Edward Earl Wright says he was near his parked truck outside his mother’s house in Milwaukee after midnight when Officers Michael Vagnini, Jacob Knight, Jeffrey Cline, Gregory Kuspa and Jason Mucha stopped him and asked if he had drugs or guns.
When Wright said he did not, Vagnini allegedly accused the man of lying and began searching his truck without his consent.
“After searching Mr. Wright’s vehicle and finding nothing, Officer Vagnini put plastic gloves on his hands and reached inside Mr. Wright’s pants, grabbing and searching Mr. Wright’s genitalia; once again without Mr. Wright’s consent; without probable cause; and without a reasonable basis to do so,” the complaint states.
http://breakingbrown.com/2015/12/milwaukee-settles-74-black-men-say-illegally-fondled-cavity-searched-police/
The sexual assault charges were dropped, but it sounds to me that sexual assaults are exactly what happened to these men. That 26 month jail term is not long enough. More than that, the offending officers will not have the sexual offender tag on them for rest of their lives like they should have.
As a woman who has lived on this planet all her life, as a woman who has to maneuver the world so as not to be too far away from other human beings, especially at night, so as to avoid being raped, I can't help but think about how these male victims suddenly had the experience of being a female alone.
The assault described in the article wasn't about driving while black but that's the situation that immediately came to my mind. Driving While Black is exactly when a lot of black and brown citizens will find themselves alone with a white or white-passing police officer.
While black boys are taught to keep their hands on steering wheels and not move their hands to their pockets or glove compartment without asking the officer first should they be pulled over by police, too many black girls are NOT taught to avoid being pulled over in a dark, isolated area by a policeman. If a woman can continue, driving very slowly for a few blocks until she gets to a convenience store parking lot, a random home's driveway, or at least a bright street light she should. Holtzclaw isn't the only predator in a uniform.
And this case shows that black men, having lower social status, have one more reason to be mindful when being put in the position of being alone with police officers as well.
Outside of the prison setting, what happened in this case is likely the closest many heterosexual men will get to being raped. The power differential between rapist and rape victim is usually based on the social power difference between men and women. But in this case, the power differential was between white males as police officers and black male citizens.
The man who rapes women, the prison tough who rapes men new to prison, the white cop that violates black male citizens seem like to be of one mindset, yes? In the back of their minds there must be something like "I dominate and humiliate you to prove my power over you, to make myself feel bigger, more important."I can't help but wonder if some men -- the ones not so empathetic, not so aware of just how similarly the systems of sexism and racism operate-- will rethink their position on sexism and "false accusations of rape" if they read this article and identify with the black male victims who were violated in the article above.
Think about it. If there were 74 black male victims, then 60 to 70 or even 73 of them were disbelieved when they complained of being violated, right? Something like that, right? If that's not a rape culture experience, then I don't know what is.
So will men reading this article empathize with other men being violated more than they do women? Will the rarely true "false accusations of rape" be believed less if they read this article?
I hope so because even in the days right after slavery and post-reconstruction when the lynching of black men was probably at an all time high, 2/3rds of the time these black men were NOT lynched for rape. According to Ida B Wells, black men were lynched so that their property or a business could be stolen --if not for straight entertainment or white pride of course.
White men used the rape of white females as an excuse. White men put white female rape stories in their newspapers so as to make themselves look less animalistic and keep outside investors, in Europe and in the North, investing in the recovering South after the Civil War. And the remaining 1/3 of where there were rape accusations? Ida B Wells found interracial relationships, again being put forth by white men as "rape" in order to save face and/or destroy those relationships.
To me it's clear that false accusations of rape have always been something that one man says to another man to further his own agenda, using a woman as a shield. Furthermore, in wars since the beginning of time, men rape the other sides women to communicate something to the other men. The tendency of men to use rape and false accusations of rape seems raceless--- hence the defense of people like Bill Cosby and R. Kelly.
"United States’ rape statistics confirm that false reporting is the stuff of the fantastical, and that, in a deeply unsettling reality, men are indeed raping women in droves."
~ Latina Feminista
READ MOREhttp://www.theestablishment.co/2015/12/12/the-dangerous-ramifications-of-newsweeks-story-on-rape-accusations/
All of this should make it clear that racism isn't the only problem black people, including black men, face. Like a Alteria Gaston wrote in another article, "White Supremacist Capitalistic Patriarchy is the ideology that needs to be dismantled - NOT JUST RACISM. "
* * * * *
A video for you. Just so you know just how easily you can wind up alone with a person willing to abuse their power. You'll never believe how easily the cop admits to why he pulled the black driver over.
(Another example of Slave Master Mentality)
DRIVING WHILE BLACK MUCH?
WELL, THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT!
see the link--> http://dwbtheapp.com/
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