Who Will Humanize
Diallo?
By Dr. EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON
Worse, the refusal by police, prosecutors and
juries to vigorously punish officers who overuse deadly force against
Blacks fortifies political mean-spiritedness, widens the crisis and
turmoil in the inner cities, pollutes the political process, mars the
criminal justice system, and expands the racial divide.
There is faint hope that the Justice
Department will do more than merely "review" the Albany verdict and
will bring federal civil rights charges against the
officers....The Albany
verdict will probably stand. And it will, again, send the frightening
message that Black lives are still less valuable than White lives.
Special to USAfricaonline.com
The
frenzied search is on to find out why the four White New York police
officers who shot African immigrant Amadou Diallo walked out of an
Albany court free men. One answer came from a defense attorney who
watched the trail proceedings closely. He noted that the defense
attorneys for the officers smartly defied the conventional defense
trial strategy of refusing to put a defendant on the stand to testify
in their behalf. This strategy was glaringly apparent in the O.J.
Simpson trial. Instead the attorneys put the four cops on the stand.
In doing this the defense was able to "humanize" them. In other words
they came off not as the racist, brutes as many depicted them, but as
honest cops who simply made a terrible error in judgment.
It worked. Unfortunately the price to humanize
the four White officers was to devalue the life of a Black victim.
But this was really not that hard to do. Two centuries of legal
slavery and the decades of legal segregation, lynchings, mob violence
gave the firm signal that Blacks had few legal and political rights
and need not look to the police and the courts to protect them.
During much of the 20th Century, Blacks were
typecast in the media and popular culture as lazy, buffonish, and
crime-prone. The civil rights movement of the 1960s brought only
slight improvement to the Black image. By the 1980s, the shallow
reservoir of White goodwill and tolerance generated by the civil
rights movement had long since dried up and much of the media and the
public once more transformed Blacks into the stereotype of the pimp,
dope-dealer and gang banger. The slash and burn assaults on jobs,
education, health and social programs; and the roll-back of civil
rights and affirmative action touched off a fresh round of Black
bashing and replanted the notion that Blacks were an expendable
commodity.
The O.J. Simpson verdict, the Million Man
March, the Rodney King beating, the Los Angeles riots further widened
the racial gap and ignited a full head long retreat into a dangerous
racial knownothingism in which Black and White communities appeared
more as warring camps then socially interactive communities. Blacks,
especially young Black males, were now blamed for much of the crime
and violence in America. The public screamed for more police,
prosecutors, prisons and tougher laws. The prison cells quickly began
to bulge with young Black males.
The "us vs. them" low intensity racial warfare
that has badly disfigured relations between the police and many
Blacks has taken a big toll on many law enforcement and public
officials as well as those in the Black communities. It has forced
many police officials to defend the morally and legally indefensible
practice of racial profiling on the grounds that Blacks are
cop-hating lawbreakers and therefore cracking down on them is merely
good law enforcement. It has pushed many public officials into near
paralysis when it comes to reigning in police violence. They dread
being branded soft on crime.
Meanwhile, the police-Black conflict reinforces
the already deep belief of many Blacks that the police have an open
license to kill and maim in the Black communities and, as in the
Diallo shooting, won't hesitate to use it. This dangerous mix of
mistrust and hostility between many Blacks and the police sparked the
intense rage that followed the controversial shootings of Tyisha
Miller, Margaret Mitchell, Diallo and other Blacks. Worse, the
refusal by police, prosecutors and juries to vigorously punish
officers who overuse deadly force against Blacks fortifies political
mean-spiritedness, widens the crisis and turmoil in the inner cities,
pollutes the political process, mars the criminal justice system, and
expands the racial divide.
There is faint hope that the Justice Department
will do more than merely "review" the Albany verdict and will bring
federal civil rights charges against the officers. But given the
Justice Department's well known reluctance to second guess state
prosecutors when it comes to prosecuting cops there is no almost no
likelihood that this will happen. The
Albany verdict will probably stand. And it will, again, send the
frightening message that Black lives are still less valuable than
White lives.
Dr. Hutchinson, a nationally syndicated columnist and the director
of the National Alliance for Positive Action, is based in Los
Angeles. He is an executive editor of USAfricaonline.com and The
Black Business Journal.
|
Testimony details
hail of bullets, pause in shooting
A trial of two cities and struggle for justice.
By Jack E. White, columnist TIME
magazine
 COMMUNITY
INTEREST
Confederate
Flag is a symbol of division.
By Dr. Rufus G. W Sanders
|
Should Africa debates begin and end
at
The
New York Times and
The
Washington Post?
Black
History Month,
Jews and
Martin Luther King's legacy. By Chido Nwangwu
Millennial Listmess.
By Prof. Walt Brasch, USAfricaonline.com contributing
editor
|
