The incredible litany of publicly exposed incidents of police use of force against African American males in the past two years is both a testament to the power of social media and an exposé of the deficits of state, local and federal government accountability. Yet, the brutalization of African American males by law enforcement agents is not a new phenomenon. It was chronicled after the riots of the 1960s in the Kerner Commission Report and remains a historical legacy of the power of law enforcement agencies over the lives and bodies of black men. Whereas W.E.B. DuBois used his brilliant essays published in the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine to expose the horrors of lynching in early 20th Century America, contemporary movements such as Black Lives Matter and their allies have used Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, FaceTime and related social networking platforms—along with the ever-present video phone—to expose police excesses.
Although the United States belatedly ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in 1994, it still has failed to fully implement key elements of the treaty, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). This failure is particularly evident in the area of criminal justice, where African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians are disproportionately stopped and frisked, arrested, incarcerated and sentenced to the death penalty. They are more likely to be denied bail, more likely to be tried as adults when they are juveniles, and less likely to be employed once they are released from prison.
