Black=Terrorist=Thug: The New Racial Profile?

[WEagle]

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0339/bain.php

BLACK = TERRORIST = THUG: THE NEW RACIAL PROFILE?
Bryonn Bain recounts getting pulled over, thrown in jail, and diagnosed by his lawyer as bipolar. Then the assistant D.A. recognized him as a Harvard Law classmate. A true tale of mistaken identity.
- - - -

Saturday night, November 23, 2002, I was pulled over on the Bruckner Expressway because of a broken taillight. The police officer who ran my license claimed I had multiple warrants out for my arrest, and I was thrown in jail to begin a weekend I will not soon forget.

During the next three days, I was interrogated about "terrorist activity"—whether I was involved with a terrorist group or knew anyone else who was—without an attorney present. My Legal Aid lawyer claimed she was also a medical professional and diagnosed me as mentally ill when I told her I teach poetry at New York University. After my bail was posted, I was held behind bars another night because central booking ran out of the receipts required for my release. On my third day in jail, accused of two misdemeanors and a felony I knew nothing about, I was finally found innocent, and allowed to go home.

These events are not in themselves that extraordinary. Black men and women in this country have for centuries experienced far worse episodes with law enforcement. This incident is striking because it occurred at a time when I have been working to expose the injustice and inhumanity of the prison crisis in America, and because it was not the first time I was unjustly jailed.

Six months after I was racially profiled in 1999, The Village Voice published a story I wrote entitled "Walking While Black," recounting the wrongful arrest I experienced with my brother and cousin outside the now defunct Latin Quarter nightclub in Manhattan. The story was read by several hundred thousand people and received a response unprecedented in the paper's history. The 400 pages of mail sent to me in the following weeks indicated how widespread the epidemic of police misconduct is across the nation.

-more-

[G_j]

1. just read this

This man had a pretty disturbing experience... I guess it wasn't the first time, but I hope it's the last.

:scared:

[BronxDiva]

2. Profiling

Although this is not related to terrorism, I've been subjected to profiling in The Bronx recently. (The Bruckner is in The Bronx.) I'm not Black or Hispanic, but each time this happened I was with a Hispanic friend. Apparently anyone "lighter" is not allowed to associate with or visit neighborhoods they are assumed not to belong in. In fact, I had a cop who asked me "what are you doing here?" and "what are you doing with HIM?" His tone was disgusting!

I've lived in The Bronx for years. To have a street blocked off and your friend thrown up against a car and you subjected to insulting interrogation, on the same street you've driven through countless times, is troubling. We apparently fit the profile of a drug deal. These "undercover" cops are supposedly trained and they stake out a known drug locations. If this is true, someone is doing a bad job of training The Bronx Task Froce. They constantly break their cover. You literally have people shaking their heads, laughing or yelling "Welcome to The Bronx!" Either they are not being trained correctly or you have these young mavericks "looking for a quick gold shield" as some seasoned detectives have told me. Since the Amadou Diallo killing, you would think The Bronx Drug Task Force would have gone through the sensitivity training they promised to institute. As the old timers have told me, "Shut up! Don't mouth off! You'll end up behind bars or shot! These guys looking for fast track gold shield are more scared than you and the last thing they can handle is someone mouthing off and knowing their rights!" They certainly don't want to look like fools and it is their word against yours.

I didn't believe this stuff actually happened until I experienced it. I had a friend who thought we exaggerated these incidents until this humiliation happened to all of us one night! If you're white, you are not allowed to have "darker" friends, especially in The Bronx. It's 2003 and nothing has changed for white cops at the NYPD. I'm sorry if I offend anyone. Visit The Bronx. Most of the undercover (and uniformed cops) are white. I speak from experience. How can they possibly understand the nuances of a neighborhood when they come from a suburb 50 miles away? NYPD had a moratorium after 9/11, but it quickly wore off with stuff like this. How many times can you beg for mercy for the sake of your friend? How many times can you say "yes master" before you say WTF?

[WEagle]

3. no offense taken

thanks for sharing your experience. I believe every word of it.
So much for the "melting pot" fairy tale.

[newyawker99]

4. Hi BronxDiva!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[noiretextatique]

9. thanks for your story...a lot of people don't believe it

until it happens to them. interestingly enough, i was just having a conversation about this denial the other day. a black woman claimed she experienced racism, and immediately, two white women dismissed her experience as "something else." one even claimed it was "dangerous" to make such a claim without "evidence," and then began to recite her experience with racism and bigotry because she's jewish. this same person however, denied the black woman's experience was what the black woman thought it was...amazing.
i am always amazed when this happens...and it happens a lot.

i am not sure what the denial is about, but i gently explained to those two women:

you don't get to decide what someone else experiences, nor do you have the right to automatically dismiss someone else's experience as invalid...because you have no idea WHAT she experienced. still amazes me that this happens so frequently.

[frank frankly]

24. welcome welcome!

"the ghetto is a cage
they only give you two choices
be a rebel or a slave
so i rebel" dead prez

Profiling will end. It will end!

[Karenina]

5. Race&class&race&class....

I encourage anyone clicking on this thread to READ the link AND the one therein on "Walking While Black." Then PLEASE if you haven't seen this piece in Editorials, click here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=12001

TWO WORDS: DIVIDE AND CONQUER.

Does anyone get the "link?" :silly:

[Karenina]

6. I'm not surprised to find this thread

on page 6. Idealist that I am, disappointment still stalks me. I perceive such a fundamental reluctance to confront the BASIC issues of our interconnectedness as so many are so concentrated on our superficial differences.

I would like to add yet another DU link from LBN:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=130512

How many are aware that this resistance has been going on for YEARS??? My cyberspace correspondent , Yigal Bronner was JAILED. Many Jewish families have been polarized and split FOR YEARS over these issues, much the same way as is happening in mainstream America now.

WHY are so few are willing to engage? Until we look the MONSTER LIE in the face, we who perceive ourselves as "Menschen" will LOSE to the divide and conquer strategy. It IS QUITE effective.

Where are you, my fellow DUers? Is is more fun to rip into each others' candidates than to examine the ties that bind us????

It's getting a bit late in my time zone... I'll hang in as long as I am able.

[G_j]

7. I don't know

it sort of reminds me of my frustration that so little attention is given to the absolute disgrace of the prison industrial complex and the segment of our population that it most effects. The situation is absolutely criminal. Who of the candidates dares to really address these issues?



** "class warfare" here is an article I posted here months ago some more food for thought.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=3953

Forbidden Connections: Class, Cowardice, and War
by Paul Street
No Class Analysis

Beneath myths of equal opportunity and rampant upward mobility, the United States is a savagely unequal society with a rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian class structure. As a reflection of that harsh structural reality, it is nearly taboo to speak or write in any engaged and meaningful way about class inequality in the nation's "mainstream" (corporate-dominated) media and politics. That mainstream can host a public debate over the use of race as a preferential factor in college and graduate and professional school admissions. Meanwhile, the richly aristocratic "legacy" system, whereby the affluent children of elite school graduates receive a significant admissions boost at places like Harvard and Princeton, is beyond the pale of polite discussion and acceptable debate.

How interesting during the last year to watch one legacy product - Yale and Harvard graduate George W. Bush - order his Justice Department to intervene against the use of race as a factor in admissions to the University of Michigan. Bush then claimed to embrace affirmative action when the Supreme Court (unanimously filled by graduates of schools tainted by the legacy system), to which (along with the massive disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida) he owes his office, upheld affirmative action.

The mainstream gives vent to disgust over the revelation that America's great reactionary virtue magnate William J. Bennett hypocritically "lost more than $8 million" to the gambling industry during the last ten years. It says nothing about the higher immorality involved in the maintenance of a social structure wherein one man affordably entertains himself by cycling a sum of money greater than six times the lifetime earnings of most of his fellow citizens through slot machines. (US Census Bureau, The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings ).

"Bring Em On Bush"

An excellent example of class's marginalization in mainstream discourse is found in the short-lived brouhaha that emerged when Bush taunted Iraqi guerillas to attack American soldiers earlier this month. "There are some," an angry Bush told reporters on July 2nd "that feel like if they attack us we may decide to leave prematurely. They don't understand what they are talking about if that is the case...There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on." (Sean Loughlin, "Bush Warns Militants in Iraq," CNN.com./INSIDE POLITICS, July 3, 2003, available online at
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/ 07/02/sprj.nitop. bush/indext.html).
...more..

[Karenina]

8. G_j, thank you for your post

are our "fellow Americans" simply unable or pehaps unwilling to "GET IT?" I have posted these threads as a "challenge" for our compatriots to "connect the dots." There are none so blind as those who refuse to see... This has been an issue for me since childhood when I integrated the local school and discussed the "issues" with my psychiatrist dad. It was ALWAYS so clear to me what the "core problem" was. When his eyes welled up with tears as I questioned him, I KNEW his answers were crafted to give me the strength to "carry on" somehow.

[G_j]

10. so hard to get down

to the nitty gritty...

Who were the voters who were denied in Fla. in 2000 and called FELONS?!

Where was the progressive leadership, not only to raise hell about a stolen election, but about the people who were singled out to be deprived of their votes?

I was in a video store the other day and Bowling For Columbine was playing on the TV. I commented to the (African American) woman at the counter that it was a great movie.
She looked at me (a white male) with a stern glint in her eye and said, "it's something to really think about". I was pretty sure I knew what she meant.

We have a long way to go.

[noiretextatique]

11. florida was a disgrace

another disgraceful episode in america's long history of racial disgraces. and it was even more disgraceful that the democratic leadership chose not to address the voter purge. it really makes you wonder, doesn't it? the opposition party illegally disenfranchises ELIGIBLE voters (likely democratic voters), yet democrats did little to address the issue, so as not to offend other voters, some who are not as likely to vote democratic as those who were illegally disenfranchised :crazy:

:wtf: is THAT?

[G_j]

12. what had me shaking my head

about that, was that the media, Democrats and progressives in general didn't seem to express a sense of deja vu. I mean wasn't it just a fairly short time ago that Blacks were being denied the right to vote in the south?
Unfortunately when the 'left' pulled towards the right, it seems to have regressed in it's desire to come to terms with racial issues also. The way that the prison system and the racist war on (some) drugs flourished in recent years made this obvious to me, and I don't consider myself exceptionally enlightened either.

While I'm ranting, this whole war on terror reeks of racism also.
I haven't heard much about that from the candidates either.

BTW, here is something I just read from Alternet:

WHEN WILL DEAN MEET-UP IN THE 'HOOD'?
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, AlterNet
While Dean has tackled race relatively more than the other white candidates, none of them have really addressed some key issues or spent serious time in the black community.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16822

[noiretextatique]

13. there seems to be a historical disconnect

on one hand, and a belief that "it's all in the distant past" on the other. as to the former, some people don't realize how bad it was not that long ago...as to the latter, some people think it's all resolved now, in spite of evidence to the contrary. it's total cultural cognitive dissonance...something the media isn't immune to.
some certainly had a sense of deja vu...others had a sense of poltical expediancy and opportunism, even if it was at their own expense. perhaps DLC-inspired strategry for 2002 and 2004? i marvel at why more african-americans haven't joined the green or independent party, though i suspect many are tempted.
most of america's wars reek of racism. i think you're pretty damned enlighted myself...and thanks for the rant session :D

[G_j]

16. it's just another one of those

puzzlers, I actually thought Nader had some of the best 'connect the dot' views, yet he didn't actively court the non-white electorate that I am aware of. Some Native Americans I know registered Green, mostly because LaDuke running as VP got their attention.

If there's one reason why I get upset about people saying the Dems need to be centrist is that to me this means not connecting the dots. Cynthia McKinney connected them and they hung her out to dry. And low and behold, she was not a kook, it turns out she was right on the truth! After Shrub is gone, I'm still interested in third party options.

[Karenina]

15. All "current issues" aside

WHY is it SO DIFFICULT for folks to see the OBVIOUS PARALLELS? Since '67, American Jewish families have bent rent asunder by the "mit uns oder gegen uns" BS, those more enlightened and empathetic being shouted down and marginalized for their ability to "nuance." That cloud of polarization now casts its shadow over America. It appears that so few can look at that very recent history, or the more distant of Germany in WWII and SEE CLEARLY thet the same shit on a different day is the flavor du jour. Sometimes I just want to scream, "WHAT IST THE MATTER WITH "YOU PEOPLE," that until I calm down and realize it's ALL US PEOPLE.

Black folks getting the jack boot on their necks, blue collar folks getting the jack boot on their necks, Palestinians AND Israelis getting the jack boot on their necks, Iraqis getting the jack boot on their necks I ask anyone reading this post in all sincerity, WHAT'S NOT TO GET????? It's out there in BLOODY TECHNICOLOR... :cry: :cry: :cry:

[G_j]

18. there was a post

by Solomon (I think I spelled that right) about the Iraq invasion being a racist war which was excellent! I thought I had book marked it, but I guess I didn't.

Also, as you point out, it isn't just racism. I guess it starts there, but then blue collar workers make useful 'slaves' as well as anyone. To folks like the BFEE, I don't think race really means much more than a means to manipulate people to support their plans. They really don't care about any of us 'unwashed masses'. They will use our racism and fear of 'others' to their ends, I guess thats the way it's always worked.

[Karenina]

20. The rain in Spain lays mainly in the plains

I think s/he's got it...

[G_j]

21. of course

"down here" we HAVE to confront our racism and fear because it makes us all vulnerable and powerless, even that person a little farther up in the pecking order.
I don't know maybe it's about having a soul in the end. All the percs in the world won't change that. We have a huge segment of our population locked behind bars, homeless and hungry children, millions without health care. We are virtually forced to clothe our children in clothes made by other children in sweat shops.
And in the mean time we are bombarded with messages to be afraid of Black and Arab males. Damn! we should all be working together to return a sense of humanity to the world. That's why we have to deal with racism, so we can get it together and do the things that really have to be done.

weww another rant there.... :-)


on edit: I have to run, but I'll make sure to kick this thread again, nice conversing with you all. Hope to do it again.. :-)

[noiretextatique]

19. regime change starts at home

until we "get it" here...what hope is there is "getting it" elsewhere? denial is the glue that holds it ALL in place...or things fall apart. we have much practice in denial here...in concepts of privilege and superiority and hegemony. not surprising we accept that as natural elsewhere. as you have mentioned several times, america has never done the internal work that germany and other countries did. instead...we prefer to keep swinging back and forth...doling out rights and privileges to our own citizens, only after much struggle and much bloodshed. we have never learned here, much less any place else in the world.

[Karenina]

22. PSSSSSSST...

KX, have you noticed the studious avoidance of the "common thread" I've strung together here? It seems SO OBVIOUS to me... :shrug:

But then again, I've often been told I'm "too sensitive." :silly:

[noiretextatique]

23. um, why yes, karenina...funny you mention that

:eyes: sort drives home the point of my post above, no? psst..."sensitive" :puke:

[WEagle]

27. ok

please let me in on it too.

[WEagle]

29. could you be refering to

the BFEE,PNAC,MIC,PIC,WTO,WB/IMF,Walmart country club reptilian royalty? (the names change) And then the rest of us fighting amongst ourselves over the table scraps?

[Karenina]

33. HALLO!!!!

:hi:

[G_j]

34. don't forget

blood sucking vampires.

that should complete the description pretty well.

[G_j]

14. Thanks for pointing us

towards that story! That really inspires me, I had not heard anythng about these pilots. Just goes to show there is always hope, even in the worst of situations. thanks!

[WEagle]

26. hey!

it looks like you saved this thread Karenina. thank you,

and an interesting discussion going on I see..

[Karenina]

30. WEagle, your post is important!

Anyone who cares at all can read about Bain's experience. The picture of the sign with his surname on it was almost too much for me to bear. My personal experience does not contain the level physical violence he endured but can anyone tell me how much less painful it is?
Then when I read about my fellow travellers who are "blue collar" or Israeli refusniks (and yes, some of my "best friends" are...) how can I fail to see the common thread? Can you blame me for trying to communicate the urgency of understanding the connection? I know you would never do so and extend my gratitude to you for sensibilities.

[WEagle]

31. I am

sickened every day by a shadowy awareness of the horror and violence served out to my fellow human beings. In November I will probably return again to the gates of the School Of The Americas to call out the names of the murdered, though I will not cross the line. I am afraid of their prisons.

[Karenina]

17. SIGH....

:kick:

[noiretextatique]

25. well...

:bounce: i guess it's not close enough to the election yet :eyes:

[rocktivity]

28. Link to Latest Breaking News thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=129181#130236

[WEagle]

32. good

some good comments over there also. The more people to read the story the better. This is America.

[G_j]

35. I don't know

how anyone could read this and not be shaken up a bit. I know I was.

[noiretextatique]

36. what the heck

:kick: