“In Julie Otsuka’s novel When the Emperor was Divine, the boy sees visions of his father and what he believes his father is like physically and personality wise. Even though the boy hasn’t seen or talked to his father for many years, he still talks very highly of him. Therefore, some people might argue that the boy is delusional. In fact, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown would also agree that the boy is being delusional; people aren’t who they seem to be. By diving deeper into the boy’s mentality and how he views his father, it is understood this concept is important to note. Why can’t the family, the boy specifically, in When the Emperor was Divine accept that the father is not the man they had once thought he was? The answer to this question can come from many different angles. One reason that sticks out is, they want to protect their father. Just as in Young Goodman Brown, Goodman Brown doesn’t believe his father is a devil worshipper because he wants to protect his father and becoming one with the devil is a dangerous thing to do.
When the Emperor was Divine is a story about a Japanese American family that gets taken from their home during World War II in a nationwide issue that affects all Japanese Americans and sends them to various barracks in Utah. The families that are sent to the camp are based on looks, if you look Japanese or Asian you were taken, and are stripped of all rights previously owned. The story is told in many different voices, characters, and is told from each of their perspectives of what is going on. Readers get a look into the emotions that each character felt going through the whole process. As the book continues readers get a slight introduction of the mysterious father and who he is, but until the fathers’ point of view readers don’t actually get to see the father for who he truly is. Young Goodman Brown is a novel that follows Goodman Brown and his encounter with the Devil. The story reveals many people who Goodman thought were pure and good to actually be in cahoots with the Devil and Goodman is forever changed after it. A once lively man turned to a depressed, distrustful man who lives out his days in sorrow.
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The boy in When the Emperor was Divine holds his father to a different standard. The boy remembers him as, “a loving, mild-mannered, and gentle man” (Otsuka 90). But upon his return readers come to know the father as bitter and weary, reeling from the psychological effects of being unjustly interned as an alien enemy. The same issue presents itself in the story of Young Goodman Brown. Goodman speaks very highly of his father. The devil is talking with Goodman and the devil reveals that “it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip’s war” (Hawthorne 939). Hearing this news, Goodman is crushed. Readers begin to wonder why, why do families, young boys in general, speak so highly of the men of their families when they really don’t know them at all. One possible answer to this is that the boy is protecting the image of his father for his own sake. Growing up without a father being an adolescent boy can pose its challenges. He is protecting his father by keeping his name from being dragged in the mud because of what others will think of him after the arrest. Goodman uses the same tactic when his father is named a devil worshipper, he wants nothing but to protect his father’s image in his own mind so he can keep sane.
The solution to this issue could also be, the boy refuses to accept his father is anything else but a lovable man because he wants normality within their family and the image of his father keeps him sane. With World War II going on, his father was taken from him, and their family is having to pack up and leave everything behind. This gives the boy a reason to want a little normality in his life. His visions of his dad being the cowboy that saves the town gives the boy a little hope. Hope that one day all will go back to normal. The constant referring back to the boys’ father and how good of a man he is/was shows, readers, that the boy looks up to his father. To get through these rough times the boy needs something to get him through and feeling normal gets people past those tough times. Goodman Brown can also be explained by this answer. Even though his father is a devil worshipper, Goodman is going through a tough time and needs normalcy within his life. Seeing others as someone they used to be, gives a sense of ease and makes the bad parts of that person go away. Even though refusing to accept the truth is not always the right answer, it is an answer that can give people the time it takes for them to heal.
Another possible solution to this ever-growing list is, that the outcome the boy was given wasn’t the outcome that he had expected or wanted. Instead of dealing with the issue head-on, overlooking it and remembering his father as he once was is easier. The boy in When the Emperor was Divine painted the image of a superhero father one that did it all. Upon finding out that the father is not who he imagines him as, the boy reverts back to his imagination and chooses to remember him as he once was. The father is gripped by his rage and resentment at America for imprisoning him and his family, the father slowly disconnects from his family, becoming more sullen and withdrawing into his inner world. “Though he did not physically die at the camp, he does return as a ghost of his former self” (Otsuka 98). The boy loses his father mentally and given the outcome wasn’t expected the boy continues to revert back to his own mind and how he saw his dad.”
Racial Profiling In Stop-and-Frisk
According to The Attorney General of New Jersey in 1999, “… determined that searches of cars on the Turnpike were even more racially disparate than the initial stops: 77.2% of all ‘consent’ searches were of minorities and blacks” (Rudovsky, 2001). It is also important to note that according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, “Nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent.” With these unfortunate statistics surrounding the stop-and-frisk policy in New York City, it comes to show that police officers are ultimately targeting innocent minorities because of their abuse of authority. Rudovsky also points out that, “American men constitute approximately 7% of the population.’ In 1930, they constituted 22% of all prison admissions; today they comprise 51% of admissions, a rate six times that of white men” (2001, page 314). It is a substantial difference between the whites and minorities that are being targeted by police officers. The idea of this was presented in Ross Tuttle’s documentary, “The Haunted and the Hated: An Inside Look at the NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy.”
I was intrigued by the idea presented in the film from the beginning. According to Burns, he states that “researchers were interested in understanding how frequently patrol officers engaged in searches, how often their searches met constitutional standards, and what explained the proclivity to search unconstitutionally” (2013, page 335). The studies have shown that “30% of the 115 suspects in the sample were searched unconstitutionally, and few of these cases resulted in arrest or citation” (2013, page 335). I believe that this method of stop-and-frisk is not that successful in terms of helping our community; it has just created an immense amount of tension between our local communities and our police officers. I might want to investigate this speculation in my examination venture: Does the likelihood of power utilized on people amid a Stop and Frisk experience in New York City differ by race?
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First of all, in order to support my thesis and establish if whether or not the probability of force used on individuals during a Stop and Frisk encounter in New York City varies by race, I plan to borrow somewhat more profound to understand why the police feel the need to target minorities, and where this ultimately roots from. Without a doubt, there is a large number of variables causing police officers to target minorities and also make this policy of Stop-and-Frisk. Nonetheless, according to Burns, he talks about the Supreme Court Case of Terry v. Ohio (Terry v. Ohio, 1986), and he states that “The Court ruled that officers may detain a person briefly without probable cause that the person committed a crime. It further stated that stopping and frisking an individual is distinct from and do not constitute an arrest despite the restricted freedoms involved” (2013, 329-330). So, it would be logical to assume that the majority of minorities depicted in the documentary, just like a great percentage of minorities in general, are being restricted of their rights and that there does not need to be an actual reason as to why they are being stopped. It is mind-boggling to believe that the government allows this to happen. Why should we have our rights taken away from us? As we know, the Stop-and-Frisk policy violates our Fourth Amendment, and it is repeatedly being questioned and have larger amounts of translation. So, as Burns puts it, “Frisks cannot become ‘fishing expeditions’ to see if the suspects have any evidence that could be used against them” (2013, page 31). Therefore, the police officers presented in the film are just “fishing” for evidence to be used against the innocent minorities and are also finding ways to abuse their power, and potentially causing more damage within the relationships between them and us.
Also, to thoroughly analyze this research topic, I am planning to explore the existing studies and find out the statistics that minorities have been targeted and how that has increased throughout a couple of years. The article that I have used in my first paragraph called, “Law Enforcement by Stereotypes and Serendipity: Racial Profiling and Stops and Searches Without Cause” and I would also like to use another article called, “Street Stops and Broken Windows: Terry, Race, and Disorder in New York City”, in which I will explore in order to find the answers.
All things considered, even though the roots and statistics are found in the immense amount of research, the film alone can speak for itself. The film depicted how police do this to 1800 people a day, that sounds like too much. One of the quotes that an anonymous NYPD veteran stated was that a captain walked into the precinct and gave a speech about violating rights, and he said: “We’re gonna go out there, and we’re gonna violate some rights.” They feel as though they have the right to do as they please, and they know the government has their back. What matters the most to police officers is having their quotas, because according to the film, if you do not meet your quota, the cops will be subjected to disciplinary. They want to meet quotas because they know that someday they will have a higher position, and it will benefit them. Racial bias seems to be a factor within the “Stop-and-Frisk” policy because most of these police officers are stopping men who are Latino and African-Americans; in other words, minorities. According to Rudovsky, he states that “Back to 1996 in Los Angeles, “of the 561 juvenile felony cases transferred to adult court, 5% were white, 6% were Asian, 30% were black, and 59% were Hispanic” (2001, page 316). The legal framework in America has dependably persevered through much distrust concerning whether there is racial profiling among captures. The stop and search approach of the NYPD has caused much discussion and attention since being connected as a result of the unmistakable racial difference in stops. Presently the inquiry remains; Are cops being racially one-sided while picking whom to stop or would they, say they are simply focusing on “high wrongdoing” neighborhoods, in this way picking minorities as a matter of course?
Works Cited
- Burns, Ronald G. Policing: A Modular Approach. Pearson, 2013.
- Fagan, Jeffrey, and Garth Davies. “Street stops and broken windows: Terry, race, and disorder in New York City.” Fordham Urb. LJ 28 (2000): 457.
- Rudovsky, David. “Law enforcement by stereotypes and serendipity: Racial profiling and stops and searches without cause.” U. Pa. J. Const. L. 3 (2001): 296.
- “Stop-And-Frisk Data”. New York Civil Liberties Union, 2019, https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-data. Accessed 14 Apr 2019.
- Tuttle, R. (2012). The Hunted and the Hated: An Inside Look at the NYPD’S Stop-and-Frisk Policy (Video File) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rWtDMPaRD8.
