Fighting For Equality-Fighting Against Discrimination

African Americans, Feminists, and the LGBT community all have one thing in common; they are all fighting for equality. For years, there have been people from different walks of life, organizing, forming groups, and fighting for equality. Most of those groups have seen a substantial amount of progress in their fight for equality, yet the fight for equality seems like a fight that will never be completely won.

Numerous groups that are fighting for equality have condemned the criminal justice system for their unfair treatment of African Americans. According to a report drafted by the sentencing commission, African Americans were given sentences that were 10% longer than whites who committed the same crimes. According to Project America: “black males have experienced the highest rate of imprisonment—6.5 times that of white males and 2.5 that of Hispanic males—of the three major races in the United States.” One in six black males has been arrested as of 2001, and those numbers are rising and are expected to change from one in six to one in three.

African Americans are also trying to put an end to the racial disparities in the unemployment figures. Recent reports compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statics, states that: the unemployment rate for African Americans is 11.0%, while whites have seen their unemployment rate drop to 5.1%. Hispanics are caught in the middle, with their unemployment rate currently at 6.9%. Please, remember that the unemployment rate is always higher than the percentages released by the government, due to the exclusion of those people that have dropped out of the workforce, because they were unable to find employment, retired, or they are in school and not working. To make matters worse, African Americans are still becoming victims of racial profiling, which has become a serious issue in the black community. By looking at those figures, we can clearly see why African Americans are constantly fighting for equality, while fighting against discrimination and racial profiling.

Women are fighting for equality and battling discrimination. This fight has been occurring since the 19th century, when the first wave of feminism was created primarily to fight for equal political rights and to show people that women deserve to be treated like human beings, instead of being treated like property that could be owned and controlled by men. The fight for equal political rights for women started with the American Women’s Suffrage Movement, which ended in 1920, the year that women were granted the right to vote.

Second wave feminism came alive in the 1960s. Second wave feminism focused on more than political rights; women were fighting for equality in the workplace, and at home. They brought awareness to the economic doctrine of comparable worth, which was also known as equal pay for equal value. The concept of comparable worth is that jobs which require similar abilities, skills, and educational backgrounds should pay the same wages. A person’s gender, age, or race should not be a factor when it comes to comparable worth. Second wave feminism also focused on reproductive right, issues involving domestic violence, rape marriage laws, and education. Second wave feminism ended in the 1980s. Getting the equal pay act passed was one of the greatest accomplishments of second wave feminism.

By the time that second wave feminism had ended, feminism had spread world-wide, and women from all over the world were seeing a substantial amount of progress in their fight for equality. Third wave feminism started in the 1990s, and it is still active today. It focuses on eliminating gender roles, and stereotypes, while shedding light on atrocious treatments of women of color, and transgendered women.

LGBT is an acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered. This movement was created in the 1990s for the sole purpose of achieving equal treatment in a world where they are judged for their sexual orientation. Throughout history there have always been people that fought for equal rights for those that were a part of the gay community. They have came a long way, and accomplished a lot over the years. In 1779, Thomas Jeffersoncreated bill 64, part of that bill made it illegal for men to engage in sexual intercourse with other men. Men who engaged in such acts were to be castrated as a punishment for their actions. Here we are now, in 2014, and politicians are supporting same-sex couples on their journey for equal rights. And one issue that the LGBT community has been advocating is the passing of laws that will make same-marriage legal. Their hard work has paid off tremendously. Same-sex couples are currently allowed to marry in 16 countries, and in 30 states in the United States. Their fight for equality is still going on, and every day they have to deal with being discriminated against, because some people let their ignorance lead them to judge people without really understanding them or the problems that they are faced with.

How can we rid the world of these problems, and create a world where all people are equal? First, we need to realize that creating groups isolates those people in that group from everyone else, and that will usually create more problems. People that are excluded from those groups, the ones who are deemed as being the oppressors, will usually form their own groups to attack and degrade the group of people that are fighting for equality. There is theNAACP and then there is the KKK, Feminist groups and anti-feminist groups, the LGBT community and religious groups that are constantly causing problems for them. These situations make reaching the highest level of equality close to impossible. Every step that they take to progress, there is always someone trying to stop them.

Groups that are fighting for equality should consider uniting and taking on their problems as one large group. Imagine black men and women standing side by side with white women, and they are all fighting for equal rights together. Imagine some of those black men, and women of different races that are religious, standing side by side with members of the LGBT community, and they are all fighting for equal rights together. This will show the world that a person’s race, gender, or religion should not prevent them from having the same rights as everyone else. By forming one group, comprised of people that are facing similar issues, each of them will have the opportunity to see what everyone else is dealing with, and it will give them a chance to see beyond their differences and realize that we are all human and deserve to be treated equally.

As the people in this group learn about each other’s struggles, they will be able to go out into the world and educate those people that they have a lot in common with; I am talking about the ones discriminates against other people, and contribute to the high level of inequality that has infected society.

None of us are born hating anyone, or judging people simply because we think that they are different. These types of behaviors are learned at a young age and they become ingrained in the minds of children that grow up in aberrated environments. This also means that humans have the power to unlearn those behaviors. We can’t force parents to raise their children a certain way simply because the negative things that they are learning is wrong in the eyes of most people. What we can do is redesign the educational system, and teach children how to relate to other cultures. Students in grades K-12 should be learning about discrimination and why it is imperative that they do not condemn people for being different.

Bullying is a huge issue in schools throughout the United States, and being a bully as a child can lead to becoming an adult that causes the types of problems outlined in this article. Many of those incidents involving bullying force the victims to commit suicide, or hurt those people that are bullying them. The only way that we can combat this behavior that students are learning at home or in other environments outside of their home is to teach them how discrimination and inequality hurts others. We need to show them that being different don’t make you a bad person, but it makes you unique, which is an amazing thing. Students should be able to learn about the problems that people went through in the past, because society chose to degrade those groups of people that didn’t fit the image of what they deemed as being normal. They must learn from our mistakes, because if we don’t teach them these things while they are young, we will minimize our chances of breaking this vicious cycle of inequality, hatred, and racism that has taken over the world.

Criminal Organizations: Controlling Organized Crime

In order to address the dilemma of organized crime in America, one must examine the situation and circumstances related to the success of criminal organizations.  The problems presented by various relationships established in organized criminal activity, legal limitations associated with combating organized crime, a critique of major federal laws and strategies to support this effort, and realistic solutions to control organized crime are all considerations for controlling organized crime.

Problems Presented and Various Relationships Established by Organized Crime
A discussion of the symbiotic and reciprocal relationships between the underworld and upper-world will clarify the savings and loan scandal, the  Central States Pension Fund, and contra as well as how collusion and skimming benefit the money movers.  A large part of the problems presented by organized crime stems from the relationships formed between legal officials, banks, and those who classified as criminals.

Although the upper-world consists of individuals occupying public trust positions and the underworld consists of persons who live on the other side of the law, a common history of exchanges between the two developed into a corrupt and long-term relationship.  In fact, corrupt public officials are the true organizers of crime (Lyman & Potter, 2007).  A summary of six examples of the connection of upper-world and underworld criminal behavior acts as an indicator of the lengths of organized crime in America.  President George W. Bush and President George Bush, Sr. are well-known for organized crime element ties (Schiem, 2005). President Bill Clinton reputedly received “gifts” from a mob boss in the Whitewater scandal (Isaac, 1996). President John F. Kennedy associated with the mob. President Richard Nixon and President Ronald Reagan maintained relationships with organized criminals.  Meyer Lansky attempted to integrate corporate America and organized crime (Lyman & Potter, 2007).

The symbiotic and reciprocal relationships occurring between the upper-world and underworld are vital in organized crime.  Lyman and Potter state that as public officials receive investment opportunities, campaign money, direct assistance in negotiations and bargaining, and private graft from organized criminals for official favors a symbiotic relationships form.  In Morrisburg, a comprehensive study found that contributions to political parties and candidates from organized crime syndicates in legitimate and above the board transactions.  These contributions usually function to bring in voters as “street” money.  Reciprocal relationships between the underworld and upper-world unite government representatives, clients, and criminals.  The collusion between the legitimate world of politicians, police officers, business, and finance and the illegitimate world of organized crime is a primary function of the organized crime syndicate.  The money mover who puts illegally gained profits to work in stocks, bonds, real-estate, importing, and trust funds is a vital part of the symbiotic and reciprocal relationships (Lyman & Potter, 2007).

In the savings and loan scandal, members of the Bush family helped to skim savings and loan funds to payoffs lucratively made to bank directors or they performed interventions that influenced unsound and speculative investments that required non-payment of loans in non-profitable ventures.  In this scandal, political connections to the Bush family protected the acts of skimming that guilty parties of misconduct committed (FDIC, n.d.).  The Central States Pension Fund Nixon received the endorsement of a mob-controlled Teamsters union. Hoffa, involved in borrowing money from the Central States Pension Fund teamsters, went to prison for a thirteen year term during the Kennedy administration and in 1971, Nixon pardoned Hoffa.
Contra involved revelations about America arming Nicaraguan guerillas, foreign policy that benefitted drug trafficking, government collusions in money laundering with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, and Middle Eastern arms shipments.  The contra scandals gave the Reagan administration heightened “sleaze factor” (Lyman & Potter, 2007).

It is very difficult for law enforcement and politicians who are on the “straight-and-narrow” to combat organized crime. The thin-blue-line that is in the police departments prevents legitimate law enforcement officers from telling on those who are in symbiotic relationships with criminals.  Even though laws may exist against certain behavior, it seems as though most politicians are immune to such laws as is evident by the amount of scandal in the White House alone (Lyman & Potter, 2007).   Limitations associated with combating organized crime stem from legitimate criminals who are usually considered to be on the right side of the law.  Another limitation is that people who see what is wrong in the government are shunned by their peers or called militants by the government.  As long as schools teach that those who are willing to stand against the government’s wrongs are considered organized criminals, there will continue to be corrupt officials who ensure that organized crime thrives.

Although there are major federal laws and strategies to support the effort to control organized crime, they will all fail.  There are so many different departments that have been created by the government to combat organized crime, but as long as the politicians and officials are a part of organized criminals they are all just a waste of money.  A critique about the strategies and laws is that they are just a lot of bologna schemed up to fool the truly good officials and police officers into believing what the corrupt top officials wish them to believe so that the “bad guys” are those who are illegitimately in the business.  For example, it is very disgusting that Mrs. Reagan was pushing for a Drug War at the same time her husband was making money from the drug runners (Lyman & Potter, 2007).  The strategies of the War of Drugs has made a handsome profit for the actual drug dealers and their “legal partners” and ruined the lives of millions of non-violent people who were imprisoned for drugs.  It seems like the politicians making money from the drug cartels are much lower than those who are serving time in prison for something that is a personal choice.

An easy solution to the problem of organized crime is not a simple endeavor. Fundamental changes would have to be made in police organization, substantive laws, and investigative processes to diminish the threat that organized crime poses to our social and economic systems.  Law-enforcement efforts against organized crime needs to be increased while the obtainable profits associated with criminal organizations need to be decreased.  The legalization of narcotics and marijuana under strict clinical and medical controls for chronic addicts would reduce the revenues of drug traffickers.  Since legalization of gambling does not lessen the criminal element in it, stiffer gambling laws would benefit law enforcement.  The Anti-Racketeering Unit of the federal Department of Justice should be strengthened to break down the isolation of different law-enforcement agencies.  State activity should expand to connect with local law enforcement to eliminate the inertia and isolation of local law-enforcement agencies.  Police corruption should be eliminated in regards to organized crime, and law-enforcement efficiency should be improved.  To pierce the wall of silence surrounding organized crime procedures should be made available for gaining compelling testimony and evidence (Ploscowe, 2014).

The problems presented by various relationships established in organized criminal activity, legal limitations associated with combating organized crime, a critique of major federal laws and strategies to support this effort, and realistic solutions to control organized crime have been examined.  It has been concluded that organized crime cannot prosper without the symbiotic and reciprocal relationships between the upper-world & underworld.  This suggests that without a serious overall in the system organized crime will always be a problem in America; however some suggestions have been made that may benefit the combating of organized crime.