Prejudgments color perceptions.
During the novel coronavirus pandemic, I immersed myself in the Sunday School teaching of “Injustice Will Be Punished.” My curious thoughts intensified during the lesson; it was then time for me to present. “Frederick Douglass was a former slave—let me stop right there— former, which means God delivered him from slavery.” The positivity of the message I was striving to convey began to deeply root into me, urging me to speak fruition over the black communities. Soon after the Sunday School lesson, I cried out to God from my oh-so-comfortable chair filled with delicate blankets. “God, is this a sign? That you are using all bad things that come against my community not to harm us, but to help us prosper?” The sign was as crystal clear as my reflection in a mirror. I would need to develop my voice through God’s word. So, I hope this message finds you well. If not, I hope that you leave feeling empowered, hungry to challenge your words before the Federal Government of the United States of America.
”Discrimination also increases prejudice through the reactions it provokes in its victims; another example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In his classic 1954 book, The Nature of Prejudice, Gordon Allport noted that being a victim of discrimination can produce either self-blame or anger. Both reactions may create new grounds for prejudice through the classic blame-the-victim dynamic. If the circumstances of ghetto life breed a higher crime rate, someone can then use the higher crime rate to justify continuing the discrimination that helped to create the ghetto (Myers, 2004). Social inequalities proceed to influence systemic racism, in which legislative instruments have not incorporated prolonged remedies to racial oppression. Thus, assembling once another embodiment of the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Nonetheless, the regulatory practices and psychological roots of racial oppression serve as the foundation of the creation to combat systemic racism, racial oppression, and the subconscious bias of culturally unprepared authority across the country. Therefore, I am proposing the creation of the sixteenth executive department in the Federal Government of the United States of America. The Social Relations and Racial Justice Department will constitute the civil and human liberties of each individual regardless of ethnicity, sexual orientation, and level of education. Furthermore, the creation of the Social Relations and Racial Justice Department will work in synergy with existing independent agencies, commissions, and the executive department’s sub-agencies.
These partnerships are, but not limited to, psychologists/sociologists of National Institute for Mental Health and the American Psychological Association, Commission of Civil Rights, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Inter-American Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Interagency Council on Homelessness, Office of Government Ethics, Institute of Peace, Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, and Administration for Children and Families. The Social Relations and Racial Justice Department will be the source of funding for social services in marginalized communities, that will improve the dialogue between community members and other human services professionals (i.e.cognitive behavioral therapy, governmental assistance programs, childcare, etcetera).
Additionally, the contemporary executive department will provide monetary assistance to Historically Black Colleges and Universities to decrease the rate of hermeneutical injustice, while increasing access to cognitive behavioral therapy, innovative multimodal learning techniques, and demanding careers in marginalized populations. Furthermore, stakeholders within public school systems, including colleges/universities, will adopt implicit bias training before the upcoming school year and semester. The advanced protocols will be in place to minimize, if not diminish, the Black Escalation Effect, which states black children are disproportionately disciplined in a school system that consists of punitive punishment rather than using restorative justice practices (Okonofua & Eberhardt, 2015).
Indefinitely, the Social Relations and Racial Justice Department will also provide funding to mental health establishments for those who voluntarily or involuntarily seek psychotherapy due to their subconscious bias and extreme actions to people of minority. Thus, promoting self-awareness and new interpretation techniques relating to their identity.
The overall mission of the Social Relations and Racial Justice Department is to create a remedy for racial oppression and systemic racism with the development of an executive department that will integrate the purposes of current agencies. Furthermore, the Social Relations and Racial Justice Department will seek to mold the contemporary democracy, in which you and I are a part of, thus creating for more participants to collaborate and unify to end racial oppression.
The history of our racial oppression and systemic racism has existed within the upbringing of our democracy. Therefore, we must collaboratively express our frustration, through sublimation in advocacy, unity, and equilibrium to promote transformation not only amongst each other but at racial oppression’s disastrous roots, the weakest handles of the Federal Government of the United States of America, which are open to opportunities for modification.