12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today
224
12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today
224Paperback
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Overview
In an era of contentious debate about controversial police practices and, more broadly, the significance of implications of race throughout American life, 12 Angry Men is an urgent, moving, and timely book that exposes “a serious impediment to the collective American Dream of a colorblind society” (Pittsburgh Urban Media).
In this “extraordinarily compelling” book, a dozen eloquent authors tell their own personal stories of being racially profiled. From a Harvard law school student tackled by a security guard on the streets of Manhattan, a federal prosecutor detained while walking in his own neighborhood in Washington, DC, and a high school student in Colorado arrested for “loitering” in the subway station as he waits for the train home, to a bike rider in Austin, Texas, a professor at a Big Ten university in Iowa, and the head of the ACLU’s racial profiling initiative (who was pursued by national guardsmen after arriving on the red-eye in Boston’s Logan airport), here are true stories of law-abiding Americans who also happen to be black men (Publishers Weekly).
Cumulatively, the effect is staggering, and will open the eyes of anyone who thinks we live in a “post-racial” or “colorblind” America.
“Powerful.” —Jet
“This is raw testimony intended to vividly capture the invasions of privacy and the assaults on dignity that always accompany unreasonable government intrusion.” —Kirkus Reviews
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781595587718 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | New Press, The |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2012 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.08(w) x 6.94(h) x 0.58(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE BILL OF RIGHTS FOR BLACK MEN
Bryonn Bain
Bryonn Bain is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the founder of the Blackout Arts Collective. He has taught courses at New York University, Brooklyn College, Rikers Island Academy, and other universities and prisons, using the arts and popular culture to critically examine the prison crisis in America. He appeared on 60 Minutes after his personal story of racial profiling was printed in the Village Voice. The multimedia stage production Lyrics from Lockdown (Official Selection, NYC Hip-Hop Theater Festival) weaves his story of wrongful imprisonment with the poetry and letters of death row survivor Nanon Williams through hip-hop, theater, spoken word, and song.
In this piece, Bain describes being arrested, along with his brother and cousin, outside a nightclub in New York City in a case of mistaken identity. As Bain eloquently points out, the only thing his identity had in common with that of the actual perpetrators was the color of his skin.
After hundreds of hours and thousands of pages of legal theory in law school, I finally had my first real lesson in the Law. While home in New York City from school for the weekend, I was arrested and held in a cell overnight for a crime that I witnessed someone else commit.
We left the Latin Quarter nightclub that night laughing that Red, my cousin, had finally found someone shorter than his five-foot-five frame to dance with him. My younger brother, K, was fiending for a turkey sandwich, so we all walked over to the bodega around the corner, just one block west of Broadway. We had no idea that class was about to be in session. The lesson for the day was that there is a special Bill of Rights for nonwhite people in the United States — one that applies with particular severity to black men. It has never been ratified by Congress because — in the hearts ofthose with the power to enforce it — the Black Bill of Rights is held to be self-evident.
As we left the store, armed only with sandwiches and Snapples, the three of us saw a group of young men standing around a car parked on the corner in front of the store. As music blasted from the wide-open doors of their car, the men appeared to be arguing with someone in an apartment above the store. The argument escalated when one of the young men began throwing bottles at the apartment window. Several other people who had just left the club, as well as a number of random passersby, witnessed the altercation and began scattering to avoid the raining shards of glass.
AMENDMENT I
CONGRESS CAN MAKE NO LAW ALTERING THE ESTABLISHED FACT THAT A BLACK MAN IS A NIGGER.
My brother, cousin, and I abruptly began to walk up the street toward the subway to avoid the chaos that was unfolding. Another bottle was hurled. This time, the apartment window cracked, and more glass shattered onto the pavement. We were halfway up the block when we looked back at the guys who had been hanging outside the store. They had jumped in the car, turned off their music, and slammed the doors, and they were getting away from the scene as quickly as possible. As we continued to walk toward the subway, about six or seven bouncers came running down the street to see who had caused all the noise. "Where do you BOYS think you're going?!" yelled the biggest of this muscle-bound band of bullies in black shirts. They came after my family and me with outstretched arms to corral us back down the block. "To the 2 train," I answered. Just then, I remembered that there are constitutional restrictions on physically restraining people against their will. Common sense told me that the bouncers' authority couldn't possibly extend into the middle of the street around the corner from their club. "You have absolutely no authority to put your hands on any of us!" I insisted with a sense of newly found conviction. We kept going. This clearly pissed off the bouncers — especially the big, bald, white bouncer who seemed to be the head honcho.
AMENDMENT II
HE RIGHT OF ANY WHITE PERSON TO APPREHEND A NIGGER WILL NOT BE INFRINGED.
The fact that the bouncers' efforts at intimidation were being disregarded by three young black men much smaller than they were only made matters worse for the bouncers' egos (each of us is under five-foot-ten and weighs no more than 180 pounds). The bouncer who appeared to be in charge warned us we would regret having ignored him. "You BOYS better stay right where you are!" barked the now-seething bouncer. I told my brother and cousin to ignore him. We were not in their club. In fact, we were among the many people dispersing from the site of the disturbance, which had occurred an entire block away from their "territory." They were clearly beyond their jurisdiction. Furthermore, the bouncers had not bothered to ask any of the many other witnesses what had happened before they attempted to apprehend us. They certainly had not asked us. A crime had been committed, and someone black was going to be apprehended — whether that black person was a crack addict, a corrections officer, a preacher, a professional entertainer, or a student at a prestigious law school.
Minutes after we had walked by the bouncers, I was staring at badge 1727. We were screamed at and shoved around by Officer Ronald Connelly and his cronies. "That's them, officer!" the head bouncer said, indicting us with a single sentence.
AMENDMENT III
NO NIGGER SHALL, AT ANY TIME, FAIL TO OBEY ANY PUBLIC AUTHORITY FIGURES — EVEN WHEN THOSE FIGURES ARE BEYOND THE JURISDICTION OF THEIR AUTHORITY.
"You boys out here throwin' bottles at people?!" shouted the officer. Asking any of the witnesses would have easily cleared up the issue of who had thrown the bottles, but the officer could not have cared less about that. My family and I were now being punished for the crime of thwarting the bouncers' unauthorized attempt to apprehend us. We were going to be guilty unless we could prove ourselves innocent.
AMENDMENT IV
THE FACT THAT A BLACK MAN IS A NIGGER IS SUFFICIENT PROBABLE CAUSE FOR HIM TO BE SEARCHED AND SEIZED.
Having failed to convince Connelly, the chubby, gray-haired officer in charge, of our innocence, we were up against the wall in a matter of minutes. Each of us had the legs of our dignity spread apart, was publicly frisked from shirt to socks, and then had our pockets rummaged through. All the while, Officer Connelly insisted that we shut up and keep facing the wall, or, as he told Red, he would treat us like we "were trying to fight back." Next, the officers searched through my backpack and seemed surprised to find my laptop and a law school casebook, which I had brought to the club so that I could get some studying done on the bus ride back to school.
We were shoved into the squad car in front of a crowd composed of friends and acquaintances who had been in the club with us and had by now learned of our situation. I tried with little success to play back the facts of the famous Miranda case in my mind. I was fairly certain these cops were in the wrong for failing to read us our rights.
AMENDMENT V
ANY NIGGER ACCUSED OF A CRIME IS TO BE PUNISHED WITHOUT ANY DUE PROCESS WHATSOEVER.
We were never told that we had a right to remain silent. We were never told that we had the right to an attorney. We were never informed that anything we said could and would be used against us in a court of law.
AMENDMENT VI
IN ALL PROSECUTIONS OF NIGGERS, THEIR ACCUSER SHALL ENJOY THE RIGHT OF A SPEEDY APPREHENSION, WHILE THE ACCUSED NIGGER SHALL ENJOY A DEHUMANIZING AND HUMILIATING ARREST.
After my mug shot was taken at the precinct, Officer Connelly chuckled to himself as he took a little blue-and-white pin out of my wallet. "This is too sharp for you to take into the cell. We can't have you slitting somebody's wrist in there!" he said facetiously. I was handed that pin the day before at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I wanted to be transported back there, where I had seen the ancient Egyptian art exhibit that afternoon. The relics of each dynastic period pulled a proud grin across my face as I stood in awe at the magnificence of this enduring legacy of my black African ancestors.
This legacy has been denied for so long that my skin now signals to many that I must be at least an accomplice to any crime that occurs somewhere in the vicinity of my person. This legacy has been denied for so long that it was unfathomable to the cops that we were innocent bystanders in this situation. This legacy has been denied for so long that I lay locked up all night, for no good reason, in a filthy cell barely bigger than the bathroom in my tiny basement apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This legacy is negated by the lily-white institutions where many blacks are trained to think that they are somehow different from the type of Negro this kind of thing happens to, because in their minds White Supremacy is essentially an ideology of the past.
Yet White Supremacy was alive and well enough to handcuff three innocent young men and bend them over the hood of a squad car with cops cackling on in front of the crowd, "These BOYS think they can come up here from Brooklyn, cause all kinds of trouble, and get away with it!"
AMENDMENT VII
NIGGERS MUST REMAIN WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THEIR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS. THOSE WHO DO NOT ARE CLEARLY LOOKING FOR TROUBLE.
Indeed, I had come from Brooklyn with my younger brother and cousin that evening to get our dance on at the Latin Quarter. However, having gone to college in the same neighborhood, I consider it to be more of a second home than a place where I can escape the eyes of my community and unleash the kind of juvenile mischief to which the officers were alluding. At twenty-five years old, after leaving college five years before and completing both a master's degree and my first year of law school, this kind of adolescent escapism was now far behind me. But that didn't matter.
The bouncers and the cops didn't give a damn who we were or what we were about. While doing our paperwork several hours later, another officer, who realized how absurd our ordeal was and treated us with the utmost respect, explained to us why he believed we had been arrested.
AMENDMENT VIII
WHEREVER NIGGERS ARE CAUSING TROUBLE, ARRESTING ANY NIGGER AT THE SCENE OF THE CRIME IS JUST AS GOOD AS ARRESTING THE ONE WHO IS ACTUALLY GUILTY OF THE CRIME IN QUESTION.
After repeated incidents calling for police intervention during the last few months, the 24th Precinct and the Latin Quarter had joined forces to help deal with the club's "less desirable element." To prevent the club from being shut down, they needed to set an example for potential wrongdoers. We were just unfortunate enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time — and to fit the description of that "element." To make matters worse, from the bouncers' point of view, we had the audacity to demonstrate our understanding that for them to touch us without our consent constituted battery.
As Officer Connelly joked on about how this was the kind of thing that would keep us from ever going anywhere in life, the situation grew increasingly unbelievable. "You go to Harvard Law School?" he inquired with a sarcastic smirk. "You must be on a ball scholarship or somethin', huh?" I wanted to hit him upside his uninformed head with one of my casebooks. I wanted to waterboard him with the sweat and tears that have fallen from my mother's face for the last twenty years, during which she has held down three nursing jobs to send six children to school. I wanted to tell everyone watching just how hard she has worked to give us more control over our own destinies than she had while growing up in her rural village in Trinidad. I still haven't told my mom what happened. Seeing the look on her face when I do will be the worst thing to come out of this experience. I can already hear the sound of her crying when she thinks to herself that none of her years of laboring in hospitals through sleepless nights mattered on this particular evening.
AMENDMENT IX
NIGGERS WILL NEVER BE TREATED LIKE FULL CITIZENS IN AMERICA — NO MATTER HOW HARD THEY WORK TO IMPROVE THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES.
It did not matter to the officers or the bouncers that my brother was going to graduate from Brooklyn College that June after working and going to school full time for the last six years. It did not matter that he had worked for the New Jersey Department of Corrections for almost a year. They didn't give a damn that I was the president of my class for each of the four years that I attended Columbia University. It did not matter that I was then in my second year at Harvard Law School. And in a fair and just society, none of that should matter. Our basic civil rights should be respected nomatter who we are or the institutions with which we are affiliated. What should have mattered was that we were innocent. Officer Connelly checked all three of our licenses and found that none of us had ever been convicted of a crime.
AMENDMENT X
A NIGGER WHO HAS NO ARREST RECORD JUST HASN'T BEEN CAUGHT YET.
It should have mattered that we had no record. But it didn't. What mattered was that we were black and we were there. That was enough for everyone involved to draw the conclusion that we were guilty until we could be proved innocent.
After our overnight crash course in the true criminal law of this country, I know from firsthand experience that the Bill of Rights for Black Men in America completely contradicts the one that was ratified for the society at large. The afternoon before we were arrested, I overheard an elderly white woman on the bus remark to the man beside her how much safer Mayor Giuliani has made New York City feel. I remember thinking to myself, "Not if you look like Diallo or Louima!" It's about as safe as L.A. was for Rodney King, or as safe as Texas was for James Byrd Jr.; this list could go on for days. Although the Ku Klux Klan may feel safe enough to march in Manhattan, the rights of black men are increasingly violated every day by the New York City police and by police in other cities around the country. In the context of some of these atrocities, I suppose we were rather lucky to have been only abducted, degraded, pushed around, and publicly humiliated.
Addendum: After four court appearances over five months, the DA's case against Bryonn Bain, Kristofer Bain, and Kyle Vazquez was dismissed. No affidavits or other evidence were produced to support the charges against them.
CHAPTER 2REPORTING WHILE BLACK
Solomon Moore
Solomon Moore was a criminal justice correspondent for the New York Times based in Los Angeles from 2007 to 2010. His work focused on national law enforcement and crime trends, incarceration, and criminal justice policy. He covered the Iraq War from 2005 until 2008 for the New York Times and, before that, for the Los Angeles Times. He was a member of a four-person team in Baghdad that won a 2006 Overseas Press Club award. His bureau was also selected for an honorable mention for the Pulitzer Prize that year. In addition, he has worked in Africa, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Egypt, Jordan, and Europe. He has two children.
In his piece, Moore describes an encounter with the police in Salisbury, North Carolina, where he was reporting on gang activity when he got caught up in the police department's ongoing harassment of local youth.
He did not ask my name or my business. The police officer just grabbed my wrists, swung me around, and jerked my hands high behind my back. He levered me down onto the hood of his cruiser. My bald head made a distinct thump.
"You have no right to put your hands on me!" I exclaimed. "This is a high-crime area," said the tall white officer as he expertly handcuffed me. "You were loitering. We have ordinances against loitering."
In 2007, while talking to a group of young black men standing on a sidewalk in Salisbury, NC, for an article for the New York Times on the harsh anti-gang law enforcement tactics some law enforcement agencies use, I had discovered the main challenge to such measures: police have great difficulty determining who is, and who is not, a gangster — especially black gangsters.
I was not a gangster. I was a criminal justice reporter. I visited prisons and jails and detention centers. I pored through court records. I sat down with police chiefs and beat cops and federal agents and prosecutors. And I sought out pimps and drug dealers and gangsters to put them on the record.
My reporting was going well. I had gone to Salisbury to find someone with firsthand experience with North Carolina's tough anti-gang stance, and I had found that someone: me. Except, I didn't quite fit the description of the person I was seeking. I shared some common traits with the subjects of my reporting, but I wasn't really cut out for the thug life. At thirty-seven years old, I was already beyond my street-tough years. I suppose I could have been taken for an "O.G.," or "original gangster," except that I didn't roll like that — I drove a Volvo station wagon, paid a California mortgage, and had two young homeys in youth soccer leagues.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "12 Angry Men"
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