African-American Politician Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” This is a quote he used in his famous speech “I have a dream” on August 28th, 1963 in Washington.
Even though this speech was delivered 57 years ago, Prejudice still is a big problem in modern society. These Problems have been around for a long time
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There are many different kinds of Prejudice like racial, age, gender, or religious prejudice but today I will talk about racial and socioeconomic prejudice, which doesn’t only play a big role in modern society but also in the plan “12 Angry men” by Reginald Rose.
What are '12 Angry Men” about?
The play '12 Angry Men”, is about a jury's consultations in a capital murder case. A 12-man jury is sent to discuss the murder trial of a 16-year-old Puerto Rican teenager who is being blamed for the death of his father. If all 12 men agree that the boy is guilty he will be sentenced to death.
What does Prejudice mean?
But first of all, let me simply clarify what Prejudice really implies.
Prejudice is a biased feeling that did not depend on the reason or genuine encounter. When an individual concludes that they dislike somebody dependent on their skin color, religion, nationality, or different reasons that the individual has no influence over, they are one-sided and have partiality towards that individual.
Argument 1:
In the play “12 Angry Men” by Reginald Rose there are a few very racist Jurors especially Juror 3 said a few things that highlight his racist way of thinking. Right at the beginning of the play on page 9, he says: “I mean let’s be reasonable. You sat in court and heard the same things we did: The man’s a dangerous killer. You could see it.” The problem here is that Juror 3 is not being reasonable. The accused is a black teenager, who lives in a poor neighborhood so Juror 3 could be referring to the way the accused looks when he said “You could see it.” However, no one can see if a person killed someone or did something good or bad by looking at them.
Especially in a judicial system, there shouldn’t be any prejudice as it affects the judge's and the juror's decision and could even send someone to jail without being guilty. However, the decisions people make are often based on prejudice even if they don’t want to admit it, bias affects the way people think, and a lot of the time people don’t even notice that they are judging people based on prejudice. I’m sure most of you remember when we talked about the Zimmermann Case a few weeks ago, this case was very public and a lot of people knew about it, but things like that happen a lot even today. For instance: In 2005, John McNeil got a call from his child announcing that 19-year-old Brian Epp was on their property in the backyard of the family's home, threatening the child with a case box cutter. McNeil, an individual of color, got back, called the police, and told Brian Epp, a white man, to leave. At that point fired a warning shot into the ground, yet Epp kept on moving toward him. McNeil then shot Epp, killing him. Witnesses confirmed McNeil's record of occasions, and police at first controlled he acted in self-protection. Be that as it may, after 9 months, the Cobb County District Attorney's Office brought murder allegations against him and won a conviction condemning the man to live in jail.
In February 2013, in the wake of going through six years in jail, a judge decided that John McNeill ought to be released because of the various mistakes at trial and the jury not being appropriately taught about an individual's entitlement to utilize power to protect himself, his home or someone else from an assault.
There was a CCTV tape that demonstrated that McNeill acted in self-defense and had no aim of killing Brian Epp however he despite everything got charged and got sent to jail.
As indicated by the NAACP, the McNeils were the main dark inhabitants living in an all-upscale predominantly white Atlanta neighborhood.
The Judge that sent McNeill to jail expressed that his choice had nothing to do with race or racial partiality yet individuals questioned his statement. This case isn’t the only one where prejudice plays a big role in the case of 19-Year-old Chase Legleitner and 21-year-old Lamar Lloyd. Both of these men are approximately the same age and they both committed the same crime. Lloyd is African American while Legleitner is caucasian. As I just said both of these men committed the same crime however Legleitner only had to serve 2 years in county jail while Lloyd has to serve 26 years in prison. It was the same crime, the same courtroom, the same day, and even the same judge but very different results. Now if this doesn’t show you how severe white privilege is I don’t know what does.
Argument 2:
Another type of prejudice that is highlighted in the play is socioeconomic prejudice. In the play there isn’t one particular Juror that represents socioeconomic prejudice, there are a few that think that the accused is guilty because of the neighborhood that he lives in. When Juror 4 said: “He was born in a slum. Slums are breeding grounds for criminals.” When he says that the is biased. He is not stating facts but just what he thinks may be true. Only because a person lives in a slum doesn’t mean that he’s a criminal. Just like Juror 4, Juror 10 blames the crime and the boy because he’s poor: “Listen, I’ve lived among ‘em all my life. You can’t believe a word they say. I mean, they’re born liars.”
The problem is that people can often not control how wealthy they are.
Conclusion:
The play “12 Angry Men”, by Reginald Rose shows us how severe Prejudice was and still is and how it is hard to keep bias out of the judicial system or just daily life. We can see that even though we’re not in the 60s Prejudice of any kind is still a big problem in society. When we research and learn more about how present prejudice still is today we can see that it’s still a big problem.
When Martin Luther King Jr. said that he wants his four kids to live in a nation where they won’t be judged by their skin color but by the content of their character, we can see that there still is a long way to go for the world to achieve equality between everyone. It shouldn’t matter what color your skin is, what gender you are, or where you come from but what's on the inside is what should matter.
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