April 2000

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Thinking About Amadou Diallo

Marty Jezer is a writer from Brattleboro, VT who is author of Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words; Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel; and The Dark Ages: Life in the USA, 1945-1960. He appreciates comments at <mjez@sover.net>

Amadou Diallo, a young man from the African country of Guinea, immigrated to the United States believing that this was the land of opportunity. Like many immigrants before him, he settled in the Bronx and earned his living as a peddler.

On the night of February 4, 1999, four undercover police accosted Diallo in the doorway of his building with drawn guns. They flashed their badges, shouted that they were cops, and ordered Diallo to put his hands up. For reasons we do not know, Diallo reached into his pocket to pull out his wallet. The cops, thinking he was drawing a gun, began firing. In the space of seconds they fired 41 shots at an unarmed man. Nineteen of them struck Diallo and, almost instantly, killed him.

That's the story as we now know it. We also know that the police thought Diallo resembled a rapist that they were looking for in the neighborhood--i.e., the rapist, like Diallo, was black. Oddly, the police were able to see well enough to believe Diallo resembled the rapist, but were not able to see well enough to distinguish Diallo's wallet from a gun.

We are left with two questions. Why did the police accost Diallo and why didn't Diallo obey the police and raise his hands?

The answer to the first question is racial profiling, which begins with racial stereotyping. I'm reminded of comedian Buddy Hackett's old "Chinese waiter" routine in which a waiter in a Chinese restaurant brings won ton and egg drop soup to the wrong customers. In frustration, he exclaims, "Funny thing about you white people, you all look alike."

The difficulty of identifying individuals across our country's racial divide is not limited to cops. We all tend to see skin color first; then, and only if we choose, do we see each other for whom we are.

Racial profiling is a product of racial stereotyping. Police, especially those patrolling in big city anti-crime units, tend to see individuals as "perpetrators" before they see them as human beings. Blacks, especially, are viewed this way. The Bronx cops spotted Diallo and, because he was black, were poised to shoot without giving him any benefit of doubt.

The police neither invented racism nor set the conditions in which it flourishes. They, more than any other citizens, risk their lives on the fissures of society's breakdown. Our racist history, our economic inequality, our senseless drug laws, our refusal to put resources into helping the urban (and rural) poor have created a social pathology that ill-trained police officers are sent out to patrol. As individuals, the four police officers are probably no more or less racist than anybody else. In the assumption behind their racial profiling, they reflect society and represent us.

Why, then, didn't Amadou Diallo simply raise his hand at the police command? I can think of any number of reasons. Four men approaching you with guns drawn--when you yourself know you've done nothing wrong--are to be feared rather than trusted. As an immigrant, Diallo was possibly accustomed to officials requesting that he show his papers. Reaching for his wallet might have been an attempt to be forthcoming. If that was the case, the police shot a man who was not only innocent but trying to cooperate with them.

There's another possible theory. Diallo apparently was a person who stuttered. As one who also stutters, I know how difficult it can be to talk fluently when under pressure, as Diallo was in this situation. It's conceivable--though this is just speculation on my part--that Diallo, ashamed of his speech, didn't want to stutter in front of the police and so went for his wallet to provide them with printed identification. Or, he may have been fearful that the police would mistake his verbal difficulty for an act of hostility (those of us who stutter often confront this misperception). I've spoken to many people who stutter, and they all agree that they might have done what Diallo did in a similar situation: reach for identification rather than give it verbally.

Does this make folks who stutter targets for police? Not if they are white. The police would not assume, as they did with Diallo, that a disfluent white person--or any white person--would be pulling a gun from his pocket. They'd have the patience, and the motive, to see the wallet.

There's so much that needs to be done in this society to honor Diallo's dream of becoming part of the American mosaic. A new multi-dimensioned war on poverty would be a beginning but not enough. As much as we need programs, we need imagination, the imagination to walk, if only for a moment, in the shoes of people we see as "other."

I address this to white folk like myself. How would we feel as a person of color approached by cops with guns drawn? How would we feel walking in our own neighborhood knowing that we fit a profile that puts us at risk of being stopped and searched? How would we feel being on vacation knowing that we could never be sure how we'd be received by a waiter, shopkeeper, innkeeper... or police officer?

We talk about being one nation indivisible, but we don't come close. White people in this country are all children of immigrants who, most of them, started out like Diallo, hopeful and poor. But Diallo was a black man, and that's why he's dead. Murdered by four white men supposedly upholding "law and order."