In this second part of my academic analysis of When They See Us, I want to dive deeper into the criminal aspect of the series and connect that to how this country’s prison system is an inconspicuous extension of slavery. If you haven’t already read part one of my academic essay, I highly suggest that you go back and read that first. As we saw in my last article, the negativity surrounding the black image has a long-running history that has culminated in the negative perception society has of the black community today. In the following analysis, I want to connect how that image, and the fear of blackness, has to lead to the massive wave of police enforcement used against the black community.
Demonization & Criminalization = Justification for Incarceration
The very presence of a black male is seen as criminal in society today. The first episode of When They See Us makes it clear to the audience that the very action of being black is a crime when the lead investigator demanded that, “Every young black male who was in the park last night is a suspect…” (DuVernay 00:20:07). This scene explicitly points to racism because the woman in charge of the case automatically differentiates black boys as the only possible suspects without having any evidence to point to the suspect being a particular race. She never even attempts to pursue possible suspects of another race who were in the park that night. Even after it was revealed to the officers leading the case that the young boys couldn’t have been involved because of a conflict with timelines, they still only pursued the black boys in forcing them to admit they were guilty. This idea of criminalization based on race is supported in the article “Trayvon Martin: Racial Profiling, Black Male Stigma, and Social Work Practice” by Martell Lee Teasley, Jerome H. Schiele, Charles Adams, and Nathern S. Okilwa. In the article, this is referred to as racial profiling, which is defined as “…an act of injustice that uses race as the foundation for shaping perceptions and behaviors associated with defining who is and which groups are designated as ‘criminal’” (Teasly et al. 37). Like portrayed in the series, racial profiling has been used to incarcerate black males at a disproportionately higher rate than white males. As Smiley and Fakunle mention, “Black men are six times as likely to go to jail or prison as White men” (354). This points back to the lingering influence of slavery because society uses incarceration as a form to control the black character they fear and to “protect” themselves from the threatening image they’ve created of the black male.
Society has turned to the criminal justice system as a way of controlling the black image they fear because of the damage incarceration does to the individual, as well as the black community as a whole. It was revealed by Teasly et at. that in an interview with the Nixon administration, they confessed: “that the initialization of the 1970s War on Drugs was a diversion tactic designed to camouflage the administration’s efforts to attack its two perceived enemies: the radical antiwar left and black people” (39). This explicit attack on the black community proves that criminalization is seen as a form to control the image society fears, because of the well known deleterious effects that result from incarceration.
Episode four of When They See Us depicted some of the horrible realities of what being in prison truly entails. Since Korey was the only boy who was 16, he went straight into the adult prison system. While there, he stayed in deplorable living conditions, such as having rats in the cell where he slept (00:04:42). He was also attacked and nearly killed by other inmates multiple times, and most of the guards were corrupt, even orchestrating the beatings and turning a blind eye to it. As a result of being continually attacked, Korey stayed in solitary confinement to avoid being killed by the other inmates, but this led to many psychological consequences due to the lack of socialization. The physical and mental effects that people face in prison are fairly comparable to what slaves endured, evidence of how incarceration is the result of lingering slavery.
Even if the effects of being in prison weren’t bad enough, life after release is still affected by the incarceration of black males. Episode three revealed this difficulty to assimilate back into society after four of the boys were released. It follows how each of them had extreme difficultly finding jobs because of all the restrictions convicted felons face. As Raymond asked whenever he was filling out a job application for the first time, “Who am I supposed to work for with all this hanging over me?” (00:39:52). The reality is, the criminal justice system makes it so that between the lack of job opportunities, lost rights to vote, and harsh stipulations of parole, assimilation into society is nearly impossible, and often leads previous convicts to go back to prison or having a permanently reduced quality of life. Society also usually places a negative stigma around these people, and as seen in When They See Us, many people hated them. This difficultly to assimilate into society can be compared to the emancipation of slaves. After they were finally freed, they were left with no means to take care of themselves, no possessions, and little protection from the law, as well as a deep hatred from most white people surrounding them. Even the few reparations they did receive during the Reconstruction period, were short-lived and soon stripped away. This correlation is again evidence of how the criminal justice system is interspersed with hints of slavery.
Society also uses blackness as an excuse for extreme punishments and violence against the black community. After the late 1800’s there was a major rise in lynchings which struck fear into the communities of black people (Smiley and Fakunle 353). It was said that the “most prevalent accusation was the rape or sexual assault of a White woman by a Black male” (Smiley and Fakunle 353). This directly ties into the same accusation that the Central Park 5 faced in When They See Us. These accusations would usually be baseless with no actual facts or evidence, created solely to justify the exorbitant abuse and violence directed towards the black community. One prominent example mentioned from the article was of a young white female accusing a black male of sexual assault (Smiley and Fakunle 353). As a result, “roughly 300 Black people were killed, and more than 9,000 people were left homeless after White mobs destroyed the Greenwood community” (Smiley and Fakunle 353). Eventually “lynching of a Black body became a form of ritualistic violence where limbs and other body parts were taken as souvenirs” and were justified because “uncontrollable desires of Black males were illegal and criminal and needed to be stopped through the use of physical force” (Smiley and Fakunle 353). These examples prove that the dehumanization, demonization, and criminalization of blackness by society are used as an excuse to justify the actions of inhumane, extreme forms of punishment and harassment towards the black community, which is seen transcending from slavery to public lynchings to incarceration.
