Sometimes, the African man living in the US need a little reminder. The black race is not the inferior race – as many stereotypical movies about Africa portray – and you are not entitled to believe that. The Netflix true-crime series directed by Ava Duvernay, ‘When They See Us’, reminds us of this fact. It also reminds us that as long as the system remains flawed, coloured people in the US are unsafe.
The mini-series present to the world the case of five young African-American and Latino boys. They were falsely accused and wrongly convicted of attacking and raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. The history of falsely accusing black men of rape in America is a long and disturbing one. What’s more terrifying and outraging about this story is how much injustice it reeks of.
The Central Park Five Case
The rape incident that led to the conviction was meted out to Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old white woman. She was terribly assaulted and left for dead while she was out jogging through northern Central Park. The attack left her in a coma for 12 days, after which she could not recollect who her attacker was.
The five boys, then aged 14 -16, happened to be among the many African American boys playing at the same park on the night of the incident. They were arrested and convicted for the crime with no pieces of evidence linking them to it. 13 years of their lives were taken from them. In the end, they were compensated with $41 million for the wrongful convictions, but money does not bring back all kinds of losses.
In Our Thoughts
A Twitter user noted, after seeing the mini-series, that horror movies aren’t scary anymore. It is a chilling reminder of how quickly life can be taken away. From Africa, we have seen movies and heard stories about racism in America. But we have never seen anything this terrifying on screen. Sadly, the horror portrayed in ‘When They See Us’ is probably not going to end anytime soon.
It turns out, black is just on the skin of the African man, but it is the mind of the people perpetuating the fear of blackness that is truly dark.
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