“When They See Us,” Highlights How Incarceration Destroys The Lives Of Children Of Color
From the moment of their arrest in April of 1989 up until their long-awaited exoneration, the Central Park 5 endured a heinous miscarriage of justice. Their rights were not protected, their character was assassinated, their youthful innocence was taken away, and their humanity was discarded. Their story is interwoven into the larger narrative of the American project that the criminal justice system destroys the lives of children of color.
Ava DuVernay’s latest series, When They See Us, depicts how the criminal justice system failed 5 young boys of color by sentencing them to prison terms for a crime they didn’t commit. Five teenagers, four African Americans and one Latino from Harlem — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise, who came to be known as The Central Park 5, were interrogated (Without parental consent or an attorney present), forced to lie and sign false confessions under the threat of the state, tried, and convicted of the rape of Trisha Meili. It would take until 2002 for all their convictions to be vacated when Matias Reyes, a murderer and serial rapist, admitted to the crime. The Netflix series details the hard truths of a tremendously flawed justice system that still incarcerated children of color as adults at alarming rates, who are presumed guilty until proven innocent. With nuance and dexterous cinematography, Duvernay not only conveys the evil done to the innocent boys but reveals how the criminal justice system still operates in the same destructive ways.
While When They See Us convincingly portrays the unimaginable horrors that the 5 boys endured with brutal clarity, the series also bequeathed to the viewers the reality of how the justice system impacts the family members of the incarcerated. From the lawyer fees, commissary needs, high-price phone cost, and traveling sometimes hundreds of miles away for visitation, it drains the financial and psychological resources of families. The unshakable powerlessness of the parents and guardians against the institutional power of system is the scarlet thread that runs throughout the four- part series. They had to maneuver and navigate within the confines of a system that was designed for their punishment not their protection. The fear and uncertainty of not knowing what to say, who to call, and lacking the resources to insure that their children’s rights were not violated was is almost unbearable to witness. The heart-wrenching moments between Korey Wise and Delores Wise, played brilliantly by Jharrel Jerome and Niecy Nash, are especially haunting as a 16 year-old boy has to serve 14- year sentence. The terror of being isolated hundreds of miles away from his mother, his only support system.
Sadly, Black and Brown children are still left to rot in prisons all over the country. In a recent study done by WNYC Data News Team on the disparity of Black and Brown children imprisoned as adults, some alarming facts were discovered as they combed through the records of inmates: In a New Jersey State Prison, at least 152 inmates are still in prison today for crimes they committed as kids in the past five years, 93 percent of them are black or Latino, the most common crime they committed was robbery, 20 percent of them have sentences of 10 or more years, and 2 are female inmates. To quote Kanye West, “The systems is working effectively.”
The major takeaway for the series is a simple one: Whey “they” saw them, they saw animals not children. They were kids. They were 5 teenage kids. But the disease of white supremacy rendered the police, prosecutors, judges, and every other member of the justice system unable to see the boys as children. They were dehumanized to the point where the innocence could never be a possibility. They were rendered as non-beings, described as criminals, predators, rapists but never seen as the children they were by those who swore to protect and serve them. When They See Us is a harsh reminder that the struggle continues.
About the author: Rashad Grove is a journalist who writes about music, pop culture, sports, politics, and everything Black. His work has appeared on BET, Billboard, MTV News, AllHipHop, Revolt TV, Okayplayer, High Snobiety, The Source Magazine, and others.
