Marco teórico 1 Envejecimiento a nivel internacional

The Impudent Slave: Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom and

the Conflation of Black Skin and Wrongdoing

“No black is ever up to any good.” -Patricia J. Williams

Introduction

In its August 12, 2013, decision in Floyd et al v. The City of New York, 08 Civ. 1034 (SAS), the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, ruled that the defendant City of New York was liable for the New York Police Department violating the Plaintiffs’ rights through its use of an ostensibly crime preventing policy known as ‘Stop-and-Frisk’.1 As deployed, the policy permitted, and in fact encouraged, the NYPD to stop and search individual citizens without having probable cause to do so. The named Plaintiffs in Floyd, each of whom had been subjected to this ‘Stop-and-Frisk’ policy, claimed the NYPD had violated their constitutionally guaranteed rights.

The Plaintiffs in Floyd claimed that in addition to Stop-and-Frisk being unconstitutional, they had been also been unjustly or unfairly targeted by it. Specifically, they alleged they were stopped and searched on the basis of mere suspicion, contrary to the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens against unreasonable searches and

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1 _{Floyd, et al v. City of New York, et al, was, in fact, a federal class action lawsuit brought on behalf of} minorities against the New York Police Department for unlawful stop-and-frisks based on racial profiling. The named plaintiffs had all been subjected to such unlawful police conduct. USDJ Scheindlin issued two decisions – one on liability (which is discussed here), the other on remedies. The City of New York appealed USDJ Scheindlin’s rulings but on January 30, 2014, agreed to drop its appeal and pursue the court-ordered remedies.

seizures.2 Further, in addition to claiming their respective subjections to Stop-and-Frisk were inherently unreasonable, the Plaintiffs also claimed the policy was wrongfully deployed against them. In particular, the named Plaintiffs, each of whom was black or Hispanic, alleged that they were targeted by Stop-and-Frisk because of their race, contrary to the Constitution’s guaranteed equal protection of the law, which prohibits intentional discrimination on the basis of race, among other things. Accordingly, the thrust of the Plaintiffs’ case was that the Stop-and-Frisk policy was not being conducted in a racially neutral manner.

The trial of this matter lasted nine weeks, stretching from March through May of 2013. In her reasons, and prior to turning to her findings of fact at trial, United States District Judge Scheindlin noted the following facts, among others, were uncontested:

- Between January 2004 and June 2012, the NYPD conducted over 4.4 million Terry stops;3

- The number of stops per year rose sharply from 314,000 in 2004 to a high of 868,000 in 2011;

- 6% of all stops resulted in an arrest, and 6% resulted in a summons. The remaining 88% of the 4.4 million stops resulted in no further law enforcement action.

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2 _{Amendment IV of the U.S. Constitution provides: “The right of the people to be secure in their} persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

3 _{‘Terry stops’ are a legal practice whereby the police briefly detain an individual on the basis that} individual is suspected of criminal activity (see Terry v. Ohio, 392 1 U.S. 1 (1968). This is a lower threshold for police detention than probable cause, but such detention is also meant to be brief. A Stop-and-Frisk incident would be a Terry stop with a search of the individual.

- In 52% of the 4.4 million stops, the person stopped was black. In 31% the person was Hispanic, and in 10% the person was white;

- In 2010, New York City’s resident population was roughly 23% black, 29% Hispanic, and 33% white;

- In 23% of the stops of blacks, and 24% of the stops of Hispanics, the officer recorded using force. The number for whites was 17%; and

- Between 2004 and 2009, the percentage of stops where the officer failed to state a specific suspected crime rose from 1% to 36%. (6-7)

As a result, the facts determined at hearing included that blacks were subjected to Stop- and-Frisk at a rate double their population while, conversely, whites were subjected to the policy at a rate of one-third their population.

Given that neither party disputed the claim at trial, the disproportionate targeting of blacks by Stop-and-Frisk was unsurprisingly borne out in the evidence: focusing on the expert testimony proffered at trial, USDJ Scheindlin concluded that blacks were discriminatorily targeted by ‘Stop-and-Frisk’ in a number of ways. The learned judge’s findings included that “the NYPD carries out more stops where there are more black and Hispanic residents” and that “Blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to be stopped within precincts and census tracts… even in areas with low crime rates, racially heterogeneous populations, or predominately white populations” (9). Moreover, it was found that, somewhat paradoxically, for the period from 2004 to 2009, blacks were determined to be 14% more likely than whites to be subjected to the use of force during Stop-and-Frisk searches, yet were found to be 8% less likely than whites to endure further enforcement action beyond the stop itself (9). Further compounding the evidence

of their differential treatment, blacks were also found to be 30% more likely to be arrested (rather than merely receive a summons) than whites for the same suspected crimes (9). As USDJ Scheindlin determined, “together, these results show that blacks are likely targeted for stops based on a lesser degree of objectively founded suspicion than whites” (9).

In response to this largely uncontested evidence of differential treatment, the City did not deny that blacks and Hispanics were disproportionately targeted by Stop-and- Frisk. Rather, the City’s testimony, offered through its experts, invoked “suspect race description data” which assumed the appropriate racial deployment of Stop-and-Frisk should correspond to the rates of the races in suspect descriptions provided by victims of crime, and not racial neutrality or population breakdown (51). Put another way, the City’s position at trial was that a racial bias in the deployment of Stop-and-Frisk is appropriate given the racially disproportionate numbers of black and Hispanic criminal suspects. Indeed, in defence of “the fact that blacks and Hispanics represent 87% of the persons stopped in 2011 and 2012”, the City entered evidence that “approximately 83% of all known crime suspects and approximately 90% of all violent crime suspects were blacks and Hispanics” (51).

USDJ Scheindlin rejected the City’s argument that Stop-and-Frisk’s racialized targeting was justified by the racial statistics of crime suspects. Rather, the learned judge held that the legally correct racial distribution of Stop-and-Frisk searches – that is, the only racially neutral deployment of Stop-and-Frisk – would reflect the racial distribution of the general population and not that of suspected criminals:

This [Stop-and-Frisk deployed on the basis of suspect race description data] might be a valid comparison if the people stopped were criminals, or if they were stopped based on fitting a specific suspect description. But there was insufficient evidence to support either conclusion. To the contrary, nearly 90% of the people stopped are released without the officer finding any basis for a summons or arrest, and only 13% of stops are based on fitting a specific suspect description. There is no reason to believe that the nearly 90% of people who are stopped and then subject to no further enforcement action are criminals. (51-52)

The Court thus held that the City’s professed reasons for its clearly racialized application of Stop-and-Frisk did not, and could not, contribute to crime prevention.

Crucially, then, in her conclusion that “there is no reason to believe that their [Stop-and-Frisk stops] racial distribution should resemble that of the local criminal population, as opposed to that of the local population in general”, USDJ Scheindlin noted a flawed presumption in the City’s position at trial (52). Specifically, and in light of the fact that the racialized deployment of stops failed to result in crime prevention, USDJ Scheindlin aptly commented that the City wrongly presumed criminality in respect of black and Hispanic citizens: “I conclude that Dr. Fagan’s [the Plaintiffs’ statistics expert] benchmark is the better choice. The reason is simple and reveals a serious flaw in the logic applied by the City’s experts: there is no basis for assuming that the racial distribution of stopped pedestrians will resemble the racial distribution of the local criminal population if the people stopped are not criminals” (51). Effectively, the City ran Stop-and-Frisk – and attempted to justify at trial its racially differential deployment –

on the basis that blacks and Hispanics are appropriately presumed guilty of some potentially criminal activity simply because of their race. Although its reasoning was rejected by the Court at trial, for the City black (and brown) skin in-and-of-itself signified the likelihood of criminality, and therefore merited racially specific crime prevention and law enforcement practices.

The notion that black skin is demonstrative of criminality or potential criminality is hardly novel to contemporary policing practices or even our current era. In The

Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America,

Khalil Gibran Muhammad notes that social scientists and statisticians endeavoured in the latter half of the nineteenth century to better understand racial relations in the wake of black freedom, as well as “at what pace… [blacks] … would enter the modern urban world as citizens” (20). But as Muhammad continues, this work nonetheless presumed black inferiority in ways largely beholden to the conceptual underpinnings of the racial slavery that had just ended.4 Thus, following the racial equality ostensibly provided by Emancipation, blacks continued to be subordinated. This was achieved predominantly by conceptualizing them as criminals. Emphasizing national censuses as attempts to render this new black free life into comprehensible data, Muhammad focuses on the 1890s – twenty-five years after Emancipation – and forward, arguing black criminality became the key explanation and justification for perpetuating the subordination of free blacks.5

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4 _{At the core of this disciplinary or conceptual cultural shift was an attempt to understand what free} blacks meant to the broader body politic. As Muhammad eloquently puts it: “The monumental shift from slavery to freedom meant more than the transformation of slaves into freedmen – the realization of the hopes and prayers and resistance of four million people; it also meant a paradigm shift in the terms used to discuss, debate, and deal with them. The slavery problem became the Negro Problem” (20).

5 _{Muhammad explains that “With the publication of the 1890 census, prison statistics for the first time} became the basis of a national discussion about blacks as a distinct and dangerous criminal

Moreover, that explanation and justification was legitimized through social science, the primary discourse at the turn of the century (and perhaps into our present) for defining the scope of black identity and its relation to the broader cultural sphere:

Out of the new methods and data sources, black criminality would emerge, alongside disease and intelligence, as a fundamental measure of black inferiority. From the 1890s through the first four decades of the twentieth century, black criminality would become one of the most commonly cited and long lasting justifications for black inequality and mortality in the modern urban world. (20-21)

Of course, the notion of black criminality as an explanation for persistent black subordination inherently legitimated discriminatory thought and practices, and the naturalness of white supremacy.6 As Muhammad continues, “For white Americans of every ideological stripe – from radical southern racists to northern progressives – African American criminality became one of the most widely accepted bases for justifying prejudicial thinking, discriminatory treatment, and/or acceptance of racial violence as an instrument of public safety” (4).

This chapter explores the identification of black skin with wrongdoing (if not criminality per se), tracing it back to American slavery as essential to the subordination of blacks generally and the maintenance of slavery specifically. In turning to Frederick Douglass’s 1855 autobiography, which details his time in and escape from slavery, I

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population… [as it showed]… that African Americans, as 12 percent of the population, made up 30 percent of the nation’s prison population” (3-4).

6 _{As I discuss, this presumption of black criminality also operated to subordinate blacks in slavery,} even though asserting whiteness as racially superior was not necessarily intended by or explicitly claimed through it (though it was obviously a result).

explore how the fact of being enslaved signified some wrongdoing which, in turn, justified or explained the discipline and punishment of slaves as necessary to preserve the institution of slavery itself. Moreover, as Douglass notes, this slave wrongdoing, which was presumed, also precluded slaves from advancing a defence or response to their alleged wrongdoing by characterizing that too as a punishable wrong. As a result, and what Douglass illustrates, is that the presumption of their wrongdoing also silenced slaves.

According to proponents of slaveholding, this ‘silencing’ of slaves was essential to maintaining or perpetuating the economic basis of slavery.7 And by the mid- nineteenth century, as those proponents increasingly emphasized race as the basis or reason for enslavement, this presumption of slave wrongdoing took on a distinctly racial character. Once black skin became the definitive mark of enslavement – whether of the enslaved or the enslaveable – it also came to mean wrongdoing. This conflation or presumption of black skin and wrongdoing was ultimately exemplified, and reached its logical conclusion, in the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.8 That Act effectively presumed blacks guilty of illegal conduct in illegally attempting to escape slavery – of contravening the Act itself – on the basis of mere allegations of the same (and because it precluded any substantial response by blacks to any such allegations). Moreover, because of its federal scope, the Act extended this presumption of blacks’ illegal conduct, generated within slavery, into non-slaveholding states. Thus as race became the justification for slavery amidst calls for the institution’s abolition, the legal status of black

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7 _{As I explore, those who disagreed with slavery also recognized, often reluctantly, this feature of it as} essential to its practice.

people as property throughout was reified, and the presumption of blacks’ wrongdoing both established and confirmed their status as (silent) property to be circulated within the economy of slavery.

The mechanics of plantation authority

Born into slavery in 1818 Maryland, Frederick Douglass ultimately became a key figure in the abolitionist movement after escaping from bondage as a young man. Teaching himself to write – in-and-of-itself a transgressive act – Douglass, after achieving freedom, eventually lectured and published on the horrors of slavery and the philosophical and moral rights of freedom.9 From a literary perspective, Douglass is most renowned for his autobiographical Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845, which detailed his life in and escape from slavery.10 My Bondage and

My Freedom, published in 1855, is his second autobiography – a revised and expanded

version of his Narrative, devoting more narrative space to his participation in the abolitionist movement.

To provide context for Douglass’s story, as well as to cement his centrality to the abolitionist movement, the original editor of My Bondage includes in his preface a letter

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9 _{Christopher Hager explains about the potential dangers of slave literacy to slaveholding: “Ironically,} many slaveholders ranked among the nineteenth century’s most committed believers in the importance and liberating potential of the ability to write. They tacitly acknowledged a form of racial equality that almost no one else did: if African American slaves accepted literacy, they could be expected to use it more or less as white people did – to communicate with each other and speak their minds. They especially would use it, southerners feared, to rebel or escape” (31). As Lisa Sisco also notes, “In many ways, Douglass’s acquisition of literacy is a series of acts of resistance, because his master and the southern legal code specifically say he shouldn’t be taught to read or write” (19).

10 _{As Henry Louis Gates writes in arguing Douglass defined the genre of slave narrative: “It was} Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of 1845 that exploited the potential and came to determine the shape of language in the slave narrative” (83).

composed by Douglass in response to his editor’s “urgent solicitation for such a work” (5). Douglass’s letter focuses his text’s aims through a legal metaphor: in seeking to expose the horrors of slavery to the reader, Douglass intends through his narrative to place “slavery on trial” in the court of public opinion (7). More specifically, Douglass characterizes his narrative as evidence to be considered in the public adjudication of the legitimacy of slavery (while noting that the enslaved are also simultaneously on trial in that same public forum): “Not only is slavery on trial, but unfortunately, the enslaved people are also on trial. It is alleged that they are naturally, inferior ; that they are so low in the scale of humanity, and so utterly stupid, they are unconscious of their wrongs, and do not apprehend their rights” (7). From the outset, Douglass suggests that the subordination of slaves, including how they are legally defined as well as how they are more broadly understood by the public, is central to his text’s polemical aims.

In focussing on these conceptions of the slave, Douglass emphasizes the presumption inherent in slavery that the enslaved have committed wrongs. These wrongs – which are attributed to the fact of their race – result in and justify their enslavement: it is understood and expected that slaves have committed “wrongs” leading to their subordinated existence, regardless of such wrongs resulting from slaves being “stupid” or ignorant. Such race-based “wrongs” are thus essential to the maintenance or perpetuation of racialized slavery. However, this presumption of slave wrongdoing, at least so far as Douglass is concerned, is somewhat merited (even if ultimately caused by the greater ‘wrong’ of slavery). As he acknowledges, while a slave his very subsistence often depended upon stealing the food of others: repeatedly caught within the bureaucracy of slaveholding, Douglass notes that although he tried to live a moral life within slavery and

“hated everything like stealing, as such” he “did not hesitate to take food” from his master when hungry (139). But for Douglass, the legitimacy of such thievery – such illegal conduct – extended beyond the master-slave relationship. Rather, Douglass