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“When They See Us” asks white women to question our role in white patriarchy

Wmc Fbomb When They See Us Linda Fairstein 61719

In Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us, Trisha Meili, the victim of the brutal beating and rape for which five boys were wrongfully accused and convicted, appears only fleetingly. In Meili’s physical absence, another white woman — prosecutor and head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office at the time — Linda Fairstein (played by Felicity Huffman) effectively becomes her mouthpiece, and weaponizes Meili under the guise of her protection. DuVernay’s artful depiction of Fairstein exposes the process through which white women’s pain can be used as a pawn for white patriarchy.

This process begins in the first episode of the series, during which Fairstein commands a group of police officers to “get an army of blue into Harlem” in the wake of Meili’s attack. They do and while there arrest five young suspects: Raymond Santana (Marquis Rodriguez), Kevin Richardson (Asante Blackk), Antron McCray (Caleel Harris), Yusef Salaam (Ethan Herisse), and Korey Wise (Jharrel Jerome). Fairstein then instructs detectives to begin interrogating the suspects, who are minors — most in the absence of their parents. “No kid gloves here,” Fairstein asserts. “These are not kids. They raped this woman. Our lady jogger deserves this.”

In the harrowing scenes that follow, the boys are interrogated incessantly for hours until they are eventually coerced into confessing. Fairstein’s forced presentation of “the jogger,” a privileged white woman, being violated by a group of boys of color confirms the deepest nightmares of the white psyche, emblazoned through a long history of racist archetypes. In a recent interview, Yusef Salaam described the Central Park Five as “modern-day Emmett Tills.” This racist archetype of violent men of color ultimately ironically manifests in physical violence done to that very group; Fairstein, who is later joined by lead prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer (Vera Farmiga), uses these racially charged archetypes to implicate the boys and reinscribe the violence suffered by Meili into their lives and onto their bodies.

While the connection drawn between a white woman’s victimhood and violence against black and brown boys is undeniable thus far in the series, the dehumanizing effect of this process on Meili herself comes later. Eventually, it becomes clear that Fairstein views Meili not as an individual, but as a symbol of white female victimhood. For instance, when Lederer pushes back on Fairstein’s request that she bury the finding that the DNA from semen collected from a sock at the crime scene did not match any of the accused boys, claiming that Fairstein is crossing a line, Fairstein retorts, “What line? Where’s the line for Patricia, huh?... Remember her.” By denying the facts of the case, Fairstein also denies the reality of what Meili experienced, effectively decentering her from her own rape and ignoring what true justice might mean for her.

Lederer’s objectification of Meili is clear when the victim is finally allowed to speak for herself on the witness stand. The camera is so focused on Meili’s entrance that her body does not fully come into the frame; Instead, the camera follows her abdomen, her limp hand, and focuses on the people in the courtroom staring and grimacing as she passes. Lederer asks Meili not once but four times whether or not she had memory of the hours surrounding the attack. She then holds up a blatantly blood-soaked shirt, asking Meili to first identify it as her own, then to disclose the color that it had been: white. Meili’s throat catches as she says it. Lederer asks Meili to list her many injuries. The scene is garrish, tedious, and completely at odds with trauma-informed practices. Lederer does not need Meili for factual evidence; rather she needs Meili to perform the role of “the jogger.” Consequently, she manipulates Meili into reliving the rape and quite literally uses her pain as a prop to persecute brown boys.

Ultimately, instead of helping an assaulted woman find justice, the state itself assaulted five boys — and, on top of that, allowed the true assailant to continue attacking women. As episode four depicts, Matias Reyes, a convicted murderer and serial rapist already in prison, confessed to raping Meili in 2001. Reyes assaulted nine women over the course of 1988-1989 and killed one: Lourdes Gonzalez.

In addition to the harm done by Lederer and the state in this case, the media’s coverage of the case at the time was also incredibly damaging. First, the fanaticization of this case obscured important truths about sexual violence —  namely, about eighty percent of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim, so Meili’s experience was in the minority. Sensationalizing the “stranger in the alley narrative” allowed more privileged assailants to “separate their own criminal tendencies” from this narrative, as DuVernay herself explained in an interview. Most notably, Donald Trump, who has since been accused by 23 women of sexual misconduct, took out ads in New York City papers at the time calling for a return of the death penalty in relation to the case.

The trio of white women at the center of When They See Us ultimately reveals a lot about white women’s alliance to white supremacy. This alliance is indispensable to the white patriarchy, and acknowledging this can be extremely challenging for white women, particularly in the context of sexual crimes. For example, while the experience inspired her to dedicate her life to working with survivors of sexual assault, Meili has expressed doubts about the exonerated men’s innocence and misgivings about their awarded settlement. But continuing to leverage racial privilege for power within a male-dominated system is an obstacle in the path toward true liberation from patriarchy, a system in which sexual violence against us is so common. White women must learn to question our racial protection so that we can resist, rather than enable, white supremacy and seek to understand the ways our suffering is fundamentally linked to others’. Let us learn from the white women of When They See Us not to allow our own pain to become pawn.  



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