America has a lot of problems. We will explore America by looking at the abuse of power in it. I remember when I was in 6th grade when I heard about the Michael Brown case. My mom and dad had to sit me down and say that I was lucky that I am a white boy living in a good neighborhood because there are some people that aren’t as lucky as you and that we have to fight to help those people that aren't as lucky as us. My dad had the same conversation when our newest president trump was elected. What I learned from the last three years is that we are a nation divided.

In this country, racism and police brutality are two of the biggest problems. In 2015, The Washington Post launched a real-time database to track fatal police shootings. The database showed that at the beginning of 2016 police officers killed 50 unarmed white people and the same number of black people.  But the fact is that the white population in America is almost quintuple the number of black people. That means that for every unarmed white person killed five unarmed black people were killed. That is a chilling fact. What is even more chilling is that in many ways racism is less prevalent now than it was twenty years ago. In 1990 about 46% of people approved of people that were married to someone of a different race compared to 87% today. It also doesn't help that some in the law enforcement community abuse their power. Even former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper admitted that in the process of responding to massive protests related to WTO meetings in his home city back in 1999 that he was “awfully sorry I didn’t do certain things and that I did do other things.” It's not always law enforcement. In some cases, it's the penal system. Many of the jails in the United States are owned and operated by private companies. These companies have to keep a certain amount of people behind bars in order to remain profitable. We all have to liberate these people from the unjust treatment that they get just by being different from other people.

Likewise, Politics is a huge problem as well. Especially with our current political system. 19% of people in the united states don't trust our political system. That is 6 million of the 318.9 million people that live in this country. CNN did a poll this October that showed that more than half of the people in the united states don’t like the new president-elect trump, yet the question remains how did he win, and it simple. People were to confident. People didn't go to the voting polls because the media projected an easy win for Clinton. The only states that won for Clinton were mostly small states. Hilary won the popular by almost 2 million people but the electoral college was the only reason that Hillary lost if the electoral college did not exist. The idea of a democracy is that everyone should get to vote based on who they like, and the electoral college is ruining that. What I find probably most annoying is that the electors are mostly rich people or people at the top of the chain of Americans. It would be nicer if the United states made the electoral college(if they don’t erase it) to make it more diverse. Furthermore, the government abuses their power by not letting people decide who is leader but making themselves choose.

Moreover, college’s abuse their power by claiming that their students will get good jobs. What if that is not true? What if you don’t get a good job? What if you are in debt because of college expenses? What if I told you that this happens fairly often to students? The National Student Clearinghouse reports that 55 percent of first-time undergraduates who started college in the fall of 2008 finished a degree within six years, versus the 56.1 percent of those who began in fall 2007. The US also has the lowest college completion rate in the developed world. What happens to those dropouts you might ask? Well, they are stuck with a lot of student loans and since they didn’t complete college they probably didn't get a high paying job which makes it even harder to pay back those loans. Did you know that that the average American has 29,000$ of student loans?(Money CNN) Most colleges promise that you will get a good job after college. They don't tell you about student debt that comes along with the college degree. In this university of phoenix add they say that they have “your career in mind”  but what they really have in mind is their bottom line.

In conclusion, there are a lot of issues in the United States of America. Racism, our political system, and our universities are just some of those issues. People and our nation's institutions of this nation need to accept each other and learn to not treat someone differently based on the way they look or their perceived social class. Even though at times some people may not agree with other people we still have to find the way to respect them.

Works Cited
""I Made Major Mistakes" - Ex-Seattle Police Chief Admits Response to 1999 WTO Protests Was Too Heavy-Handed." Democracy Now! Web. 21 Dec. 2016.
"Aren't More White People than Black People Killed by Police? Yes, but No." The Washington Post. WP Company, n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2016.
"Aren’t More White People than Black People Killed by Police? Yes, but No." The New York Times, 11 July 2015. Web. 21 Dec. 2016.
"Poll: 1 In 5 Americans Trusts The Government." NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2016.
Becker, Kyle. "10 Charts Show How 'Racist' America Really Is." Independent Journal Review. N.p., 24 June 2015. Web. 21 Dec. 2016.
13TH. 13TH. Netflix, n.d. Web.