Date of Award

2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Fitzgerald, Keith

Keywords

Racism, United States, Stand Your Ground, Florida

Area of Concentration

Political Science

Abstract

The United States has always had to grapple with its deep-seeded history of racial discrimination against Blacks since the start of the Antebellum era. While the U.S has progressively become more inclusive of Blacks thanks to periods of great reform like Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement, laws that discriminate on the basis of race have transitioned from overt to covert. The Florida Stand Your Ground law has come under fire for being covertly racist against Blacks. The objective of this thesis is it to analyze the history of covert and overt racism in the U.S. and reveal whether or not the Florida Stand Your Ground law is covertly racist. While the overall statistical analysis of the study failed to prove the existence of covert racism in Stand Your Ground, there are some differences when examining the sentencing outcomes by race. This study supports the claim that there still exists racial discrimination against Blacks in the U.S.

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