A Racial and Psychological study of DuVernay’s Mini Film Series When They See Us

Abstract

The Netflix mini film series, When They See Us that was directed by Ava DuVernay was a real story that happened in 1989 at New York’s Central Park where a female white jogger, Trisha Meili, was found brutally assaulted and left to death in the woods. Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salam, and Antron McCray were the main suspects. The five African Americans and Latino boys were fourteen to sixteen years old who were left between the hands of the American justice system to live the most horrifying experience in their lives for a crime they never did. The aim of this thesis is to explore Ava DuVernay’s movie, When They See Us and the bias nature of the criminal justice system in America against people of color and how it impacted their lives and their psychology. The applied methodological theories are: critical race theory, Race Based Traumatic Stress theory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Post Incarceration Syndrome and Freud’s defense mechanisms. The study analyzes the experiences of the Central Park Five as it relates to racism and justice inequality, and how racism, microaggression and implicit bias lead discrimination and brutalization of people of color by the American justice system. As it sought to understand the relationship and the connection between trauma and racism, and how the experience of the five boys ruined their lives, their relationships and left them traumatized.