Shan Malik
Professor Dr. Miller
HIST 128 African American History
Justice: A Historically Biased System
For my Black History project, I chose to analyze the acclaimed Netflix series entitles “When They See Us,” which tells the infamous story of the men known as the “Central Park Five,” who were falsely accused of a highly disturbing physical assault on a female runner, only to be decisively proven to be completely innocent decades later. The horrific tales and experiences that these youths faced were the direct result of a clear misapplication of justice within the court system as well as the strong presence of institutionalized racism.The criminal justice system in the United States, from the highest levels to local jurisdictions, has had a long and unfortunate history of deliberate racist policies specifically targeting members of the African American community.
The history and the events surrounding the prosecutions of the Central Park Five is a compelling tale of racial injustice. The young men were unintentionally caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and were by chance physically in the same general location of an assault that occurred in Central Park of New York City. During this night in 1989, a jogger was suddenly and terribly attacked by a then unknown assailant who attacked, assaulted, and beat her until unconsciousness. A wide-scale crackdown by authorities ensued in a sudden and a desperate search for the individual responsible for the horrendous assault. The youths were swiftly and arbitrarily arrested by the New York City police, and then subsequently subjected to severe mental intimidation and physical assault as well as placements in jail and detention. Psychological manipulation was strategically used on the part of the authorities in order to extract any sort of possible information that the police could find about the assault in Central Park. Eventually, forced confessions were finally made by the five young men, not out of any sincerity, but rather as a result of prolonged and terrifying psychological manipulation, as well as by the very real threat of violence. Many would argue that the police were overly punitive and eager to just find anyone that they could place the responsibility upon, thus compromising the standards of criminal investigation work as well as the natural and legally-protective rights of individuals accused of committing a crime, for example the principle that someone is considered innocent until proven guilty. During the trial process, the Central Park Five were pitted against better-funded and better-known attorneys who were vehement in their insistence and defense of their unshakeable belief of guilt. After being tried and prosecuted for their “involvement” in the antisocial behavior of the night of the assault, they were all sent to prison, where they experienced the cruelty and brutality of life under incarceration. Years of intense fear on a daily basis, terrifying experiences of violence, and the inherent corruption of a governmental system defined the life of the Central Park Five for many years.
There has undeniably been a long history of the inequality of African-Americans before the law within the United States as well as violence on the part of law enforcement. There was a long and severe application of numerous and draconian “Black Codes” and “Jim Crow Laws” throughout both the colonial and modern periods of American history. Among the most infamous of the many historical law codes curtailing the rights of black Americans were the South Carolina laws that absolutely forbade the teaching of the enslaved to read and write, with the punishment for the breaking of this particularly inhumane rule being the penalty of death. Even after the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments which outlawed slavery in the entirety of the United States and constitutionally gave citizenship to all former slaves, the period of the post-Civil War Reconstruction and onwards saw the weak applications and enforcement of laws and civil rights protections for African Americans. To this day official statistics and governmental data clearly shows the vast disparity in justice and the effects of legal convictions overwhelmingly targeting black Americans. The Reagan administration’s escalation of the “War on Drugs” created even more difficulties for America’s historically disenfranchised communities already dealing with a myriad of other socio-economic issues, for example by initiating the “Mandatory Sentencing Laws” as well as “Zero Tolerance Policies” that would lead to untold amounts of tribulations and sufferings for the worse-off of US society. “New Jim Crow,” is a concept by the researcher named Michelle Alexander that characterized the irrefutably disproportionate amount of African-Americans in prison, and she argues that the active and wide-scale imprisonment of so many members of the black community can be seen arguably as the latest phase of the historical Jim Crow Laws, in other words a deliberate and conscientious effort to strip the protection of equality to an entire group of people. The New York City Police department’s highly discriminatory and controversial “Stop and Frisk” policy gave the authorities the legal power to overwhelmingly target black and Hispanic Americans for physical searches under the apparent pretense of the desire to control the amount of illegal firearms in the hands of young people. Bias in the legal system more skewed towards individual police officers known to have broken civil liberties has resulted in extreme and exceptional distrust of both the legal system and the police forces enforcing them. The severe and unnecessary punishment of Rodney King in 1992 and the complete acquittal of all of the officers involved in his savage beating led to high levels of public outrage then resulted in the LA Riots. Other famous historical cases and events include the sad end of Eric Garner, an African-American man who was placed in a violent choke-hold by an officer of the NYPD which led to his painful suffocation and death, with the officer not being faced with an indictment by the police department. Philando Castile, another African-American man, informed an officer that he was a licensed firearm owner and felt compelled to inform the police that he had the weapon placed away in his vehicle, was shot several times as close range right after trying to reach for his identification while being pulled over. There was the Michael Brown case of 2014, and then the highly militarized local government response and then the subsequent protests.
After serving so many years in prison and being subjected to unspeakable experiences of brutality, eventually the actual perpetrator of the terrible acts of assault upon the female jogger came forwards to the authorities and fully confessed that he alone had been the sole criminal. This person’s coming forward and subsequent statements then led to the eventual complete exoneration of all of the crimes that the men of the Central Park Five had been falsely accused of committing and the total reversal of the crimes held in their names. The entire public then became aware and fully conscious of the innocence that these men had all this time, leading to many to celebrate their release from incarceration and the societal recognition of their taking no part in wrongdoing. The Central Park Five were then finally free.
Success stories and histories of civil rights movements combatting institutionalized racism.“When They See Us” is an incredibly powerful series emotionally, and portrays the true historical events of forced confessions and a strategically manipulated justice system. This systemic corruption, a method that creates untold suffering for numerous individuals from minority communities, only serves to perpetuate racial disparity and inequality that must be addressed and solved in order for the United States to truly protect the safety as well as dignity of its citizens. As Martin Luther King Jr. passionately emphasized throughout his historical struggle for the winning of civil rights, that injustice towards one group is injustice towards all groups, and that there cannot be true freedom and inequality while blatant and lingering injustice exists in this nation. There is never such a thing as half-freedom.
Works Cited
Balko, Radley. “Opinion | There’s Overwhelming Evidence That the Criminal-Justice System Is Racist. Here’s the Proof.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 18 Sept. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/09/18/theres-overwhelming-evidence-that-the-criminal-justice-system-is-racist-heres-the-proof/.
White, Deborah G., et al. Freedom on My Mind: a History of African Americans, with Documents (Second Edition). Bedford/St. Martins, 2017
