Covid

MASKING SAVES LIVES

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Young Black People--Are Jails Their Destiny?

Young Black women get inordinately long sentences for defending themselves from an aggressive "admirer." So what else is new? http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/06/killer-lesbians-mauled-by-killer-court-media-wolfpack/

"Four more Black girls just went bad. Young, 19 to 25; from Newark or surrounding neighborhoods; “troubled” families; having babies while in their teens – you’ve heard it all before. The reason you’re reading about this bunch is that they’re lesbians – “killer lesbians,” “a wolf pack of lesbians,” say the media. They’re not martyrs or heroes; they did something stupid that got them sentenced to prison. They stood up for themselves.

“'Man Is Stabbed in Attack After Admiring a Stranger,” wrote the comparatively well-mannered New York Times last August 19th.

"The Manhattan district attorney says Patreese Johnson, one of the four, was the stabber. He charged her with attempted murder, and Johnson, Renata Hill, Venice Brown, and Terrain Dandridge with felony assault and gang assault. The man assaulted was Dwayne Buckle, 29, who, seeing the “gang” on the corner of 6th Avenue and 4th Street in Manhattan’s West Village, singled out Johnson because she was “slightly pretty.” He claimed he said, “Hi, how are you doing?”

"Johnson, Hill, Brown, Dandridge, and three other women — a “seething sapphic septet,” according to the New York Post — had just gotten off the train from Newark, looking for a little fun. Being young, they knew the odds of fun were better in the Village; being lesbians, they knew fun was not to be had in the streets of Newark, where, four years earlier, 15-year-old Sakia Gunn was knifed to death by men who thought she was cute — until she told them she was gay.

"Although what happened between these women and Dwayne Buckle was caught on surveillance cameras, there isn’t one newspaper account that doesn’t, somehow, conflict with the others. Dwayne Buckle, a “filmmaker” or “sound mixer” or “dvd bootlegger” -– depending on your news source -– evidently said more than “Hi.” The women contend he pointed to Patreese Johnson’s crotch and said, “Let me get some of that.” When Johnson answered, “No thank you, I’m not interested,” he told Johnson that he could fuck her and her friends straight.

No comments: