Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Shorter Darren Wilson Testimony: Michael Brown was a 'Giant Beast Negro' That Had to Be Killed


If you have not yet read Darren Wilson's testimony to the Ferguson grand jury which decided that he would suffer no ill consequences for his decision to kill Michael Brown, please do so.

Wilson's description of the events on the day that he decided to shoot and kill an unarmed person cannot be adequately relayed to you by a second party.

The absurd, unfathomable, and fantastical story which Wilson spun out of the whole cloth in order to justify killing an unarmed black teenager combines the deepest and ugliest white supremacist stereotypes and fantasies about black folks' humanity such as the "negro fiend", "black beast", and "giant negro", with white racist paranoiac thinking, and dialogue from blaxploitation movies.

Darren Wilson's grand jury testimony purports to be an accurate description of his encounter with Michael Brown. In reality, it is closer to an amateurish summer stock theater production of the movie Birth of the Nation as performed by the KKK and/or Neo-Nazis.

After submitting a blank police report that provided no substantive information about his decision to kill Michael Brown, Darren Wilson was trained by attorneys from the police union (a common procedure when police kill civilians), and had many weeks to prepare his grand jury testimony.

During that time, Wilson was privy to the narrative and witness testimony that he would be confronted by in court.

Wilson was also aided by a prosecutor who was not at all interested in finding sufficient probable cause to proceed with a proper trial for the latter's decision to kill Michael Brown.

Ultimately, Darren Wilson was either 1) coached to recite a profoundly racist and bizarre version of his encounter with Michael Brown; 2) is deeply mired in the White Gaze and White Racial Frame to such a degree that he actually believes the white supremacist fictions he told the grand jury; or 3) some combination of the above.



The American legal system is not separate and apart from the social norms, cultures, values, and beliefs which produced it. Rather, the legal system (as well as schools, prisons, hospitals, etc.) is a crystallization of American society and its hierarchies of power.

Social scientists and others have produced volumes of research which have repeatedly demonstrated how the American legal system reinforces, perpetuates, and reflects disparate racial outcomes and white supremacy. For example, their findings include how black Americans face racial bias and unfair treatment at every level of the criminal justice system from initial police encounters to sentencing and parole decisions. Juries are influenced by implicit racial bias. Juries are also less likely to find black witnesses "credible" or "believable". And perhaps most troubling, white jurors can be subconsciously primed by images of apes and gorillas--this deeply racist association between animals and African-Americans in turn makes white jurors more likely to give black defendants the death penalty.

The empirical evidence for white racial bias in the criminal justice system is the context which produced the Ferguson grand jury's decision in favor of Darren Wilson. White supremacy makes Wilson's testimony an "intelligible" and "legitimate" type of truth claim as understood by the jurors, and the broader white society that supports Wilson's killing of the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.

White supremacy and white racial paranoiac thinking makes Wilson's following statements about Michael Brown believable and valid--as opposed to utterances and transparent lies that most certainly do not surpass the legal standard of "reasonable doubt".

Wilson told the grand jury the following:

1. Brown possessed super human negro strength as he effortlessly crushed the weak white man's flesh with one hand. "And when I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan...Hulk Hogan, that’s just how big he felt and how small I felt just from grasping his arm."

2. Brown is so strong and possessed of giant negro powers that he could attack Wilson with one hand while using the other to give his compatriot Dorian Johnson the box of cigars.

3. Even though he was shot several times by Darren Wilson, Brown let out a bestial grown like a feral monster, seemingly impervious to the threat of bullets and harm, he then charged at the police officer:

"So when he stopped, I stopped. And then he starts to turn around, I tell him to get on the ground, get on the ground. He turns, and when he looked at me, he made like a grunting, like aggravated sound and he starts, he turns and he’s coming back towards me. His first step is coming towards me, he kind of does like a stutter step to start running. When he does that, his left hand goes in a fist and goes to his side, his right one goes under his shirt in his waistband and he starts running at me."

"At this point it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him.

And the face that he had was looking straight through me, like I wasn’t even there, I wasn’t even anything in his way."

4. Brown apparently speaks like a blaxploitation movie character: "He grabs my gun, says, 'You are too much of a pussy to shoot me.'"

5. Brown, like other negroes, was irrational and crazed. Wilson was in a state of terror: "The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked. He comes back towards me again with his hands up."

6. Brown also has melanin powered super speed. Because blacks are apparently natural athletes with overdeveloped leg muscles, Brown ran away from Wilson so fast that he left a trail of dust at his feet in a manner akin to that of a Looney Tunes cartoon character: "When I look up after that, I see him start to run and I see a cloud of dust behind him."

7. Because Brown is a giant negro he towered over Wilson: "He then grabs my door again and shuts my door. At that time is when I saw him coming into my vehicle. His head was higher than the top of my car. And I see him ducking and as he is ducking, his hands are up and he is coming in my vehicle."

Darren Wilson's testimony to the grand jury mates a cultural script that views black people as inherently criminal with recent empirical research that demonstrates how white folks actually do believe that black people are "super human" and a mysterious type of Other.

Wilson's tale is also a reminder of how the near past of Jim and Jane Crow lives in the "post racial" present of the Age of Obama.

A black man is President of the United States of America.

But, a white cop can use language and white racial logic of 19th and early 20th century lynch law--with its fixation on "negro fiends", "imps of the inferno", and "noble" defenders of white society--to avoid going to trial for taking the life of an unarmed black teenager, while also being elevated to hero status (and financially enriched) by those sick and morally deranged white folks who want to live vicariously through the act of killing a black person.

Dred Scott is buried several miles away from where Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown. Scott, in one of the most infamous United States Supreme Court decisions, was deemed to not have any rights that a white man is bound to respect. Almost 150 years later, Darren Wilson used the same white supremacist logic, and in doing so offered a version of events that would have been a perfect fit for a 19th century newspaper article about the lynching, disembowelment, and vivisection of a black victim of spectacular white violence.

"History is a moving train". Ferguson is a reminder of how those historical continuities of white supremacy as enacted through the American legal system (and other cultural and social institutions) are still killing and murdering black and brown folks with impunity.

30 comments:

Sandy Young (Corkingiron) said...

"...the black man has no rights which the white man is bound to respect..." - Chief Justice Taney.
That's not a train, Sir. It is a cruel and vicious carousel.

seeknsanity said...

It's entirely ridiculous, CD. Just like George Zimmerman's story, our young black men seem to have something click in them, while running away, that makes them want to turn around and charge the thing thy feared and was running from, in the first place. Why would this make sense to anyone, other than those that subscribe to the mythical "negro beast' of superhuman sensibilities? There are just parallels to the Zimmerman narrative that are sticking out to me. I would not be surprised if he used that story as a guide for his own. It did work for George.

chauncey devega said...

They probably studied the script. Zimmerman had blaxploitation super negroes too.

chauncey devega said...

Damn. Powerful. Borrowing w. attribution.

Shady Grady said...

IIRC from some history reading racist fears of black beasts hopped up on cocaine attacking white women were a big reason why police departments in the early 20th century increased their firepower. The language which Wilson and his supporters use is taken directly from that time. So not much has changed.


The only thing which remains to be seen is if a President will direct his AG to produce a civil rights indictment.

BobbyV said...

Negroes made one feel inadequate. But most important of all, they were tough, beautifully, enviably tough, not giving a damn for anyone or anything.... This is what I envied and feared in the
Negro....

[James] Baldwin tells us that one of the reasons Negroes hate the white man is that the white man refuses to look at him: the Negro knows that in white eyes all Negroes are alike; they are faceless and therefore not altogether human. The psychologists, in their turn, tell us that the white man hates the Negro because he tends to project those wild impulses that he fears in himself onto an alien group which he then punishes with his contempt.

Norman Podhoretz, My Negro Problem and Yours.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/my-negro-problem-and-ours/

Gable1111 said...

If history is a moving train, that train is running in circles. That such a sham of a grand jury was perpetrated to validate the obvious, that no black man today has any rights that a white cop is bound to respect. We are right back to where we were in the time of Dredd Scott and before.


Meanwhile our "cullud" President can only find it in him to scold the protesters, while mouthing empty platitudes about the difficulty of Germans, Irish, Poles and others getting along in democracy.


I'm about to lose my damned mind.

Justin M. White said...

Has anyone been reporting on the failure of police/authorities to act during the post-decision mayhem? Obviously the announcement time was planned to incite as much anger and anxiety as possible, but there were also reports of police not responding to calls from people reporting people with guns (that failure led to the one known fatality of that night: http://www.inquisitr.com/1634913/deandre-joshua-first-ferguson-riots-fatality-man-found-shot-near-where-michael-brown-died/)

Also when I was watching the on-the-ground streams last night, they were talking about how the fire department was ignoring fires all over the place. They were also on the ground reports pointing out how the police "didn't seem prepared" despite all the preparation that they were obviously doing.

The Sanity Inspector said...

FWIW, here's his interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC World News Tonight.

balitwilight said...

Darren Wilson is a 6-foot 4-inch, 210 pound policeman, wearing Kevlar, armed with a Beretta 9mm handgun holding at least 15 devastating hollow-point rounds in the magazine with 1 round in the chamber.


Wilson had already shot 18-year old teenager Michael Brown twice when Michael Brown took of running. Michael Brown (probably exhausted) then turned round with his hands up - and his shot dead. In "self defense". By the 6-foot 4-inch, 210 pound cop wearing Kevlar, pointing the 9mm handgun right at the teenager in broad daylight.


That a majority of "white" Americans - in 2014! - are crazed enough with racism and White Supremacy to believe Wilson reasonably feared for his life tells you everything you need to know about what is behind "black" disaffection, unemployment rate, housing discrimination, glass ceiling, school-to-prison pipeline, etc. It says all you need to know about the REAL passion behind the 2nd Amendment. It also tells all "black" people in America that neither they nor their children are safe anywhere; that they are literally surrounded by a mortal enemy whose ranks are broad, deep and literally (in every actual meaning of this word) insane. Malcolm X seems to have been onto something.

SW said...

Were you surprised to learn that Wilson was 6'4"? I certainly was. It seems as though the media presented his pictures as though he were much, much shorter. Very weird.

Paul Willis said...

Well, I read that damned testimony. He was clearly coached to tell a story. He even mildly incriminates himself by admitting that the first thing he did after returning to the station was NOT complete an incident report, but summon a police lawyer.

But the thing that got me most about his so-called testimony (other than his conveniently selective memory lapses) was that even when he was in fear for his very life that the black beast might beat him to death in his car, even as he had the presence of mind to mentally survey his self-defense options at hand, he never thought to simply put the gear selector in "Drive" and just pull away out of reach. What bullshit.

Sandy Young (Corkingiron) said...

I'm flattered beyond words.

balitwilight said...

He didn't radio for backup either, which is what happens in all the movies I've seen when a cop faces down King King. No... Darrel Wilson wasn't afraid of Michael Brown. He despised him. He swaggered up in his car and swore at him even when he was walking with ANOTHER boy. Then he probably lost his temper at the sheer insolence of the negroes and tried to jerk Brown by the collar through his car window without bothering to haul his own lazy arse out of the patrol car first. When Michael Brown fled he was as good as dead. Just business-as-usual community policing in Soweto (sorry, Ferguson).

kokanee said...

Wilson's testimony would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

WARN readers knew how to read Wilson's testimony especially in regards to black people with supernatural powers. Very prescient articles here following up to the grand jury decision.

Vox (Who's Vox?) has some good articles on Ferguson:
Officer Darren Wilson's story is unbelievable. Literally.
Michael Brown spent his last day with his friend Dorian Johnson. Here's what Johnson saw.


The 2 minute video at the end of the first article is well worth watching.


Protesters in NYC shut down the Triborough bridge last night for an hour. "No justice. No peace. What are we going to do? Shut the shit down."

chauncey devega said...

Bumptious walking. The negro did not show sufficient respect and the white cop had to teach him a lesson. I hope that Anonymous releases more data on the Ferguson PD and KKK connection.

kokanee said...

Exactly: https://twitter.com/NBCNightlyNews/status/537094891336396801/photo/1

Gina said...

Mike Brown 5ft 5in = 165,10 m
Darren Wilson 6ft 4 = 193,04 m
The sizes are in this article:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/how-darren-wilson-avoided-criminal-charges

You can get some glimpses of Wilson's size in this video & the interviewer says: "You're a pretty big guy.":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llwdma6zVhA

Note as well that a witness stated that Wilson tried to pull Mike Brown into the car.

Gina said...

The family of Michael Brown is holding a news conference the day after a grand jury decided not to indict a Ferguson police officer in the teen's shooting death.

The video begins after 19:20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItDyDO1MfgA#t=1276

At 51:30
About the outburst of Mike Brown's parent on Monday night.

At 53:50
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! addressing the fact that the part of Ferguson-Florissant with mostly Black inhabitants was not protected by the national guard which she includes in the Democracy Now! video below.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/25/riot_as_the_language_of_the

45:47
"What burned & what didn't?"
- South Florissant, the White part of the district, didn't. The riot police were lined up to block the protestors.
- West Florissant, where there are Black owned businesses, no national guard was in sight last night. There were people breaking windows & setting buildings on fire. N.B.: Remains the question WHO did this.

54:20
The announcement came late at night - a context of provocation.

54:45
- Over a 100 days of primarily non-violent resistance. "They gave the system a chance, & the system broke their heart." - The protestors had "limited resources, limited access to the civil right tradition, limited support of various institutions & infrastructures". They taught themselves rapidly how to be organized. They should be "celebrated as heroes & not demonized".

Gina said...

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/11/20/part_2_bryan_stevenson_on_executions

The predilection for the wrong judgment is a trait of the Late Middle Ages - Western & South Western Europe between approx. 1300 to 1500.

1:23
We have created a system which is much more concerned about finality than fairnessThe intensity of discrimination in Missouri is the same as in southern states. Up from 15:00

"Admittedly" - They got no shame:

17:00
[The supreme court says] racial bias is too pervasive, it's too insidious, it's too ever present for us to take on. We just have to move on & make peace with it. & the court upholds the death penalty. (...) A system which is admittedly undermined by racial biases

kokanee said...

Hi Gina!

Correction: Mike Brown = 6' 4" and 289 libs. Darren Wilson = 6' 4" and 210 lbs.

Myshkin the Idiot said...

Mike Brown reached for his waistband.


For WHAT?! He had no weapon, why would he reach for his waist band?


Also, he held the cigarillos with his right hand while punching Wilson in the right side of his face repeatedly and then switched hands to pass them off and reached for Wilson's gun?


If Darren Wilson was afraid for his life, why would he reverse his car until he is so close to them that he cannot even exit the vehicle safely?

Gina said...

Thx! I misread. I delete the comment.

Gina said...

Above I've posted two comments with links to videos & paraphrased or transcribed part of them.

kokanee said...

Good stuff Gina. More:

Legal Experts Explain Why The Ferguson Grand Jury Was Set Up For Failure:
https://www.popularresistance.org/legal-experts-explain-why-the-ferguson-grand-jury-was-set-up-for-failure/

A prominent legal expert eviscerates the Darren Wilson prosecution, in 8 tweets:
http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/25/7285265/darren-wilson-grand-jury

Across The US People #ShutItDown Over Ferguson:
During the day people began to understand that the Ferguson grand jury, rather
than having a prosecutor seeking the indictment of Officer Darren Wilson who killed Mike Brown, instead was led by a Darren Wilson’s defense lawyer who did all he could to prevent an indictment. Prosecutor Robert McCulloch, who should have recused himself but refused to do so
despite conflicts of interests, announced the decision of the grand jury sounding like a defense lawyer for Wilson. The corruption of the grand
jury process began with him and grew from the roots of systemic racist police enforcement in Ferguson. There have been numerous informed
commentators making the point that the grand jury was handled in a way so that the “prosecutor” got what he wanted — no indictment. —https://www.popularresistance.org/across-the-us-people-shutitdown-over-fergson/

Ferguson: Baffling Decisions Continue to Provoke a Traumatized Community:
There is no question that the Michael Brown case has been mishandled from the very beginning. With the news conference Monday by St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch, we now know that it was mishandled to the very end. —http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/ferguson_baffling_decisions_continue_to_provoke_a_traumatized_community_201

joe manning said...

The exaggerated stereotypes are used to target "useful" scapegoats upon which the White projects its hatred and aggression. Maintenance of a high degree of free floating affect is essential to social control. That is, the divide and conquer strategy is the only way "they" can maintain their power.

James Estrada-Scaminaci III said...

Wilson's version is unbelievable. Just watching him talk to George S. on ABC was stomach churning. Seeing a "demon" makes me wonder how religious Wilson is and whether he has ever participated in any spiritual warfare type work that links police to practitioners of the New Apostolic Reformation. They see the world as inhabited by demons and the Black community as ruled by a specific demon.

Gable1111 said...

Wilson was reaching for whatever could aid in his "fear for his life" excuse. When asked if he thought Brown had a gun, he said "I didn't think about that." Then why bring it up?


There are so many gaps in the questioning that even a rookie prosecutor would have asked. Wilson's own testimony is inconsistent in many areas, racist in some, and downright fantastic in others.


There is no doubt that McColluch's goal was not to "find the truth" but to absolve Wilson, no matter what. Now that he has, its beyond offensive that people are told "the justice system has worked and now everyone must respect its decision."

drspittle said...

Believe it or not, that was one area with which I agreed with CNN. Every reporter analyst said the same thing. Why were some areas not covered by police and why were no local or state leaders in evidence at any time.

balitwilight said...

There is a reason they call it DEMON-ising. His police union lawyer probably advised him so. How hard can it be to demonise another dead "black" teenager in a sundown town? Wilson doesn't seem like the brightest lightbulb in the room, so he might just have taken the advise literally."Yeah, that's right... he looked like a... demon".
Whatever, they didn't need to work so hard. After all, a skinny kid with skittles Trayvon Martin (just 3-weeks out of being a 16 year-old) was seen in the eyes of most "white" Americans as a raging negro monster who was so scary that he was rightfully shot dead by armed-and-stalking hulking-man-psycho George Zimmerman.