Nov. 24 at 9:37 p.m., aboard a Southwest Airlines flight from New York City to Atlanta. The moment at which I glanced at my neighbor’s open iPad and witnessed that which I had hoped against hope would not happen. The grand jury delivered its verdict that Officer Darren Wilson would not be indicted for his role in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.
Immediately after convincing myself that what I was seeing was real, there came a flash of anger of an intensity that I have not experienced since the summer of 2013, when George Zimmerman was also let off the hook for his murder of Trayvon Martin. While the media has framed the community reaction as one of anger and chaos, I counter that, for every person who engaged in an act of vandalism, there were thousands upon thousands who marched in peaceful solidarity and protest in the days following the announcement of the verdict. For these activists, these protesters, these people who decided to take a stance and to fight against brutality, discrimination, racism and inequality, I am proud, amazed and inspired beyond description.
Here was a decision that reminded me that I live in a nation that devalues black lives. Brought here by force; enslaved, raped, beaten, lynched, blacklisted and disrespected; kept in “check” through the use of coercion, murder, brutality and fear; and subjected throughout time and space to a constant state of oppression and discrimination, the black people of this racist nation have suffered countless injustices. In keeping up with this legacy, within the last few months alone, a number of black lives have been lost as a result of suspicious police activity, including those of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, 14-year-old Cameron Tillman, 43-year-old Eric Garner, 19-year-old Roshad McIntosh, 18-year-old VonDerrit Myers, Jr. and 28-year-old Akai Gurley.
These lives are not even given justice in the courtroom. It seems that the formula for a guaranteed acquittal in court is to have a black victim and a white perpetrator. Bonus points if there is a class disparity in the defendant’s favor, or if the victim looks “intimidating” or has a history of confrontations with the law. Make sure that the victim is presented through the most “sketchy” pictures possible, while only using professional, smiling photos of the perpetrator. Finally, take pains to criminalize and dehumanize the victim. As a case in point, take the statement of Darren Wilson, in which he remarked that Michael Brown looked like “a demon” during the confrontation that led to the death of the latter.
Some will argue that the justice system is fair and impartial, and that the process in this case was fair, and the verdict logical. I call foul. The justice system is an unjust, classist and racist institution, one that seems to take a perverse pleasure in imprisoning young black and brown people, especially if they are of low-income backgrounds. Based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics for the 2010 census, 380 of every 100,000 whites in America are incarcerated; for Latinos, this number is 966 out of 100,000, and for blacks, this number is 2,207 for every 100,000. A 2013 Sentencing Project report to the United Nations Human Rights Committee found that of those born today, one in every three black males and one in every six Latino males can expect to go to prison at some point in their lives. Only one out of every 17 white males can expect the same.
I have been without faith in the justice system for years. I have not trusted the police, in any form, to serve and protect me for years. Why? Not because I am a criminal, or because I am predisposed to side against such systems, or because I feel that I should expect to be profiled and brutalized by a force that claims to protect and serve. Not because I should expect to be treated particularly harshly and with abandon in a “justice” system that is supposed to be fair and impartial, but because I am black. Because I am black, if I have the misfortune to be the defendant in an American courtroom, chances are I would be seen as guilty. And the ruling will be such. And if I am injured, or if I am killed, as a black man, the chances are, especially if my assailant is white, the defendant will be acquitted.
This is the truth of the nation in which we live. Many will deny this, many will question my argument, many will deny the existence of a school-to-prison pipeline, many will offer “logical” case-by-case explanations, and many may rationalize the discriminatory treatment that black and brown people receive. And they will accuse countless victims of injustice throughout time and space of “pulling the race card.” To them, we should say: Open your eyes. And we should say little else, because we risk wasting time and energy explaining such concepts to the oppressor, and to those who, because of their privilege, can never truly understand, and who may never care enough to try. Never forget, never lose your passion for justice and never be comfortable being ignorant. Take off the rose-colored glasses and see and confront the ugliness in our society. We must fight for transparency, accountability and responsibility. Where there are missteps, we must be there, and we must ensure that any misconduct is dealt with.
Fight for protesters’ rights, for national racial-profiling legislation, for the rights and empowerment of citizens, for a national police gun violence database, for the change of open use-of-force laws that encourage exploitation and for transparency and accountability from our police forces, including the Department of Public Safety, the Providence Police Department and those police forces in our hometowns. We must join up together in the pursuit of freedom for all, liberty for all, justice for all, safety for all, equality for all and for the rights of all citizens to be served and protected by our police.
Armani Madison ’16 sides with the Ferguson protesters and with the family of Mike Brown. He is also the president of the Brown University chapter of the NAACP. He can be reached at armani_madison@brown.edu.
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