Colin Kaepernick has no good reason why he didn't stand up during the National Anthem

Again, many thanks to Pro for allowing me to participate in this discussion. Pro argues that Colin Kaepernick has no good reason to sit down during the national anthem. Pro bases this argument on the assertion that people of color are not being oppressed in the United States. I will demonstrate that this assertion is false - people of color in the United States have been and are currently oppressed by various systems and authorities. I will focus on three main areas of society where this oppression is manifest - the education system, the criminal justice system, and -- the focus of Kaepernick's protest -- killings by police officers. If "oppressed" is being defined as "to burden with cruel or unjust impositions or restraints," then the treatment of people of color within the education system is a prime example of oppression. African-American students are treated much more punitively than white students, for example. The U.S. Department of Education reports that, despite the fact that they make up about 18 percent of enrolled students, black students account for 39 percent of all expulsions. Black students are three and a half times as likely to be suspended or expelled as white students. Over 70 percent of students arrested or referred to law enforcement were black or Hispanic. Black students with disabilities represent 21 percent of all students with disabilities but make up 44 percent of disabled students who are placed under mechanical restraints [1]. What we see here is that students of color are punished disproportionately more than white students, and when they are punished they are subject to more harsh punishment than white students. This has the effect of driving students of color out of school, limiting opportunities and increasing the likelihood of criminal activity. People of color are also "subject to a burdensome or harsh exercise of authority or power" by the criminal justice system. Over 60 percent of all prisoners in the United States are people of color; black men are nearly six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men [2]. A big part of this is the so-called War on Drugs. African-Americans make up 13 percent of the US population and 14 percent of monthly drug users, but they are 37 percent of the people arrested for drug offenses [3]. Even though whites and blacks use marijuana at roughly the same rate, an ACLU report found that blacks were 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites in 2010 [4]. Human Rights Watch has found that black Americans are arrested on drug charges at rates from 2.8 to 5.5 times as high as white Americans [5]. There is a strong possibility of racial profiling being a driver of these incarceration rates. The U.S. Department of Justice found that blacks and Hispanics were approximately three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop than white motorists. Blacks are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to be subject to use of force during encounters with police [6]. This racial disproportionality found in arrest rates even extends to the courtroom. Sentencing guidelines, like the disparity between offenses involving crack cocaine versus powder cocaine, disproportionately punish people of color. Since people of color are generally less affluent then white Americans, powder cocaine is less accessible then crack cocaine. But sentencing guidelines dictate that crack-related offenses be 18 times longer - down from 100 times longer - for crack than powder cocaine. More than 66 percent of crack users are white or Hispanic, yet more than 80 percent of defendants sentenced for crack offenses are African American [7]. The injustice should be obvious - black people are being sentenced longer than white people for using the same drug. African Americans serve, on average, 58.7 months for a drug offense, which is almost as much time as white Americans serve on average for violent offenses (61.7 months) [8]. This demonstrates that the U.S. justice system punishes people of color disproportionately. The statistics bear out that people of color, and black people in particular, are indeed subject to oppression, as Kaepernick pointed out.The specific point of Kaepernick's protest was to draw attention to the alarming rates of homicide of African Americans (particularly unarmed African Americans) at the hands of law enforcement officers. Once again, we can see how this fits the definition of oppression by looking at the numbers. According to the Guardian, black Americans are more than twice as likely as white Americans to be killed by police officers [9]. Particularly troubling is the killing of unarmed African Americans. In 2015, unarmed black people were killed by police at five times the rate of unarmed whites. Again, we are talking about a demographic that accounts for 13 percent of the U.S. population. That year, of the 102 documented cases of unarmed black people killed by police officers who were eventually charged with a crime, only two resulted in convictions for the officer involved [10]. One might expect a justifiable defense for some of these cases, but for there to be almost no convictions is almost certainly a clear case of injustice. A common outcome is for an officer to be put on paid administrative leave, which is what happened to Betsy Shelby, the police officer who fatally shot Terance Crutcher, an unarmed black man with no criminal record who had his hands raised when he was killed [11]. Or the case with Kenneth Boss, one of four police officers acquitted for the killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black man who was merely reaching for his wallet; Boss got to keep his job [12]. This is what angers many about the treatment of black people and people of color by police officers. African Americans are killed by the police at a greater rate than whites, yet there is often little punishment for the officers involved. The ultimate form of oppression is the ability to take a life unnecessarily and avoid the consequences. Political protests in sports are nothing new, and the legitimacy of the protest is borne out by the facts of reality. I believe I've laid out the facts to make a worthy case for why Colin Kaepernick is right - people of color are being oppressed in the United States. I highlighted three different areas - the education system, the criminal justice system, and police killings of people of color - as examples of oppression in modern day society. The harsh treatment and punishment of students of color, in relation to white students, creates undue burden on those students, forcing many out of the school system altogether. People of color are targeted, arrested, and incarcerated by the justice system at disproportionate rates - particularly as a result of the War on Drugs. And people of color, particular black people, are more likely than white people to be killed in encounters with the police. While most times, police officers involved in shooting of unarmed blacks are given nothing more than administrative leave as punishment, the law imposes harsher punishments on civilians of color than whites for comparable crimes. It is all part of a cycle of despair that keeps American prisons full of people of color. I did not even address the many other forms of societal oppression that exist for minorities in America, like income inequality, housing discrimination, healthcare access, voting restrictions, etc. This disparity in justice perfectly fits Pro's provided definition of "oppression." Therefore, Kaepernick's assertion, that the United States is a "country that oppresses black people and people of color," is correct. Thank you for reading. SOURCES: [1] http://www.nytimes.com... [2] http://www.sentencingproject.org... [3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com... [4] http://www.sentencingproject.org... [5] https://www.hrw.org...[6] https://www.americanprogress.org... [7] https://www.aclu.org... [8] http://www.naacp.org... [9] https://www.theguardian.com...# [10] http://mappingpoliceviolence.org... [11] http://www.commondreams.org... [12] http://www.nytimes.com...