My first time watching the Netflix docu-series When They See Us came with a mixture of emotions. I was heartbroken, angry, and disgusted. But most of all, I was hurt because it dawned on me, the way these young black boys were mistreated is a true reflection of how the young men and boys in our community are treated by society and law enforcement. This inspired me to want to look deeper into this issue, and thankfully the perfect opportunity presented itself for this whenever I was required to write a research essay for my English studies class. I was so fascinated and enlightened with the information, and with the Black Lives Matter movement going on, I felt it necessary to share this academic essay to educate our community and allies alike. I decided to break this essay up into three parts. This first section includes the introduction of the focus of this essay and the history behind the black image.
The History of a Color: Blackness
“Every young black male who was in the park last night is a suspect…” (DuVernay 00:20:07). Too often, black males are criminalized by the white gaze and seen as threatens to society without justification or fair reasoning. To intensify this issue, there is virtually no distinction in treatment between young boys and adult men. This adultification of young black boys under the white gaze causing many children in black communities to deal with incarceration, police brutality, and death at a disproportionately higher rate than their white counterparts. The limited series When They See Us directed by Ava DuVernay puts a spotlight on this through the retelling of the events 5 teenage black boys faced when they were falsely accused of raping a white woman in Central Park. This series focuses on both post-colonialism and masculinity simultaneously, highlighting how the negative aesthetic black males possess in society has led to criminal injustice stemming from lingering hints of slavery.
To understand why racist tendencies and fears perpetuate in our society, it is essential to first understand where these negative stigmas of blackness stem from. The article “The Aesthetics of Blackness: Theology, Aesthetics & Blackness in the Black Arts Movement Western Aesthetics and Blackness” by Damon Powell helps to uncover how blackness has been viewed throughout history. He states that the absence and negative depiction of black people can be traced back to as early as the Greco-Roman period (Powell 193). Since that period the “association of blackness with evil, danger, repugnancy, the demonic…has been permanently inscribed with negative symbolism in Western culture” (Powell 193). Because of this negative symbolism blackness possesses, society automatically fears and criminalizes black people, since their complexion is directly associated with all the characteristics of criminals such as evil and danger. Colonialism proved to be just as damaging in perpetuating the negative depictions of black people whenever slavery was brought to America. The art and publications in the colonies “re-enforced these negative ideals by producing images of their African slaves as grotesque buffoons, servile menials, comic entertainers and threatening sub-humans” (Powell 193), which “helped re-enforce racist stereotypes and aided the slavocracy’s efforts at dehumanization” (Powell 194). Through an analysis of art forms during the slavery period with the knowledge of the symbolism blackness held, slavery can be seen as a way to dehumanize, and thus control, the black community that they felt threatened by.
Even the article “From ‘brute’ to ‘thug:’ The demonization and criminalization of unarmed Black male victims in America” by Calvin John Smiley and David Fakunle acknowledges this portrayal of the black slave character as a form of control. They state how during the institution of slavery, “depictions of Blackness as docile and manageable reflected the ability to control the Black body and mind, creating the idea that slavery was the best position for Black people” (Smiley and Fakunle 352). But during the reconstruction period a new depiction of the black character came with their newfound economic, political, and social rights (Smiley and Fakunle 353). The black community’s overall successes “challenged White supremacy and created White fear of Black mobility”, and as a result, “This fear was met with a shift from Black people being viewed as compliant and submissive servants to savages and brute monsters” (Smiley and Fakunle 353). From that point forward black people, especially males, were displayed in the media as violent and more likely to commit crimes. This inaccurate and baseless depiction ties directly into When They See Us, as the leading lady of the investigation consistently referred to the young black boys in the park as thuggish, ruthless, and violent. During the court trials in episode two, the prosecutor uses language that alludes to this savage, primal behavior that was mentioned, stating “…they went wild in the park, beating, kicking, using bricks and stones, striking anybody they could find” (DuVernay 01:03:59). Though, as it was revealed in the series, this information was false and the prosecution knew this wasn’t true, the language used to describe the boys assumed actions reveal this deeply violent, animal-like behavior that society constantly projects on black males.
