The “Big Black Man Syndrome”: The Fear that Prevents Change

“The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country’s criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority. The abuses that have followed from these policies—the sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects—are the product of democratic will.”

-Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

After bearing witness to the video recordings of police officers executing Alton Sterling and Philando Castile within forty-eight hours of each other, I prepared to wrap my mind around the potential acquittal of the police officers involved. In 2015, 97 percent of the cases involving police brutality resulted in none of the officers being charged with a crime. This lack of accountability is evidence of a broken criminal justice system that is built on a long political legacy of African-Americans being treated as second-class citizens.

Why is it so common that horrific footage of an African-American being murdered by police officers is not enough for an indictment?

By examining the history of police brutality against African-Americans, we discover that the answer lies not only in systemically racist laws that facilitate police violence, but also, and perhaps more importantly, in the history of racial bias that continues to plague the minds of Americans.

Rodney King Case

On March 3, 1991, four Los Angeles Police Department officers were videoed brutally beating Rodney King, a twenty-five-year-old black man. King’s beating sparked the era of high-profile videos of African-Americans being abused by police officers.

Lawrence Vogelman, an attorney, wrote an article in the Fordham Urban Law Journal days after the acquittal of the four policemen involved in the Rodney King beating. He observed that the tactics used by the defense were nothing short of what he called the “Big Black Man Syndrome.” These tactics are used by lawyers to shift public scrutiny toward negative racial stereotypes of black men. They include completely dehumanizing African-American men by pathologizing them as hyper-masculine monsters or “superpredators,” as described by Hillary Clinton in 1996. These tactics, when used in the courtroom, create or awaken an existing fear of black bodies.                                  

Court documents from the Rodney King trial revealed that Laurence Powell, the police officer who beat King over fifty times with his baton, said King’s bloody body looked like a scene out of “Gorillas in the Mist.” He also stated, “I haven’t beaten anyone this bad in a long time.” The prosecutor’s numerous attempts to call foul play on the monstrous caricature that the defense painted of King failed.

The acquittal came after a superior court judge moved the trial to the predominantly white Simi Valley, where the jurors were drawn from a community and a culture in which African-American men were dehumanized sources of fear. Commenting on the jury, Lawrence Vogelman ended his analysis of the Rodney King trial with the following sentiment:

My conclusion is that as the jury perceived Rodney King, the police officers and the world they live in, the King verdict truly represented the fundamental values of the community. That is, the police officers acted toward Rodney King the way the jury wanted police officers to act.

Trayvon Martin Case

More than twenty years later, Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old unarmed black boy, was murdered by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman. Video from the trial revealed George Zimmerman telling Sean Noffke, the 911 dispatcher, “This guy looks like he is up to no good or he’s on drugs or something . . . Fucking punks! These assholes, they always get away.”

Throughout the trial, the defense attorney consistently justified Trayvon Martin’s death by relying on racial stereotypes, pathologizing Trayvon’s appearance as worthy of execution. Ultimately, he relied on the “Big Black Man Syndrome” to convince six jurors, five white women and one mixed-race woman, to acquit George Zimmerman of Martin’s murder.

Maddy, the juror with a mixed-race background, spoke to Lisa Bloom, the author of Suspicion Nation: The Inside Story of the Trayvon Martin Injustice and Why We Continue to Repeat It, about her experience serving on the jury of the Trayvon Martin case. Maddy told Bloom that

“I felt I had no voice. My voice had been taken away. No matter what I would say it wouldn’t make a difference.”

Maddy gave an example as she described numerous hours spent sequestered with the five white jurors. While in the television room, the other jurors refused to let Maddy watch the shows she wanted to watch. Instead, they spent hours watching “Games of Thrones,” which she despised for its explicit violence and the lack of racial diversity among lead characters. In other words, five white jurors spent hours watching a TV show that at the time was centered around a blonde-haired, porcelain-white-skinned character completely conquering a village of dark-skinned “savages,” in the midst of a trial of an unarmed dark-skinned boy. Consequently, outside of the trial, the “Big Black Man Syndrome” continued to work towards the dehumanization of black bodies, thus helping the defense. This is just one example of the many instances of profound alienation she felt while sequestered with the other jurors.

In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper after the trial, Juror B37 lamented that Zimmerman’s “heart was in the right place.” When Cooper asked Juror B37 whether she thought Zimmerman was guilty, she said hesitantly that he was “guilty of not using good judgment” and emphasized that this case was not about race. Yet, Maddy, the juror who spoke with Lisa Bloom, accused Juror B37 of tormenting her while they were sequestered together over her inability to speak “proper English.” Maddy describes Juror B37 pegging numerous racial stereotypes on her, eventually causing Maddy leaving one of the rooms crying and emotionally disturbed.  

One does not have to have experienced racial prejudice to know that this case was plagued by the wrong and negative depiction of minorities that prevails in this country.                                                                                                                  

Michael Brown Case

More than two years after Trayvon Martin’s death, Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson, MO police officer, gunned down Michael Brown in the middle of the street. According to the Washington Post, Wilson told the grand jury that Brown’s face made him “look like a demon” and that “the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.” Wilson’s testimony perpetuated the “Big Black Man Syndrome” by tapping into the fear that many Americans still feel when they see an African-American man.

From Rodney King to Michael Brown, these cases show how racial bias, as implicit and heinous as it may be, is still reflected in our community and thus our juries. Consequently, a juror listening to the testimonies presented at trials involving police brutality is led to believe that excessive use of force was what was needed to neutralize or de-escalate the situation.

Congressman Joe Walsh: A Case of Racism in Politics and at the University of Chicago

Today, in the wake of the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of the police, racial bias still plagues our communities. After the devastating attack in Dallas, Texas, University of Chicago alumnus and former Congressman Joe Walsh (R-IL) tweeted the following statement:

After Twitter instructed Walsh to delete this tweet, screenshots of the original message began resurfacing, causing one celebrity in particular to emphasize the threatening nature of Walsh’s comments. Musician John Legend tweeted:

Soon after this, Walsh told the Chicago Tribune that he did not mean to threaten the president. Yet, he continuously tweeted negative racial stereotypes about Black Lives Matter activists and said that he stood by what he said in the aforementioned tweet.

“Watch out black lives matter punks” is the most disturbing part of the tweet. I cannot help but remember how, in a similar sentiment, George Zimmerman said to the 911 dispatcher “Fucking punks. These assholes always get away,” minutes before he drew his gun and murdered Trayvon Martin.

The fact that we live in a society where a former elected representative tells the president of the United States to “watch out” and declares war on him using Trump-style rhetoric reinforces a fact that members of the African-American community have been told and shown repeatedly—that they are not subject to the rights and liberties of other Americans.

It is this kind of sentiment that African-American students hear and experience, but rarely see acknowledged. The University of Chicago has long failed to address the negative sentiment directed towards African-Americans on its campus. The University typically responds inadequately, as evidenced by the many incidents of racial intolerance cited in the following petition. And these are only the ones that get reported. The University rarely, if ever, takes the many microagressions that African-Americans face seriously.

One of the many reasons that African-American students want their microagressions addressed is so that those perpetuating them do not move on to become elected representatives who refuse to pass comprehensive criminal justice reform. Even more urgently, imagine the same perpetrators sitting on juries that decide that fatally shooting an unarmed black person is the only acceptable course of action.

So what do we do next

At the end of the day violence is not the answer. We must channel all of our justified anger, rage, grief, and sadness into identifying the ways each of us perpetuate negative stereotypes about African-Americans. We must foster an informed and accepting community, so that when our peers are chosen to serve on juries, they can treat victims such as Alton Sterling and Philando Castile as human beings and not fall victim to the “Big Black Man Syndrome.”

There are tangible steps we can take.

Visit here to contact your elected representative and see how he or she voted on police reform bills.

Here are resources for non-people of color on how to productively help the movement.

Choose action, not silence.

The image featured in this article is licensed under Creative Commons. The original image can be found here.