I told you all in my first post that through this blog you will get to see the many sides of Alkeyvia. I am also blogging for my Critical Race Theory class so I have decided to post my entries here as well. So for the next 8 weeks in addition to my regular posts you will get to see both the law side of me and my passion for children.
Hope You Enjoy the Many Sides of Ms. Walker!!
For the last two years two things have been weighing heavily on my heart, the American Education system and theAmerican Criminal Justice system.
In grade school I had heard the story of Brown v. Board of Education and how it changed American education and nullified the separate but equal doctrine, but it was not until first year con law that I really began to think of the implications of that Supreme Court decision. I remember calling my mom after we went over the case in class and asking her how was it living during those time and all of a sudden being able to attend school with whites. To my surprise, although Brown was decided in 1954 and my mom not being born until 1959, she said that it was not until high school that she attended school with white students. She went on to tell me that she remembers still seeing white only signs throughout the city of Miami and around school as well. By this time I was not really understanding or comprehending for that matter anything that she was saying to me. I really think that I drifted away while flipping through my con law book trying to find the date that the Supreme Court decision that declared racial segregationunconstitutional and a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was decided. Once I got to the page and did the math I had to stop my mother and ask her if she was sure she was speaking from her own experience or my grandmother's. She assured me that she was correct and proceeded to finish with her story. After hanging up the phone I was completely speechless and somewhat dumb founded. It was at that point that I began to realize that although Brown was a very important case in American History the implementation of its decision was slow and the after affects were still lingering to this day, so much so that it has spilled over into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
Growing up in inner city Miami I learned about the criminal justice system early in life (way too early if you ask me). The police was always in our neighborhood and I saw people (most young African American) men being arrested at least once if not several times a day. Since I was the youngest in the family and the only girl, my mother and older brothers attempted to shield me from a lot of it, but some days it was almost if not completely impossible to protect me from REALITY. The harsh realities of our criminal justice system really set in when I was in high school. My cousin who fell victim to the harsh inner city streets at a very young age was accused of 2nd Degree Murder. I remember sitting in the court room and hearing the State Attorney painting this picture of a person. Although he was talking about my cousin I had no idea who this person was. My cousin was not the person in the picture that he was painting. It was true that was living a life that would not be approved of by most, but I knew that it was not a life that he chose to live, it was life that he felt victim to. When the jury came back with the verdict my entire family live's would be changed forever. My cousin was taken away from us in handcuffs and his young life stripped away from himFOREVER. He would never be able to hug his mother again or be a big brother to his sisters or spend Thanksgiving with the family anymore. My cousin from that day forth would be known by a number instead of his name.
The two very personal stories that I have shared have shaped the way in which I view both the American Education and Criminal Justice systems. This blog will focus how the law has created a harmful overlap between the two systems starting with an overview of the way in which these two systems overlap with a discussion on the School to Prison Pipeline. I will then discuss the conditions of the American education system through a series of blogs that will focus on the periods post Plessy, pre Brown, and post Brown and the affirmative action era. Following those entries will be an entry on the status of American education today which will lead to the. Finally I will conclude with a recommendation on what American needs to do to cure the harmful overlap between these two systems.
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