In his early 20s, while outside eating a piece of chicken and awaiting the arrival of a friend, Jade Brown—who is now 43 and a talented executive chef, father and businessman alongside his wife in Houston, Texas—recalls to me hearing police sirens and seeing police cars—”six or seven of them” in his words—stop in front of his house in the projects of New Orleans, Louisiana. As the police officers, all white and Asian, stepped out of the car, they immediately started intimidating him and a young boy, his cousin who lived next door to him and was automatically starting to head in his house, and another boy, his friend who was coming down the street. The police yelled at all of them to stay still. “Is this your car!?” There was a white, clean car parked in the driveway. “Yes it is.”, Brown replied. His father was standing in the front door, aware of the situation. The policemen spit back with “This looks too nice to be your car.”
These types of interrogations are not common in the black community. They have been going on for centuries and as a younger black person, I imagined these threats were done with after the 80s. However, when I asked him how old he was during this time, he told me the year was 1996, the year I was born.
Meanwhile both boys are also being interrogated. The young neighbor gets his car searched, and an officer places a bag of marijuana in his front seat. The young man is then handcuffed on charges of drug possession. He was sent to jail for 30 days.
More intimidation follows. Brown is dragged from his property to the street so the police could assult him, because after Brown explained that he couldn’t be touched on his property and demonstrated that he “knew his rights”, the police exclaim, “oh, you’re a smart nigger.” The police then express that they need to search his car. “You don’t have a search warrant,” Mr. Brown rebuts.
As I know about Mr. Brown, he is not a timid and shy person, so there was no doubt when he was younger that he was a timid and shy young adult. He begins yelling “fuck y’all! You work for me!” to the police. “Jade, shut up! Chill! They’ll kill you!” his father yells from the front door. As I reflect on this statement upon writing this piece, I am dealt with the reality that this is a conversation many black people in America have daily. Father to daughter, father to son, mother to son, mother to daughter. It is a reality that there is brutality and unjust treatment by police officers toward black men and women, and this is not new. The difference is only the presence of cellphones and social media to record the actual murders and assaults and spread them globally. There have been countless murders including that of George Floyd caught on camera. But as the movie mentions, the incarceration of black men for long periods of time is another form of death that robs these men of the life and freedom they could have had if justice was properly served. this movie painfully captured the truths about black men in America and the battle with mass incarceration.
Based on the anecdotal evidence alone, it’s very obvious there is a disproportionate number against black men in jail. and in the ’90s, when the true story of this movie took place, there seemed to be nothing for a black man to do in order to get himself out of jail if he was thrown in. Sentencing to death was normal. Life sentences were normal.
An example of this is proven from an article written on issues.org titled The Effects of Mass Incarceration on Communities of Color, which states: “Perhaps the best example of this is the initial federal sentences for crack cocaine offenses: conviction for crack selling (more heavily sold and used by people of color) resulting in a sentence 100 times more severe than for selling the same amount of powder cocaine (more heavily sold and used by whites).” Extended prison sentences on African Americans particularly seem to be almost a modern day slavery tactic. My aunt sent me petitions in the earlier months about prison labor and how it should be stopped, and I took time to research about this as I’ve never heard of it. To my surprise, prisoners are forced to work long and hard hours with little to no pay—and the evidence of this? The Thirteenth Amendment in Section 1 states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” In other words, slavery is illegal unless a person is convicted of a crime, which in itself has been twisted to create a very illegal and one-sided loophole resulting in another form of trauma and death for African Americans.
In the movie, the reality of imprisonment for black men showed explicitly sour. The story that stuck the most with me was that of Herbert Lee Richardson, who created a bomb and put it on the front porch of his ex-girlfriend’s house, which detonated and killed her 11-year-old neice. He was a who possibly had undiagnosed and untreated post-traumatic stress disorder among other mental instabilities that most likely came along with the gruesome effects of war. His appeal for an extended death date was rejected and denied countless times and was put to death by electric chair. (I’d like to note a contrast between the movie’s adaptation of his story and the reality showed that Richardson was not aware of what he was doing when he set the bomb on the front porch. He actually was aware, but said the bomb was “meant to scare them“.)
Upon reflection of this movie, I have grown to examine a lot of my internal thoughts toward black men and the police. Last year, I read a book titled The Hate U Give by one of my now favorite authors, Angie Thomas. (I am very looking forward to her new release, Concrete Rose and I just need to finish reading her second novel, On the Come Up!) Before this book, my stance on black men being slaughtered by police officers were everything but solid. I swayed behind “it was his fault, he should have followed directions” and “he was a thug!” But reading that book taught me that there are two sides to every story.
Yes, Khalil was selling drugs. But he has a legitimate reason to. Yes, Mr. Brown was rebellious against the police men; but in the ’90s, there were black, white and other races of cops who took joy out of racially profiling young black men. It was normal to be called a nigger in school, by other students, and as you grew up. Now, I didn’t have this experience, but I do know that these experiences are horrific and I cannot dare to continue to imagine the hurt and pain that the families of black men must feel when releasing their black son into the world. It is a valid fear; one that should be soothed and heard, one that has been going on since the beginning of blacks in America. Yes, we are in a safer time. No, the prejudices are not as rough as they were in my grandfather’s days (you can read this post of mine for more on that) nor my uncle’s days, but I now understand that where there is division, there is evil of every kind. (James 3:16).
I don’t have a solution to injustice in incarceration. I am trying to figure out this hard, surprising, sometimes overwhelming life as I go on as well. I just know that evil, which is treating someone less than you like crap for whatever reason, can never last longer than the truth. No one is unscathed to the evils they didn’t confess or thought people forgot. As Bryan Stevenson shares in his novel Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption:
“The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Shanedra Writes Too Much 