Views » May 13, 2008
The Vendetta Against Black Men
American law enforcement has long marginalized black discontent by attributing it to more organized external forces.
Despite the rise of Sen. Barack Obama, black men remain in the bull’s-eye of governmental repression and police brutality.
The government is currently re-trying six black men who have already faced two hung juries in a case accusing them of planning to blow up both the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Miami FBI headquarters.
Known as the “Liberty City 7,” after the low-income Miami neighborhood in which they lived, the seven arrested men could soon become domestic casualties in the war on terror. (In December, the jury acquitted one of the men but then deadlocked on the remaining six. On April 16, a second trial also ended with a hung jury.)
Close observers of the trial argue a case of government entrapment. The two FBI informants – immigrants from Lebanon and Yemen to whom the government paid more than $130,000 for their services – had incentive to exaggerate the scope of the plot. And, it turns out, they were the ones who suggested the targets, purchased the surveillance equipment and supplied the transportation.
More troubling is the larger inference that black radical groups like the Moorish Science Temple, to which the men had a peripheral connection, are somehow in league with Islamic radicals like al Qaeda.
It’s an example of how American law enforcement tends to marginalize black discontent by attributing it to more organized external forces. This is a tendency rooted in U.S. tradition: black radicals and civil rights activists of past eras were often linked to communists and other “outside agitators” – as if the progeny of enslaved Africans needed Karl Marx to detail their gripes about life in America. Now, apparently, the government claims the link is with Osama bin Laden.
Despite no verdict of guilt, the men have been locked up since their 2006 arrest. Incidentally, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took into custody the man acquitted during the first trial and transported him to a detention center in Lumpkin, Ga., a day after the trial ended. Deportation proceedings have since begun against the man, a legal U.S. resident originally from Haiti.
Surely, these six struggling black men – who neighbors contend were simply trying to provide positive role models and improve their crime-ridden community – pose no serious threat to national security. However, by implying the men have mysterious Islamic links and a general hatred for America, the government can justify persecuting them.
It’s enough to make you say, “God Damn America!”
And if that’s not enough, consider the case of Sean Bell, an unarmed black man who died in a 50-shot fusillade of police bullets in Queens, N.Y. In November 2006, Bell had a bachelor party at a strip club the day before his wedding and was leaving with two friends when undercover officers confronted and then shot them. The officers mistakenly thought the men were armed and reaching for their guns. Bell’s surviving friends said their attackers never identified themselves as police officers.
The three cops who fired the bullets killing Bell and injuring his friends were acquitted of all charges. The judge ruled, essentially, that the officers’ fear justified firing 50 bullets at the unarmed trio.
The Bell case is just one of dozens – perhaps hundreds – of similar cases of police abuse against young African-American men.
In Chicago, for example, police – reportedly chasing a seat belt scofflaw – broke into a South Side home on April 30 with no warrant and arrested six members of a family, including two juveniles. Witnesses and lawyers for the family members say the police acted abusively. Among those arrested and brutalized was Elijah Henderson, 18, one of two youths wrongfully arrested in the 1998 murder of 11-year-old Ryan Harris.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this young man, who was falsely accused 10 years ago, is now in a lockup, beat up by Chicago police,” says Andre Grant, Henderson’s attorney.
Obama spoke briefly about the Bell case, urging aggrieved New Yorkers to express support for the judge’s not-guilty ruling. But he has said nothing publicly about the Liberty City 7 verdict and re-retrial or the problems of police brutality in his home city.
By downplaying these racial grievances, Obama is doing his part in the implicit deal he made with the American public to avoid any suspicion of playing the race card.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright disrupted that deal, so he had to go. Question is: What else will go with him?
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor of In These Times, where he has worked since 1983. He is the host of "The Salim Muwakkil" show on WVON, Chicago's historic black radio station, and he wrote the text for the book HAROLD: Photographs from the Harold Washington Years.
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Reader Comments
The laundry list of injustices against black men is endless, and well-known to readers here. What’s also endless, apparently, is demands for change “now”. It’s exactly why we always take two steps forward, one back. At the point where we should be smart and tactical, we explode with demands for immediate relief. When it’s a black leader that finally takes over, our demands can quickly become the focus of domestic politics, which is exactly what makes many white voters hesitate to elect him.
All groups oppressed by the system make this mistake, it’s not unique to black Americans or any other ethnic, gender, sexuality, ability group. It’s no coincidence that government plants/infiltrators often lead the escalation of demands until overt violence erupts. The hard-fought “legitimate” minority leader is made impotent and marginalized.
I judge Obama by his record. His measured approach has resulted in the toughest state law in the nation in IL, for police interrogations - he got them to agree to video tape them, from the moment the suspect is brought in for questioning - not the point of confession, as police originally sought. He got them to accept documentation of race/stops, and see for themselves that they were profiling. He’s already been attacked by the right for blocking an effort to add another stiffer penalty to gang-related homicides in IL.
I’m not about to suggest, never mind presume, Obama won’t stand and work for justice. I do presume he’ll be very politic about it, and do it step by step, and make it universal.
Let’s face it; this government has persecuted every unfavored “minority” that’s lived here, and the poor have always been its target. Obama’s a leader who acknowledges that and empowers everyone to take the reigns of democracy responsibly. If he hadn’t been temperate, we’d have been in the streets defying the Clinton teams’ racist campaign by now, and Obama’s campaign would be done, toast, over.
Instead, I heard the most astounding increase in phone calls to C-SPAN (!) Washington Journal from African Americans in defense of Obama. In years of listening to WA Journal, there have never been so many black callers. I venture the same is true for letters to the editor and blogs and online comments at mainstream news sites. Many are writing their legislators for the first time - in their role as superdelegates - in sudden awareness of how vulnerable those legislators are to public perception and organized action. I rejoice, grow in determination, and bear down to get more done, more involved - in coalition, not competition, with my fellow screwed Americans and immigrants. I do it for change, for everybody, all at once, incrementally.
Posted by Inaru on May 13, 2008 at 4:20 PM
Thank you Salim for supporting a man as despicable as Mr. Jeremiah Wright and for your uncultured and semi-literate damnation of the United States. I don’t understand why you can’t just denounce bigots and bureaucratic imbeciles for the illegitimate prosecution of these Americans of African descent. Whether you like or not, the United States is composed of a variety of ethnicities, and if you want to build a coalition to push for greater equality and justice, damning the United States, its Constitution and all the people within its borders is not a way to do it. Perhaps that is too obvious, though, I’m not sure any more. Nonetheless, this article is just another example of the foolishness and conspiratorial schizophrenia that the American left has been willing to entertain for the past 30 years. Going so far as to reiterate the hubris spewed from the mouth of that chauvinist Jeremiah Wright is simply a reflection of the bestial corruption and moral eclipse of truly learned, respectable and high-minded progressive politics. I regret to inform my fellow readers that true equality and justice has never been the consequence of parochial stupidity, boring theology and tawdry religion. For the American left and Mr. Muwakkill, the so called Reverend Wright is not a man whose words you should heed.
Posted by littlefun22 on May 14, 2008 at 7:12 AM
I support Obama and hope he wins. However, i doubt that this will change racial politics in any substantial way. Some black folk will still feel persecuted, others will thrive and point out the obvious such as Cosby has and continues to do. The rich will continue to enjoy the benefits of being rich (isn’t that why so many wish to be rich), the poor will continue to get the short end of the stick for a variety of reasons, many self induced (not finishing school, getting pregnant out of wedlock or at a very early age, using destructive drugs, etc) others due to misfortune (being born with low IQ or disabilities).
Posted by wolf on May 14, 2008 at 8:03 AM
In order to make the case that there’s an extraordinary amount of injustice in the case of cop on black, perhaps one should highlight a case that doesn’t involve blacks knee-deep in the world of gun crime, prostitution, terroristic planning and drugs. When you continually play in or around the fire, you’re bound to get burned.
Surely there’s occasional overreaction and overreach by law enforcement, but do we really have proof that it’s any more prevalent for one race than another, similar circumstances being equal? On what basis can we properly classify something like Sean Bell getting shot as being because he was black, or the “Liberty 7” getting in terrorism trouble because they were black? Aren’t we missing something, like the fact that these guys were too close to and/or regularly stepping across that line that the vast majority of the rest of us—white, black, yellow or brown—would never dream of going anywhere near?
I know of a guy up on Ruby Ridge that was also flirting with the edges of the law, who was white, and his wife and kid got shot by federal agents. I remember a certain flirting cult that held up in Waco, who were white, that ended up mostly dead.
Must we forever make this about race? If it IS true that blacks ARE inordinately victimized, could it possibly be that the non-stop anger-fueling focus on race, on the part of a certain segment of society self-interested in perpetuating it, has actually become a contributing, aggravating factor?
Posted by Natalie on May 16, 2008 at 10:00 AM
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