The question at hand is, "How are we still SLAVES in 2016"? I'm not referring to the whipping of colored people, I'm talking about the institutionalized slavery, I'm talking about the brainwashing of young people in history class, I'm talking about how majority of the laws made are for the majority and not for the minority.

Institutionalized means established in practice or custom. Slavery means a person who is a legal property of another and is forced to obey them. So, institutionalized slavery means the practice of making a person legal property and forcing them to obey you.

The main example of institutionalized slavery would be the Mass Incarceration of African American males. When a person goes to prison, they are now considered property and their name is ripped from them; they are considered number #298780. They are also ripped of their dignity and when they are released from prison, number #298780 follows them forever.

Another example of institutionalized slavery would be the child welfare system. The child welfare system is a system to prevent child abuse and neglect, however, that is based on what the government feels is neglect and abuse. There are multiple cases where children are placed in out-of-home care because of the way they were disciplined or what society says is clean or dirty. The majority of these cases are in the minority communities. Why is this? The system is this way because of what society feels about each race.

There is an Indian Child Welfare Act wherein American Indian families are placed in out-of-home care to go to another American Indian family. I feel that this act is fair, but there is not an African American child welfare act nor an Hispanics child welfare act. Instead, they place some of these minority children in foster care, most likely to be put in a home that society feels is right for them and stripping them from their cultural identity. This is connected to slavery because masters always separated the families by selling them to other plantations and by the way, the majority of licensed foster parents are paid.

The history classes that we take are enslaving the mind by giving us a book that were written by the majority. The books that we are reading are only telling a one-sided story. They are telling us only the minimum amount of information of what they want us to know. They teach us that the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery, it was the beginning of the end of that type of slavery, but the Civil War ultimately ended slavery. They teach us about Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X, but what about Eugene Debs, the campaigner for women and prisoners, or Marvel Cooke an American civil rights leader? Our minds are enslaved by teachers that are supposed to help us to get ahead in life, but they are only teaching us what will get us by in life and only teaching us what the government wants us to know.

The laws that we are supposed to obey are meant for the majority and not the minorities because of who they were written by. These laws were made to continue to oppress the minorities and the majority speaks for itself. Read the Constitution and then read the date. If you are a minority, I want you to think: Were your ancestors free when this was written? Were your ancestors considered men? When you answer these questions, you know that when the Constitution was written minorities were considered property and enslaved, so that did not apply to them. So, why would you think the off-springs of the people who wrote the Constitution would change something that benefits them and only them?

One law that was written specifically to imprison minorities is the Violence Crime and Law Enforcement Act written in 1994 by Bill Clinton. This act sent so many minorities to prison because of petty crimes such as selling dime bags of marijuana. You know what's so crazy about this act? It was written around the time crack cocaine became relevant, and when crack cocaine was placed on the streets, it was not placed in the suburbs, it was placed in the inner city. Since this bill has been passed, the prison system has quadrupled. One in fifteen prisoners are African American men, one in thirty-six of prisoners are Hispanic men and one in one hundred and six prisoners are white males. WOW! This law has destroyed so many families and the government could not care less.

If minorities want to stop being slaves to the system, minorities need to change it. Minorities need to get in a law-making positions, minorities need to empower the next generation and the communities minorities live in. If we do that, we won't be asking the question, "How are we still SLAVES in 2016"?