美国国家公共电台 NPR What A Case Of Mistaken Identity Tells Us About Race In America

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

This week, 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes was buried in Harris County, Texas. The second-grader was shot and killed as she sat in a car on the morning of December 30, during a drive-by shooting. After initial reports that the shooter was a white man, there was local and national outcry that this shooting was a racially motivated attack. Then this week, deputies in Harris County charged two men in relation to the shooting, and both of them are black. Gene¹ Demby is with NPR's Code Switch team, and he's here to talk about this case and what it might tell us about how Americans think about race and violence right now. Hi there, Gene.

GENE DEMBY, BYLINE²: Good morning, David.

GREENE: OK. So can you start by just walking us through the timeline here?

DEMBY: Sure. It's a really sad story. So...

GREENE: Yeah.

DEMBY: Jazmine Barnes was in a car with her mother near a Walmart - it was early in the morning - when shots rang out. Her mother was shot in the arm but she survived. Jazmine, who was 7, was shot in the head and died at the scene. The other passengers in the car, her sisters, said that during the shooting, they heard shots coming from a red pickup³ truck driven by a white male. And there was a police sketch⁴ after this of a white man in a hoodie that was widely circulated on social media. And so there was real fear that this was a racially motivated attack.

GREENE: OK. But now we know that the suspected shooter was black.

DEMBY: That's right. This week, the police have charged two suspects in the case, Larry Woodruffe, the alleged⁵ shooter, and Eric Black Jr., the alleged driver. The police say they think the shooting was a case of mistaken identity, that these two guys were trying to retaliate⁶ against someone they got into an argument with earlier and they misidentified that person's car as the car that Jazmine Barnes was in. They've both been charged with capital murder. The police say they actually believe that this red pickup and this white male actually exists, but they think that in the confusion of the shooting, the eyewitnesses⁷ in the car thought that that person was the shooter who was driving away.

GREENE: OK. So given all of this, help me understand the role that race is playing in this whole national conversation right now.

DEMBY: So really quickly after the shooting, between the shooting and the actual arrest, Shaun King, an activist⁸ who is very prominent social media, offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the suspect's arrest. He helped publicize this police sketch of this presumed white suspect. During the same period, Sheila Jackson Lee, who's a congressman⁹ from Harris County, which is the county that includes Houston, where this happened, she called this killing¹⁰ a hate crime. So it became framed in the context of a racial attack.

And the context here is important. So remember, it was only two decades ago that a black man named James Byrd Jr. was lynched by white supremacists about two hours away from Harris County in Texas. That killing helped fuel our federal hate crime legislation. More recently, there was the mass shooting by a white supremacist at a historic black church in 2015 in South Carolina. There was the fatal car attack by a white nationalist in Charlottesville in 2016. The FBI said in a report last year that hate crimes were up 17 percent in 2017. That's the third straight year. So the suspicions that this was a racially motivated attack, even though they were wrong, are based in this very real trend line around racially motivated violence.

GREENE: But you're suggesting that if this suspect had been identified as black from the very beginning, I mean, this story would have been really different.

DEMBY: Yeah. I mean, crime with both black victims and black perpetrators tend not to make national news, right? Just two weeks before Jazmine Barnes was shot, there was another 7-year-old in Harris County who was, unfortunately, seriously injured in a drive-by shooting. That child is OK. But when these crimes do bubble up to this level, that when they make national news, it's usually being invoked¹¹ to wave away sort of concerns about structural¹² racism¹³, right? So when people talk about police violence, they say, well, what about the violence in black communities - this sort of concern-trolling about black-on-black crime. But there are, sadly, a lot of Jazmine Barnes out there.

GREENE: That's Gene Demby from NPR's Code Switch team. Gene, thanks.

DEMBY: Thank you so much, David.

1 gene   

n.遗传因子，基因

参考例句：

• A single gene may have many effects.单一基因可能具有很多种效应。
• The targeting of gene therapy has been paid close attention.其中基因治疗的靶向性是值得密切关注的问题之一。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 pickup   

n.拾起，获得

参考例句：

• I would love to trade this car for a pickup truck.我愿意用这辆汽车换一辆小型轻便卡车。||The luck guy is a choice pickup for the girls.那位幸运的男孩是女孩子们想勾搭上的人。

4 sketch   

n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述

参考例句：

• My sister often goes into the country to sketch. 我姐姐常到乡间去写生。
• I will send you a slight sketch of the house.我将给你寄去房屋的草图。

5 alleged   

a.被指控的，嫌疑的

参考例句：

• It was alleged that he had taken bribes while in office. 他被指称在任时收受贿赂。
• alleged irregularities in the election campaign 被指称竞选运动中的不正当行为

6 retaliate   

v.报复，反击

参考例句：

• He sought every opportunity to retaliate against his enemy.他找机会向他的敌人反击。
• It is strictly forbidden to retaliate against the quality inspectors.严禁对质量检验人员进行打击报复。

7 eyewitnesses   

目击者( eyewitness的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The examination of all the eyewitnesses took a week. 对所有证人的质询用了一周的时间。
• Several eyewitnesses testified that they saw the officers hit Miller in the face. 几位目击证人证明他们看见那几个警官打了米勒的脸。

8 activist   

n.活动分子，积极分子

参考例句：

• He's been a trade union activist for many years.多年来他一直是工会的积极分子。
• He is a social activist in our factory.他是我厂的社会活动积极分子。

9 Congressman   

n.（美）国会议员

参考例句：

• He related several anecdotes about his first years as a congressman.他讲述自己初任议员那几年的几则轶事。
• The congressman is meditating a reply to his critics.这位国会议员正在考虑给他的批评者一个答复。

10 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

11 invoked   

v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求

参考例句：

• It is unlikely that libel laws will be invoked. 不大可能诉诸诽谤法。
• She had invoked the law in her own defence. 她援引法律为自己辩护。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 structural   

adj.构造的，组织的，建筑（用）的

参考例句：

• The storm caused no structural damage.风暴没有造成建筑结构方面的破坏。
• The North American continent is made up of three great structural entities.北美大陆是由三个构造单元组成的。

13 racism   

n.民族主义；种族歧视(意识)

参考例句：

• He said that racism is endemic in this country.他说种族主义在该国很普遍。
• Racism causes political instability and violence.种族主义道致政治动荡和暴力事件。