scans_daily | Sam Wilson: Captain America #20

Again, the sermon doesn't mention the brutality at all. All efforts go into proving Elvin innocent, rather than proving the Americops guilty. Elvin is bloodied and has a swollen eye when Sam visits him in jail, but does not seem otherwise incapacitated, and even the visual signifiers of his injury seem to have completely healed by the next issue. Police brutality is simply incidental to the story, it's not focused on at all.

This issue shows the Americops using excessive force. The previous issue has some characters arguing that the force against Rage was justified because he looked big and threatening.

I think what you mean is that police brutality is not the *main* focus of the story, in that it casts its net broader to be about racial inequity in the criminal justice system in general.

I'm saying that police brutality is so minimized it feels insulting. We don't have to compare this to shootings - let's compare Rage being beaten by the Americops and their truncheons, to him being beaten by his fellow inmates with their bare fists in this issue. Huge fucking difference in outcomes, eh?

Police brutality is straight-up ignored by the story. Rage, for all his rage at the system, is boiling at the thought of being unfairly convicted and doesn't seem to particularly care that he got the shit kicked out of him. Again, the priest in his sermon of all the injustices that were inflicted upon Rage, says that he was put in a cell, that he was convicted, and ... well, that's it.

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I don't see how those matter if the protagonists aren't addressing it.

Sure, you can portray the Americops as beating the shit out of civilians all you want, but if the narrative emphasis of the story is on how they have to prove Elvin innocent, and how they have to handle community reactions to prevent riots, and nothing about how they should get to work shutting the Americops down, then that's just minimizing and normalizing police brutality.

Like, in another comment you said the Americops exist because they need supervillains to fight. But they're not fighting the cops, they're fighting the courts and the rest of the criminal justice system.

In the story arc as a whole, there most certainly hasn't been nothing about shutting down the Americops. Sam just hasn't been particularly successful at it. Even this issue, we have people being beaten by Americops and that same community waving "No more Americops" signs. It's not a stretch to draw a line between those two points.

Like, in another comment you said the Americops exist because they need supervillains to fight. But they're not fighting the cops, they're fighting the courts and the rest of the criminal justice system.

It's all part of one, filthy whole.

You are talking about backdrop. I am saying this should be part of the main plot. Of course I think this is insufficient.

Rage starts off in conflict with the Americops, is unfairly and brutally beaten by them, and then decides that the real problem is the disproportionate number of black men being incarcerated in the US. Rage acts like he's privileged, like his Avengers connections would prevent him from being treated like an average black man - but he's already been beaten by the police! He's already a living example of how black men are unfairly treated by law enforcement! Why isn't he upset about the injustices he's already suffered, instead of seeking to prove a point by forgoing 'special treatment'? Why does he need to go through this whole self-inflicted song and dance when it's so utterly redundant?

I suspect the answer is that Nick Spencer doesn't actually understand the emotional resonance of police brutality, and thus feels like he needs to 'add on' to it in order to raise the stakes, inadvertently losing track of his plot in the process. Yes, this is all 'one filthy whole' in that racism in the US is institutional and pervasive, but the sheer expanse of it makes it even more idiotic to haphazardly leap from one aspect to the next.

I think we've circled back to, "I think what you mean is that police brutality is not the *main* focus of the story, in that it casts its net broader to be about racial inequity in the criminal justice system in general."

We're talking in circles now and clearly we won't change each other's minds, so I'll thank you for the thoughtful discussion and bow out.

One last shot from me: can you imagine a person in Rodney King's situation saying, "I'm going to refuse all aid from these fancy lawyers who have offered to represent me, because I don't want any special treatment. In fact, in order to prove a point about how the US justice system railroads black men into prison, I hope to go to trial and be found guilty of reckless driving and DUI and evading arrest, even though I'm innocent, so that everyone can see how the system really works."

Because that's how idiotic this plotline seems to me.

If you remove all the differences in the two situations, yes, it does then sound idiotic.

I don't like that he had Rage make an idiotic and self-destructive choice to get thrown into prison. That makes me angry; but I think that's the point.

It does not get brought up in that sermon. It's been brought up in multiple other places.

Sam Wilson: Captain America #20

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Well, since you asked...

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