because the night when my son was walking down the street to go back to his house where he lived, they, four police officers with civilian clothes draw their guns to come after him and never thought in their head that ammidou may have lived there. h he was going about his own business, but they talked about him as being a criminal, and suspicious. trayvon martin s case, i understood through the reports that he was also holding let me go back to say that amidou had only his keys and wallet. trayvon martin had the skittle and iced tea, and he was speaking on the cell phone and just walking and going back to the house where his father resides. and this is in a many different
of the accountability aspect. when we talk about what were they ding? what is the behavior and how did the body take up space? we are seeing the victim-blaming tactics talking about the press communities in how they are often blamed for the violence perpetrated to them. and professor, your work goes back to the early 20th century, a when you think of ms. diallo s son, and other names she gave s us, does it go back for a longer narrative? well, it is almost inevitable with the sort of demographic changes that brought large numbers of african-americans into the cities where the whites lived there would be a lot of tension and conflict and fear and insecurity. that is what is in the background of this case. this guy who shot and murdered
things about this case which deserve reflection. one is that i think that a lot of the people in the united states are horrified by the killing of this boy. so we could take some satisfaction in the fact that 40 or 50 years ago, the conclusions would have been simply and much more racist. so, maybe things are better. i think they are. on the one hand. on the other hand, gated communities, you know, in the
it does feel a little painful and icky that is it is dividing along the race lines and the illogical ones, and fun to exclusively blame the right for this, and professor, i want to ask you that it feels like what we are doing, needing to have a conversation about race and inequality, that an opportunity like this becomes a moment for us to talk about it in real terms, but then if the facts of the case somehow are not exactly aligned with our analysis, does the whole analysis go away? no, of course not. in any case our analysis of what happened in this case is not based on the premise that trayvon martin was an angel. it is based on the premise that he was not a menace walking through this community. right. and therefore shooting him incredible. but i think that there are two
1999, the diallo case, and she brings out sean bell and all of these other names, and what does this this do when you feel like the justices, and feel so hard and even the initiation feels like? le well, to me, it does feel like the diallo case, and i lived in new york under rudy giuliani as mayor. there was a constant fear of this, a young black man would be shot in this case, by undercover police officers and suddenly the victim s past with law enforcement would come out and a total justification of the shooting as if somebody deserved it, and never any sympathy of the families and the mayor would not go to the decedent and said, i feel your loss, but that era was so stark for those who lived