The Death Penalty and Race To closely examine many mechanisms of American society is to observe the contradiction between constitutional equality and equality in practice . Many of these contradictions exist in the area of ​​racial equality. For example, Black people often experience an unfair hand in the criminal justice system. In The Real War on Crime, Steven Donziger explains: "There are so many more African Americans than whites in our prisons that the difference cannot be explained by higher crime among African Americans - discrimination racial is also at work, and it penalizes African-Americans. Americans at almost every stage of the criminal justice system.1 This article focuses on one of these “stages”: the death penalty. The racial disparities Donziger sees in prisons are also found on death row. To be exact, African Americans make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, but they make up 40 percent of the death row population.2 Like Donziger, I believe there is something more at work; and in the tradition of Ture and Hamilton, I believe that something works in secret ways. It would almost be better to blame blatant racial discrimination. But the death penalty does not meet the explicit goal of oppressing black people. Racism persists, but it has taken more implicit, more subtle and arguably more harmful forms. The death penalty is a timely prism through which to observe the disguised racism that occurs in institutional contexts. This topic can be overwhelming and this article is by no means exhaustive. Rather, it is an opportunity to combine some sociological and legal concepts with a personal analysis in the desire to demonstrate that the death penalty and the institutions that surround it...... middle of article... ...ziger, 100.13 Chambliss, 250.14 Chambliss, 248.15 Donziger, 127.16 Donziger, 109.17 Donziger, 110.18 Campaign to end the death penalty (pamphlet).19 Leon Higgenbotham, Shades of Freedom (Oxford University Press, 1996) xxv- xxvi.20 Donziger, 109.21 David C. Baldus, et al, "Comparative Review of Death Sentences: An Empirical Study of the Georgia Experience", The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 74 (1983): 663-664.22 Baldus, 664.23 Donziger, 109.24 US General Accounting Office, “Death Penalty Sentencing: Research Indicates Patterns of Racial Disparities,” The Death Penalty in America, 271.25 Hugo Adams Bedau, The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 250.26 Donziger, 113.27 Ellsworth, 90.28 Ellsworth, 92.29 Chambliss, 243.30 Ellsworth, 92.