latinos, etc., deserve to be mentioned as the key basis for the prejudice to define the outcome of the proceedings. However, the specified phenomenon does not justify the unfairness of the U.S. legal system in the instances where people have been sentenced merely based on their cultural and ethnic background.

It should be noted that a range of solutions to the issue in question has been suggested, including the implementation of the principles of tolerance in the courtroom. However, the above-mentioned approaches still do not qualify as revolutionary tools, which will bring the members of the U.S. justice system to the necessity to disregard the ethnic background of the people involved. While setting the premises for the development of a more lenient approach towards the representatives of other races and ethnicities, it still does not provide any restrictions as far as the process of misjudgment is concerned.

Regrettably, prejudice towards the representatives of other cultures, ethnicities, and races still remains the issue of the current U.S. justice system. While measures for addressing shallow judgment are being taken, taking every single instance into account is basically impossible, which leads to the aggravation of the issue and the further enhancement of the attitudes that lead to discrimination in court.

There is no need to stress that the phenomenon of prejudice towards the representatives of minorities exists in the present-day justice system of the United States. Moreover, the effects of this prejudice are becoming increasingly more deleterious to the lives of numerous representatives of different ethnicities within the state. However, with the introduction of a set of rigid ethical principles into the American courtrooms and careful supervision of the court proceedings for providing full compliance with the regulations concerning race and prejudice, the situation may change for better.

Much to the credit of the current legal system, as well as the information management systems deployed at present, the issues such as the instances of racial discrimination, are disclosed to the public, which allows for an open discussion of the problem and the location of viable solutions. Integration of a proper ethical code will provide the framework for addressing the issue.

Reference List

Espinoza, K. E. & Willis-Esqueda, C. (2014). The influence of mitigation evidence, ethnicity, and SES on death penalty decisions by European American and Latino venire persons. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 21(2), 288–298.

Malavanti, K. F., Johnson, M. K., Rowatt, W. C. & Weaver, C. A. (2012). Subtle contextual influences on racial bias in the courtroom. The Jury Expert, 21(8), 1–15. Web.

Ulmer, J. T., Light, M. T. & Kramer, J. H. (2011). Racial disparity in the wake of the Booker/Fanfan decision: An alternative analysis to the USSC’s 2010 report. American Society of Criminology, 10(4), 1077–1117.

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Ethnicity and Justice in the United States

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