Mullen-+Punishment+Reflection

American society revolves around punishing a group of people based on their race, cultural beliefs, or the crimes they have once committed in their lives. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts a Puritan society where the whole community belittles one women for the sin that she made by adultery. Hester Prynne is forced to battle through her life as the foundation of American community pushes her down because of the one crime she has committed. She had been known for her charity work, but because she does not display the "perfect" characteristics, she is dehumanized. It is interesting because no one in society can achieve those perfect characteristics. In the early 1900s, our society continued to belittle, but because of the influence of different cultures in America, the transition of punishment veered towards people of color. There had been a wide variety of lynching and other sources of racism in America. Claude McKay wrote a poem of one that occurred one day in his life. As America creeped towards the 21st century, the people believed that the lynching and other acts of racism had been abolished by a better American Character who had good morals and ethics, but that is not so. Michelle Alexander has valid insight that today's Jim Crow is the disproportionate amount of colored to white people in our prison system. The government's departments are directly focusing on arresting and prosecuting people of color because of a racist stigmatism and our love of punishment that can be traced to our puritanical ways.