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 Have to come back to this story, and ask you: How easy is it to see yourselves in the following predicament?

Other people believe they can write your story for you, they refuse your truth and innocence, discard you, lock you up, and label you a rapist, sexual predator. You are robbed of your life – and it will be from then on extremely difficult to maintain your dignity, and even survival. 

 

Well, Black and brown and poor people have to live this story more often than we know. Here is a case with a famous white female writer involved. The story is very old, going back to slavery, the deep-seated fear that Black men are supposedly out there to rape white women, hence many a lynching. Justice seems for Black people just not attainable for the most part. 

 
This Story is very American, and interesting: heart wrenching, enlightening, tragic, and lastly moving and amazing. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/nyregion/alice-sebold-anthony-broadwater.html 

“Days later, Mr. Broadwater was taken into custody. Ms. Sebold had identified him as her rapist. 

But when it came time for the police lineup, Ms. Sebold, who is white, looked at the Black men before her and indicated that her attacker was the last person in the row, Number Five. Mr. Broadwater was Number Four. She would insist an hour later that the two men had looked identical to her. 

Studies would later show that misidentifications by eyewitnesses, especially those that are cross-racial, make up a large percentage of erroneous convictions.” 

…. “Mr. Broadwater was charged with eight felony counts, including rape and sodomy. He was 20 years old. All of it illustrated what, Mr. Hammond said, was a travesty hiding in plain sight: “Forty years, yet all it took was someone to pick up the trial transcript and, frankly, talk to Anthony and read ‘Lucky.’” 

see my earlier Dec 9 entry...


Comments

Alex K said…
I read that story in the NYT and was so saddened by the injustice and hardship Mr. Broadwater lived through. The nightmare that he lived through could have been avoided so easily if his situation was given the basic attention and concern that so many of us had been led to believe our legal system is set up to provide. NOT IF YOU'RE BLACK. Another tragedy exposing the racism our culture/society is steeped in.
December 17, 2021 at 7:38 PM
Karina said…
Reading about a huge flurry of exonerations of Black people happening in the past few weeks, i decided that the rest of the door panels will be filled with the names and stories of exonerated people whose lives were stolen, too! Without us ever much hearing about it, or caring... And this keeps reminding me of how criminalizing certain parts of a population is always the tactic of a fascist state. And it resonates with the deep and mostly unconscious compulsion to cover up our own feeling small & miserable by excluding others, punishing them for made up and fake reasons – and that is supposed to make us feel at least better than "those".... a human fallibility that is exploited by dictators and the supremacist mindset.
December 17, 2021 at 8:16 PM
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