Ava DuVernay Pens a Love Letter to Black and Brown Men with When They See Us
Ava DuVernay wields and rams a cinematic weapon against the carceral state and white supremacy with When They See Us.
When Netflix dropped When They See Us, my social media lit up. I have a diverse and pretty engaged network of people: advocates, journos, politicians, artists, and people from all walks of life. They were all talking about the special. I was a bit apprehensive about watching it since any form of visual trauma triggers all sorts of unsavory emotions in me—especially of work that can be categorized as trauma porn. It’s a reason why I refuse to follow social media activists who have gotten famous by making their handles digital rings and graves of violence and death of Black and Brown people. I refuse. I believe there is an underlying sickness there—the people who share it and seek it. I wonder if their brains light up seeing other human beings suffer. I just can’t.
But this is different. This isn’t trauma porn. This is healing. This is Ava holding our hands and walking us through this awful inferno. She’s basically become our psychotherapist, our real-life Avenger, our healer.
It’s no news to many of us that this country, and most of the modern world, was built on an exploitation, the emotional, physical, and spiritual terrorism against our people. Every facet of this reality has been created to punch down on us, even things that are perceived as innocent and pure are deployed against us. I keep telling people that this nation has the bodies of Black and Brown men littered all over, over our supposed violation of white girls, white women, white innocence, white feminism. Our mere presence defiles the purity of innocent white women.
What happened to Trisha Meili was monstrous. Matias Reyes is a monster. This goes without saying. It’s equally monstrous to send, to condemn innocent children to a corrupt, to a violent, to an inhumane prison system. A system that was created by a pathological indifference, a pathological denial, a pathological satisfaction of our unearned pain and suffering. Even the kindness that Korey Wise, one of the Central Park Five, received from one of the white guards felt like an insult on top of the injury.
I thought I was out of tears for this month. Especially after crying an ocean over my reminiscing of my grandmother. But I was wrong. Thanks, Ava? You done me wrong. I was in such emotional anguish that I didn’t think I’d be able to finish watching the special, but I trooped it through. I had to. This work is important. The work is important. It had to be done. It had to be watched. So, I binged watched it. I regret nothing.
Powerful scenes from When They See Us.
In fact, now I am reborn with a new resolve against the system. A barbaric system that takes no pity on us. A savage system that turns us into savages. A system in which we’ve been forced to accept and engage from top to bottom—all the way down to our atoms. The atoms we’ll be passing down to our great-grandchildren. Atoms that carry our pain. Atoms that have documented the constant assault against our people.
Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, their mothers, their fathers, their sisters, and their brothers will go down history as our representatives—for there are tens of thousands of us who have not only been wrongfully convicted, but we’ve also been condemned to a life of exploitation, of humiliation, of emasculation, of poverty—of hell.
We are within our right to point fingers at Donald Trump for flaming the fires of barbaric injustice, but he’s just one piece of the puzzle. There are millions of people upholding the system—and we are some of them as well. Ava showed this clearly with every person of authority that came in contact with the young men.
She and her team showed us how the media, how businessmen, how DAs, how judges, how prosecutors, how juries, how nurses, how cops, how correction officers, how parole officers, how our own family members, how our own Black and Brown people can assist the system by becoming the system.
We all have stories of how the justice system has treated us. I’ve had my own, from being stopped and frisked, to dealing with abusive detectives and DAs. Yes, there are violent people walking among us, but they’re usually left to roam our communities freely. I’ve had to deal with violent assault, with assassination attempts (please proceed with caution as these images can be triggering) that almost succeeded, only to be victim-blamed and retraumatized by DAs, detectives, and family members of perpetrators. One often feels and is alone. Yet, I’m keenly aware that many of us are penalized because of a minority of people that exist in our groups, all groups, with all people, commit all these violent crimes. It’s how the super-predator moniker came to be. How it was weaponized against us. How the carceral state became such a lucrative industry for private investors, for the state, for politicians, for businessmen.
Linda Fairstein, along with Donald Trump, has been rewarded publishing deals. They’ve made a lot of fucking money using and abusing us. She’s getting what she deserves. But let’s not forget how she managed to flourish, to make so much money, to sit at boards. Or how Donald Fucking Trump was paraded years after putting out an ad for the execution of the Central Park Five and is still making money from his appearances on shows, but his small cameo on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is especially painful to watch, to remember, to know. How quickly we are willing to forgive and forget those who want us dead just because they’re rich and famous. We are a lost people. A lost people who thanks to Ava, to social media, to our advocates, to our mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers, are finding our way.
We must protect Ava, and all our people, at all cost. Now and forever.
That said, watch* When They See Us. It is a masterpiece. Give Ava, the cast, the crew, and her team all the awards.
*Proceed with caution. Reach out to your people. We only got each other. You are not alone.*
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