Two black men broke into a home and robbed a couple and their daughter at gunpoint in March 2013. According to The Courier Journal, In April 2015, Stevens granted one of the young men responsible for the robbery with probation because he had no prior convictions for violent crimes and he had received many letters about the achievements of the young man as well as his good behavior.
Stevens made headlines again for dismissing a jury based on lack of minorities, not once but for the second time. He first dismissed the jury for a drug trial where the defendant was black and the second occurrence the defendant was also black the trial was for theft.
Is Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Olu Stevens in the wrong?
An analysis by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that prison sentences of black men were nearly 20 percent longer than those of white men for similar crimes. In all cases the crime should meet the punishment, but there are many times where a person makes a mistake that should not cost him the rest of his life. Stevens recognized the potential in the young man and he easily could’ve fell in with the wrong crowd. There have been many instances across the country where a person receives a lesser charge due to having no or a minor history conviction. Why does this seem as such a surprise?
Black men are stereotyped as violent and troublemakers by many and often times their presence causes fear in many people from the color of their skin. The fear that stereotypes of black men have often result in the sometimes unfair punishment by the justice system, which is understandable why Stevens dismissed the jury and wanted minorities to be represented. Many people are unnoticeably biased to many situations. If not one person on the jury has lived or even visited the part of town the defendant lives in, it is easy to jump to conclusions about that person based off of stereotypes of the people from that area.
In the robbery case, the father wrote in the victim impact statement about how his daughter had been terrified of black males. The mother also wrote in the statement that the young girl is “in constant fear of black men” and “Whenever we are running errands, if we come across a black male, she holds me tight and begs me to leave.”
It is the job of parents to end the the cycle of stereotypes against all people. Racism continues because people continue to teach stereotypes to children. No one is born racist, but are taught. Not all black people are violent or living in poverty. Not all Hispanics are Mexicans or immigrants. The list goes on but as people, we must reevaluate our lives and our beliefs. We must recognize how wrong stereotypes are and how many people we have met of a different race that did not live up to the stereotypes that we have heard. If you have not met more than one person of a race different from yours that does not fit into the stereotypes, then it is important to travel outside of your box and your community so that you can see for yourself how stereotypes don’t apply to the majority of a race but are placed on us unrightfully. Change starts with us!
