RAID AT SCHOOL 'PICTURES' BLACKS AS CRIMINALS

When Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was queried for comment about the capture
of Saddam Hussein in a trench near Tikrit, Iraq, he said the way in which
the former ruler was "pictured" would be of psychological benefit to
Americans. Photographs of a once dapper, dark-haired, confident figure were
replaced by a haggard and disheveled, grey-bearded man, now being probed
for lice.

As an art historian attuned to how pictures shape our opinions, I am
extremely distressed at photographs circulating in national news coverage
of African-American young people in a police incident at Stratford High
School in Goose Creek. How African-Americans have been "pictured"
throughout American history has had profound effect on the lives of many.

For example, in 1915, when D.W. Griffith debuted the first feature-length
motion picture, "The Birth of a Nation," lynching of African-American men
increased. Griffith's Gus, a rough-hewn African-American, left an
unforgettable impression when his quest to embrace the gentle virgin,
played by Lillian Gish, drove her fleeing to her death over a cliff.
Griffith had "pictured" a black man having such desire for Gish that white
women were perceived in mortal danger from any lone black male.

Many parents have spoken out about the "drug raid" at this high school in
Goose Creek. High-school students forced to the ground, handcuffed, while
armed police, guns drawn, with their dogs at the ready, barked orders at
the captives, strike many as excessive. Others maintain that the "raid" was
timed to correspond with buses having just delivered mostly
African-American students to school.

Evidently, most Euro-American students live in communities nearer to the
school, and habitually arrive later. Now we get yet another picture of
African-American youth being targeted as suspects. "Tsk tsk," the casual
viewer can smugly observe, another example of African-American criminality.

Of course, police can say they were following procedure, the school
Principal George McCrackin had "received reports" of "drug activity."

"I'm sure it was an inconvenience to those individuals who were in the
hallway," McCrackin explains. "But there is a valuable experience there."

You know, he is right. Although, up to now, this valuable experience is
usually reserved for urban youth. Recent police shootings in Ohio. Or in
Los Angeles of the early 1990s, where Rodney King had this kind of valuable
experience, beaten senseless for his traffic violation. So did Latasha
Harlin, a teenager shot in the back, dead, by a convenience store owner
after exchanged epithets over suspected shoplifting.

I wonder, what might this Goose Creek incident have become if, like King,
the police perceived resistance from one of the young men they had pressed
to the floor? Or, what if one of the young women, angry at being accused,
had mouthed off at the wrong moment?

And more to the point, what effect will this picture have on the next group
of gun-wielding police? It won't matter that no drugs were found in the
Goose Creek incident. Police, with handguns mere feet from teenage heads,
battled "suspected drug dealers," young African-Americans "pictured" as
criminals.

This ugly scene of police overreaction, dare I add, of "racial profiling,"
happened here, in a town just down the road. I hope as an extended
community that South Carolinians can come together to decry this behavior
and work diligently to spare any more of our children such a "valuable
experience."

The writer is an assistant professor of art history at Coastal Carolina
University in Conway.