Throughout my entire life, I have heard many things about my race. I have heard that we are stupid, ugly, poor, and violent. According to crime rate statistics from 2009, 47% of incarcerated adult males were black men.

The incarceration rate was at 4,749 per 100,000 U.S. residents. That means 4.7% of the U.S. population were black men in jail. You might be thinking that it is not a lot, but that is 35% of the black population at the time. So that means approximately for every three black men, one goes to jail. Now let us add in the factors that make this so.

Around 25.8% of people living in poverty in the U.S. are blacks and it is common sense that the poor will most likely commit a crime than the middle-class or the wealthy would. Gangs work the same as the Taliban. Both recruit young uneducated men who seek power or just want to be “cool”.

What better way to feel powerful when you can be judge, jury, and executioner by pointing a gun’s barrel at someone begging you not to kill them. When you are young and foolish, you can easily be manipulated and you do not have the proper morals to fully understand right or wrong.

There is also the unexplained anger towards whites for slavery which ended long ago. Blacks are very hypocritical themselves. We throw around names for whites, we make stereotypes about them as well. Racism works both ways.

Then there are also the citizens of Baltimore who blame the police based on racist assumptions, but yet to make a statement they destroy their own city.

Even though there is evidence of violence among blacks, I truly believe that it is not their skin color, but the situations they were and are placed in. I think if any other race was placed in those same situations, they would also be called stupid, ugly, poor, and violent.

Sébastien  Aymard Paul