The Incarceration of African Americans over Whites

One civil rights issue pertaining to race that is still very prevalent in the United States is the incarceration of African Americans over whites in the sense that, there are many racial disparities in the incarceration of African American and white individuals in the US. According to the NAACP Criminal Justice Fact Sheet, in 2014, African Americans constituted 2.3 million, or 34% of the total 6.8 million prison population. African Americans are also incarcerated 5 times the rate of whites and the imprisonment rate just for African American women is twice that of white women. Nationwide, African American children represent 32% of children who are arrested, 42% who are detained, and 52% whose cases are judicially relinquished to criminal court. Now this is not only a racial disparity for African Americans, but it is something that is also happening to Hispanics in the US, even if its not as widely known or seen. Some more statistics by the NAACP, now including Hispanics, are that even though African American and Hispanics make up 32% of the entire US population, they comprised 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015 and if African Americans and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rate that whites are, prisons and jail populations would decline by almost 40%.
Other than incarceration, getting more specific, there are also drug sentencing disparities between African Americans and whites. Even though African Americans and whites use drug at similar rates, the imprisonment of African Americans over the use of drugs and drug charges is almost 6 times that of whites. Whats even more unbalanced and discriminatory is the fact that in a 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, it was found out that 17 million whites and 4 million African Americans reported that they used illicit drugs within the last month, but African Americans are still imprisoned almost 6 times that of whites over drug charges, as I've already said before.
In conclusion, through what all of this information and these statistics show is that there is are large and very obvious racial disparities in the Incarceration of African Americans over Whites in the US largely based on their race and the color of their skin.

Source:
https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/

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