"Stop and Frisk" Script for Situation Video created in collaboration with John Lucas interested me and stood out to me. I am familiar with the injustice of black people being pulled over and treated harshly for no reason. I have heard stories of people feeling forced to be cautious and overly polite just to avoid violence.
One time my family was driving in Freeport, Illinois when my dad rightly got pulled over by the cops for speeding. If my father had not been white he would have driven off with much more than a warning.
However, this description of a cop pulling over a black man, we can presume, allows the reader to empathize with his anger due to injustice because of the second person point of view. Over and over Rankine writes, "And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description."
This quote reminds me of how people view black men, in particular, as the same. They "fit the description" of a thief, a hoodlum, a murderer when really there is no reason to believe that the way they look indicates who they are or what they have done. In history class we are talking about famous black men such as Frederick Douglass, William Still, and Denmark Vesey. (Notice how even though they are famous, you may not have heard of William Still or Denmark Vesey before. Oftentimes the Grand Narrative of history leaves out the successes and achievements of African Americans.) When these men are pictured online or even in books the same picture is used. While that may simply indicate the lack of historical records for the way these men looked, I think it can also symbolize how America generalizes black men and refuses to see their individuality and importance.
I completely agree with your blog post about stop and frisk. When I was reading that passage I kept thinking about how people in our society continue to generalize about African Americans and associate them with guns, drugs, murders, and breaking the law. People do not want to look at the whole picture and automatically assume that if you are an African American you are probably doing something illegal, which is absurd.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your analysis of the "Stop and Frisk" situation video. Claudia Rankine tries incredibly hard to make the reader do exactly what you said. Empathize with black men and black people in general to the anger that they have for the injustices that Americans out them through. Americans will see one black man but will not think of him as one person. They will think of him as all black men.
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