![]() It’s why 5,000 people responded to Mathewson’s Facebook call-to-arms. After controlling for factors that include education, weapon possession and prior criminal history, the US sentencing commission found that federal judges sentence Black men to prison terms that are, on average, 20% longer than white men with similar circumstances. It’s why unarmed Black people are killed by cops at three times the rate of whites, in spite of the fact that most on-duty police fatalities are committed by white men. It’s why police are more likely to stop Black drivers, even though – according to the largest analysis of police data in the history of the world – white drivers are more likely to be in possession of illegal contraband. ![]() The idea of the “scary Black person” manifests itself in every segment of the US criminal justice system. In real life, 35% of gang members are Black, but in Hollywood, 65% of the roles described as “gangsters” are played by Black actors. Black girls as young as five years old are viewed as older, less innocent and more aggressive than white girls. A 2016 paper found that Black boys are perceived as older and “less innocent” by police officers. Researchers have found that Americans perceive Black men as larger, stronger and more threatening than white men the same size. Only white people’s perceptions are made into a reality that everyone else must abide by. And it is indeed a privilege only afforded to whiteness. This belief shapes public perception, politics and the entire criminal justice system. Understanding the innate fear of Blackness embedded in the American psyche does not require legal scholarship or a judge’s explanation. In America, it is reasonable to believe that Black people are scary. It is easy to see how, for Rittenhouse and jurors, the victims were part of the frightening mob of “evil thugs”. While there is no doubt about the value of the white lives Rittenhouse snuffed out, there’s also no doubt that Rittenhouse was venturing into one of the scariest, most dangerous situations those white jurors could imagine: a Black Lives Matter protest. Think about how much privilege one must have for their feelings to become an actual law that governs the actions of people everywhere. When I first heard this principle, the first thing I thought was: “A white person came up with this.”īecause all of our opinions are shaped and colored by our experiences, “reasonable” is a subjective notion. The reason police are often acquitted of killing unarmed citizens is that they can argue that a “reasonable” police officer would have used deadly force, even if the officer turned out to be wrong and the victim was unarmed. The US supreme court case Graham v Connor enshrined this concept into law. The “reasonable man” test derives from the description of a nondescript English character called the “ man on the Clapham omnibus” – a reasonably educated, but average, hypothetical passenger on a London bus route whose thoughts and actions are defined as “ordinary”. So, why is it reasonable to believe Rittenhouse needed a killing machine to protect himself against the “evil thugs” who were not shooting and killing people? ![]() Before Rittenhouse killed two people and wounded another, no one else had been shot. “In determining whether the defendant’s beliefs were reasonable, the standard is what a person of ordinate intelligence and prudence would have believed in the defendant’s position.”īefore former Kenosha alderman Kevin Mathewson summoned “patriots willing to take up arms and defend our city from the evil thugs”, no one else had died during the unrest in his city. “A belief may be reasonable even though mistaken,” the jury instructions read. ![]()
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