Fractures Cause Fissures

Every Friday morning when I arrive at the court, the security guards begin the day by opening access to the criminal court entrance. After making it through the metal detector, I walk into the courtroom and take my seat in the section that is designated for observers. Immediately, I notice a racial discrepancy between those waiting to be called for court and those who do the calling. The defendants are not only primarily people of color, but overwhelmingly men of color; in contrast, each district attorney and judge I have seen so far has been white. 

The court officer stands at the front of the courtroom and asks each individual if they have court today, and if so, what their name is. Most sessions, the officer is a white woman who performs the routine. One morning as she was moving through the crowd, she paused when she saw me: another white woman. She looked at me and opened her mouth, as if to ask me something. But then she quickly closed it, smiled, and asked the person next to me if he had court that morning. 

Because this woman has interacted with me on multiple occasions, she recognized me as a court watcher rather than a defendant. But she also treats me differently. When the defendants use their phones in the courtroom, or talk loudly, they are met with a rather gruff “no talking” warning. However, when I whispered to my partner in observation, she politely came over and said “guys, try not to talk too much. The stenographer gets pissy.” 

I write this to hold both myself and the officer accountable. Through my position as an observer, I'm beginning to see first hand the systemic racial tensions that permeate the criminal justice system. What is becoming clear is that the defendants in the courtroom are not representative of the population of people who commit crimes, but merely the ones who are selected by the system. In her book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander described the racialized dimensions of the criminal-legal system, specifically in the context of the drug war: “studies consistently indicate that drug markets, like American society generally, reflect our nation's racial and socioeconomic boundaries. Whites tend to sell to whites; blacks to blacks” (p. 124). But, of course, we see fewer white drug dealers or users in the jails and prisons because police typically focus their attention primarily on people of color.

What Alexander teaches us in her reflections is the systematic racialization of drug crime by police and law-enforcement officers. In continuing the patterns of "randomized" drug searches, stop-and-frisks, and the regular surveillance of neighborhoods with a high percentage of people of color, the system perpetuates the racial divide in the courtroom. In understanding not only how the system inevitably demonizes and targets people of color, but also the power white people hold in the criminal-legal system, we can start to hold ourselves and those around us accountable. Our society is built upon inherent fractures that stem from the systemic racism on which our country was founded, but these fractures deepen into fissures with the help of the disinformation and naivety that envelops the broader public. To prevent the formation of these fissures, it is up to us to understand and document why the fractures exist and how we encourage them with our behavior and perception of the legal system.