Anuj Patel
ASA 002
Section A03, Mondays 7:10-8:00
ID: 998882783
Week 9

            In Soya Jung's article "Why Ferguson Matters To Asian Americans", Soya Jung talks about the harsh acts that Ferguson police officers commit, which particularly included the murder by Darren Wilson (Jung 1). Later on in Jung's article, she also mentions racism against minorities in general as well as against blacks in particular (Jung 1-2). These incidents involving racism occur quite frequently, and Jung mentions this concern as well when she says "What makes this a national political crisis is that Mike Brown’s death was not an isolated incident. It was excruciatingly unexceptional – one more deadly outcome of white supremacy in a human rights crisis that spans cities, nations, centuries." (Jung 1). Jung goes straight in to mentioning why this racism has been a long lasting problem that will not go away if we as a society do not do anything about this and also mentions that black people who commit crimes become suboptimal people within our community (Jung 3). This article relates to issues people face in the community today in Ferguson, Missouri with traffic tickets and the fines associated with these offenses. (Shapiro 2014, Martinez 2015). According to Shapiro's article, police officers in Fergusson have monitored people's driving more carefully and as a result have found more traffic violations recently. (Shapiro 2014, Martinez 2015). Shapiro mentions people who get traffic tickets who are poor are often unable to pay their fines and as a result go to jail quite often for minor traffic violations (Shapiro 2014, Martinez 2015). This relates to Soya Jung's article because most often, it is these people in minority groups who are poor, and therefore giving them the same penalties for traffic offenses as the rest of the community is considered discrimination (Martinez 2015). I would have to agree with Shapiro and Martinez to a certain extent, but it would depend on the offense. For example, for some crimes or infractions, the current fines are not enough of a deterrent and would need to make a difference to poor people in order to prevent the crime from being committed in the first place. An example is marijuana possession in California before Proposition 64 was passed making marijuana legal (McGreevy 2016). Before marijuana became legal in California, it was an infraction which had a $100 fine plus court fees (McGreevy 2016). However, there are other routine traffic offenses such as running a red light in California that also have a $100 fine plus court fees (costing $540 total in some counties). (Moffitt 2016). Despite the fact that both of these offenses currently involve the same amount of fines, marijuana possession should have been penalized much more heavily than running a red light, as marijuana possession is a conscious decision while running a red light is often due to the fact drivers may be simply inattentive without any intent to violate a traffic law (Moffitt 2016, McGreevy 2016). However, our justice system does not differentiate between these 2 offenses for a good reason, because it is hard to tell what people are thinking at the moment they commit these offenses. (McGreevy 2016, Moffitt 2016). This ties in to the article because perhaps anti black and anti minority racism is not done intentionally, but perhaps it is also done intentionally, and without being able to read the minds of the Fergusson police officers, it is hard to make judgements about them, similar to how it is hard to judge state legislatures when determining traffic violation fines (Moffitt 2016).

(Martinez 2015).


References:

Jung, Soya. "Why Ferguson Matters to Asian Americans." Race Files. N.p., 27 Dec. 2016. Web.         <https://www.racefiles.com/2014/08/20/why-ferguson-matters-to-asian-americans/>.

Martinez, Michael. "How Ferguson's tickets, fines violated rights of blacks." CNN. Cable News Network, 06 Mar. 2015. Web. <http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/06/us/ferguson-missouri-racism-tickets-fines/>.

McGreevy, Patrick. "Before Proposition 64, simple possession of marijuana was already decriminalized." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 3 Nov. 2016. Web. <http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-proposition-64-marijuana-legalization-crime-snap-20161103-story.html>.

Moffitt, Mike. "$500 fine for red-light 'California stops' excessive?" SFGate. N.p., 20 Jan. 2016. Web. <http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/500-fine-for-red-light-California-stops-6772428.php>.

Shapiro, Joseph. "In Ferguson, Court Fines And Fees Fuel Anger." NPR. NPR, 25 Aug. 2014. Web. <http://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/343143937/in-ferguson-court-fines-and-fees-fuel-anger>.