Central Park Five

Imani Weeks  

Central Park Five

Race is always the go to answer or this happen because of the skin color for everything. Even today after slavery and segregation is banned there is still racism against every race. Central Park Five shows how the color of your skin can put you in a bad position, even your gender is enough to ruin your life. Five young black and latino boys were arrested for a crime they did not commit and even served time for something that had nothing to do with them. Your race and gender will make you a target when people don’t know the true or full story.

In the movie Central Park Five they had different people speaking on the case. It was mostly the victims that were accused, their parents and media journalist. They were describing how it was back then around the time the crime was committed and how everything went downhill when the five boys got arrested. When the movie first started one thing that stuck out to me was when Rev. Calvin Butts and he was talking about young black men and one thing he said was “The most endangered species in American, that was a popular phrase, was young, black man.” When he said this my mind was based off of that one sentence the whole time I was watching the movie. It is not a coincidence that five, young, black and latino males were arrested, better yet accused for something they didn’t do. There was nothing that they could have done to get them out of the situation they didn’t deserve to be in, except changing their skin color and gender.

Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise. and more than 25 others teenaged boys entered central park together. While his friends were being arrested “I basically said what’s going on then he said didn’t I tell you not to run you little animal, something like that...” Why did he have to call that young boy an animal? I don’t think this officer will ever call his friends animals. I think it’s weird that they never revealed the skin color of this officer. It’s shocking because everybody looked at this case as a racial and gender issue, but they never once told people the names and color of the officers, only the boys and lady that was raped. I’m wondering if they trying to hide something and if they are what exactly are they trying to hide.

To identify somebody, one of the first thing you would say is “Oh, he look mexican.” or “I thought he was white.” I know it’s easy to point somebody out based on skin complexion or color but you can’t do that especially during an important case you don’t want to seem like racism. The district attorney lady that was interviewing the kids to get their confession on video did exactly that. “First it was the black boy then it was the puerto rican guy then you got on top of her?” The guy she is referencing that is puerto rican is Antron McCray and he is also mixed with African American. The black guy could have been any of the three other boys. She knew exactly what they names were but she decided to picked them out by color. That wasn't helpful at all for him to say yes he did it. It could have been any “black boy” that was being interrogated. I know the boy getting interviewed wrote their names down during the false confession because the detectives were telling them the names of the other boys.

Criminal Justice systems is not good. It’s unfair and not right. Back then and today. People always and will forever question that system. No matter what it has to do with. The media always seem to switch up stories or seem to have a huge affect on what others opinion is going to be. It was this one new paper that said “Grim test for the justice system.” While watching I’m sitting thinking like what do that mean test. After hearing oh there was no evidence against the boys just confessions that were told for them to say I knew exactly what it meant. The Justice system and people working for and with it has failed the test. I always wondered why didn’t they tell everybody that they didn’t have exact proof against the boys. Is it because they wanted the story to be over with? Did they just want to find people to blame it on or did they not want the people of their city to worry about things?

Working on this piece I realized it a lot that is going on with this case. A lady in the movie said that there was another rape around the same time as Central Park Five but it had absolutely no coverage because of the interracial part of it, and the lady got thrown off a roof. I can't help but think that it was because the lady was white and it was in Central Park, the holiest place a person can go back then besides a church. This reminded me of the Emmett Till story I learned when I was a kid. A young African American boy who whistled at a white lady and got killed for it, he done nothing wrong to hurt the lady but he life was taking. People were even talking about the death penalty for the boys. Donald Trump was willing to pay for it to come back. They were kids and they wanted them on the death penalty! More and more watching and reading articles about Central Park Five I think it’s all about the New York Police pointing out a group of innocent black males saying they committed a crime when they didn’t know what was going on or what to do. Your race and gender will make you a target when people don’t know the true or full story.