Jacob, Andy, & Gabriel Oklahoma

Racism is Still Here

Our issue is something that has been going on for a long time - the racial inequality against African-Americans.

Dear Next President,

Our issue that we are going to address is something that has been going on for a long time. The racial inequality, or in other words, racism against African Americans. This has really been going on since slavery. Since then many cases such as brown vs. the board of education have also represented racial inequality. The issue we are more worried about is the shootings that have been happening such as the shooting of Michael Brown in August of 2014.

So many killings have happened since 2014. For example Michael Brown was one of the first African Americans to get shot by a white police officer while being unarmed. In 2015 for example William Chapman was shot while also being unarmed.

As a matter of fact a couple of weeks ago a man by the name Terrance Crutcher was shot on September 16 of 2016. In 2015 over 100 unarmed African American were shot to death. In 2016 more than 150 unarmed African Americans were shot. The number of African Americans shot keeps rising. The next president has to have a way to at least lower the numbers or completely stop this.

This is an important cause because this is classified as racism because if you see on the news you don’t see a white male or female getting shot by a police officer. When you see the news, and you see somebody was shot by police officer and the person wasn’t armed it is usually going to be an African American. We were supposed to be done with racism a long time ago. If today’s people are bringing racism back than what was Martin Luther king’s sacrifice for?

A lot of people sacrificed back in the day to end racism, and we are bringing it back. The next president has to make sure that we are hiring loyal non-racist police officers. The next president needs to make sure that the police officers that have murdered people for no reason pay for what they have done. A lot of police officers have gotten off the hook. The police officer that murdered Terrance Crutcher did not receive sentence and got let free. The next president has to make sure that people such as this police officer pay or receive what they deserve.

In conclusion we believe that racism is a major problem in today's day. The next president needs to have this situation addressed with and dealt with. We believe that this should play a factor in people’s decision in voting, whether or not the president can handle it or deal with this problem.

Sincerely,

Jacob P., Andy G., and Gabriel P.

Classen School of Advanced Studies

Classen SAS 8th Grade English

Students from Ms. Sutton's 8th grade English classes in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

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