The decimation of Indigenous people and the enslavement of Africans are linked. America’s entire saga of white supremacy is a legacy of our English heritage. It’s no surprise that we have a history of systemic police brutality, harassment and bias as disheartening as any bedeviling London or far-off Brisbane.
With his new book, subtitled A Story of Violence, Injustice and the American City, Nicholas Dawidoff explores one chilling example from his home town, New Haven, Connecticut. It was your typical frame-up of an innocent inner-city youth. Naive, unworldly and eager to return home from hours of interrogation, Bobby Johnson, 16, rashly believed a detective, Clarence Willoughby. Questioned with no one else present, Johnson was strong-armed. Told that if convicted “he was liable to be executed”, the young man was promised that confession would mean probation. And so, three times, in three different ways, an innocent adolescent admitted murder.
