Wrongful Convictions

Based on the information given, Terrill Swift had a powerful influence upon my view of the justice system. Also, the power the police officers may have over an innocent person took me by surprise. I personally do not believe it is right for a person in power to convince a frightened teen or young adult to admit to a crime they did not commit. Possibly even going as far as, in Terrill’s case, to trick that same scared person into signing a confession in hopes to let themselves go back home. Part of the blame is to be put on Terrill for not reading what was presented to him before signing off, but at the age of 17, my current age, I could not say I would do things differently. Being scared and wanting to go home, I would take the police officer's word when he presented me with information that would set me free. The fact that these cases are not rare surprises me even more. I could understand if, once in a while due to inevitable flaws within the justice system, someone is prosecuted who should not be. This does not give any right, though, for officers to force people to sign wrongful confessions against that person’s will. From what Terrill was saying, this has happened many times and will continue to happen. While blame should be placed on the person signing but not reading what is being presented, it is very easy to take the word of someone whose purpose should be to protect you.

Hidden Bias

My results from this test showed I had a slight automatic preference for European Americans compared to African Americans. I was surprised at first with those results, but after thinking about why this might be, it was not as much of a surprise. I have grown up in an area where there is not much diversity and no opportunity to meet minorities on a regular basis. Media has portrayed minorities as being involved with drugs and gang violence, things that are fortunately unfamiliar to me and that I want to avoid.  One thing I found interesting, that I did not previously know, is how children learn prejudices as early as age three. That seemed like a very young age for children to show an opinion towards people based on race. Another interesting fact is how people can change their hidden biases. People do this by recognizing their biases and modifying their behaviors in a given situation.

Response to Article: "If I Were A Poor Black Kid"

After reading the article If I Were A Poor Black Kid, by Gene Marks, a lot of thoughts come to mind. I personally agree with the majority of points he makes, how by pushing yourself even while there is no hope, one will achieve greatness. The point of the article does not focus on the race part of growing up poor and trying to strive even though the community where you live is suffocating you. Instead, Gene focuses much more on growing up poor but striving to reach a high level of education. While being a different race may put you at a slight disadvantage when trying to achieve educational greatness, being poor would have a much larger effect. Gene talks about an interesting point at the end of the article, “Many come from single-parent families whose mom or dad (or in many cases their grand mom) is working two jobs to survive and are just (understandably) too plain tired to do anything else in the few short hours they’re home” (Marks, 2011). This is part of the reason why it is so much more difficult to grow up poor in a neighborhood where schools may not be as good as others. Many of these students may try to get jobs while in high school to help bring money into the family, but because of this action they may not have time for school work. If your parent makes enough money to support the family, then the ideas about striving hard to achieve a good education would make sense. The author, though, does not look at all of the points, and rather than talking about growing up poor, the author tries to focus his points around race when really they should be about growing up poor.

After looking through the various responses to the article, I agree with many things they are saying. Gene tries to tell people what to do, work harder, when really Gene does not know their situation. Gene is trying to tell people what to do, when really they might not be able to do these things for financial reasons or health reasons. Gene makes it sound so easy to just change the way people learn, and implies if everyone learned the way Gene had wanted, they would be on their way to graduating college. There is almost a sense of arrogance I get from Gene. Most kids wanting to go to college will try to succeed in school. There may be other factors though, as I mentioned before such as having to work a lot outside of school to earn money for the family, which would prevent these kids from succeeding. Gene ignores many other factors that could affect his idea of trying to succeed. It is not as simple as just working harder and you will succeed.