The death penalty, by any reasonable moral or ethical claim, is inherently wrong. It pins man against another man for no end rather than blood thirst. Especially in the United States, there has been a long history of racism associated with this barbaric form of punishment. Songs like Billie Holliday’s “Strange Fruit” serve as a time telescope to look into how often African-Americans were hanged under the shadow of Jim Crowe laws’ branches. Although we no longer hang people in the U.S., the problem of racism bleeding into the courthouse is no distant relic – the issue is well and alive today. The Amnesty International report on the Death Penalty had one extremely striking graphic where it illustrated how “the single most reliable predictor of whether someone will be sentenced to death is the race of the victim.”[1] As I am sure anyone could have easily pred
Report illustrates the disproportionate representation of African-American on Deat Row
icted, a 1990 report, the non-partisan U.S. General Accounting Office (referenced in the Amnesty International Report) concluded that “a defendant was several times more likely to be sentenced to death if the murder victim was white.” In addition, the report reveals that “the overwhelming majority of death row defendants have been executed for killing white victims, although African-Americans make about half of homicide victims.” It is made clear that racism has not just infiltrated into our system of justice; it has full on assaulted the most critical aspects of Justice. The manner in which American society still associates not even just mere criminal behavior, but such grotesque and utterly irreprehensible sin that a man is willing to condemn death to another in a tragically disproportionate way specifically towards African-Americans is gut-wrenching. At the end of the day, anyone with two-cents worth of social awareness would acknowledge that racism is a prevalent problem and is accustomed to confronting it one way or another. However, it is still mind-boggling to see how the sacred and fragile humanity of people viscously comes into question when faced with the test of the accused’s race. Justice, at least in the Rawlsian-American ideal, is supposed to blinded just as Lady Justice is. After all, why should something so seemingly arbitrary as one’s skin complexion be a weighing factor in the blind scale’s outcome? Justice, to be fair and equal, must avoid falling prey to racist ideologies. The racist “justice” system actively attempts to degrade the worth of African-Americans in its pursuit to unjustly punish wrongdoers. Thus, it becomes evident that racism plays into the application of human rights, like life.
[1]"Death Penalty and Race." Amnesty International USA. Amnesty International, 2015. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. <http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/us-death-penalty-facts/death-penalty-and-race>.
The United Nations Convention against Torture defines torture as “any activity by which sever pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining a confession, punishing him for an act he has committed, or intimidating or coercing, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation with the consent of a public official.”[1] In the same convention, the United Nations prohibits torture and declares that there are “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever”. Thus, it is clear that the most prominent international organization considers torture an attack against human rights. However, in an interview with the former Deputy Director of the CIA during the war in Afghanistan Michael Morell, torture (or as the CIA calls them: “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”) is justified. This brings up the sociological question of what goes into creating this in-group and out-group dynamics that allows torture to occur. In addition, it forces us to confront the sociological impact of justifying torture via these group dynamics.
Michael Morell outlines reasons why he does not consider the CIA’s interrogation techniques as torture and does not violate any because “… To call it torture says my guys were torturers. And they were told that they were not. They were told they were doing something legal.”[2] Thus, to the CIA and those carrying out the torture, it was justified and was not illegal. Making the torture seem like it was within the boundaries of law and morality allows the torturers commit heinous acts against humanity with little guilt. In addition, the CIA is convinced that a ton of information came from the program that eventually saved lives and stopped terror plots. As Morell puts it, “I have no doubts after looking at this that it was effective”. Essentially, because it was effective, it is justified. Sociologically, this shows us that people a stronger group deems deviant is then less than human and human rights protections no longer apply to the now deviant group.
Morell reminds us that the enhanced interrogation program “was not C.I.A.’s program. It was America’s Program.” Thus, the implication is that a stronger nation (or in-group) can set different standards of treatment for those belonging to the out-group of deviants. Doing this in the arena of Human Rights degrades the very meaning of Human Rights. Human Rights are supposed to be inalienable and are immune to circumstance. Letting a group like the U.S. get away with it is a display of how powerful dominant society is over deviant society.
[1]"Convention against Torture." Convention against Torture. United Nations Convention Against Torture, 26 June 1987. Web. 13 Oct. 2015. <http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CAT.aspx>.
[2]"VICE News Interviews the CIA’s Former Deputy Director Michael Morell."VICE News. VICE News, 26 June 2015. Web. 13 Oct. 2015. <https://news.vice.com/video/vice-news-interviews-the-cias-former-deputy-director-michael-morell>.
