When They See Us hurts to watch. That's why we must.

While When They See Us is often physically painful to watch, it’s a vital and powerful piece of media that makes strides in paving the way for change.

It took me almost two weeks to watch the entirety of When They See Us, and even longer to process it. As someone who binges heavy dramas on the reg, I was thrown when Ava DuVernay’s new Netflix miniseries seemed to punch all the air out of my system, over and over again.

In addition to being a professional TV watcher, I’m also no stranger to the horrors of the criminal justice system. I’ve been an addiction therapist for over a decade, often running programs for mandated clients who have previously been incarcerated for drug-related charges.

I’m familiar with the territory of our racist and often unbalanced criminal justice system. I know all too well that things are stacked against young brown and black men. It’s not fair. It desperately needs to change. But it’s the grim truth we live with today. Which is why it was all the more shocking to me when I couldn’t seem to make it through the first episode of the series without hyperventilating.

About twenty minutes into the first episode, Felicity Huffman – playing the myopic prosecutor Linda Fairstein – starts railing against the boys, repeatedly referring to them as “animals”. I realized that something was happening to me. I had to press the stop button.

I took a moment to scan my body, and I found myself boiling with anger, short of breath, and clenching my fists into tight knots. How could someone ever look at these young men – these children! – and label them as animals.

Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix. Acquired via Netflix Media Center. /

Of course I know how. Systemic racism, that’s how. For more on that, please see writer Hannah Giorgis’s stunning piece about the miniseries and the logic of “no humans involved” in The Atlantic. But the repeated assertion that those boys were “animals” struck me hard, and I had to take a break from the screeners Netflix had sent. I wasn’t sure if I’d be going back to the series… until I went to work the Monday after the series officially premiered on Netflix.

As I started checking in with one of my groups, two young men shared that they had seen the series and that it, too, had made them angry and upset.

The story reminded them of their time in jail, how they are often seen by society, and how incredibly demoralizing the system is. We processed those feelings in the moment, but the ideas stuck with me. By our next session, I had watched the first three episodes of the miniseries. So had many of the other clients in the group. Somehow, even though the series stirred up all sorts of difficult feelings, it beckoned for our collective attention.

Deftly written and directed by Ava DuVernay, When They See Us follows the story of the Central Park Five, five young black and Hispanic men who were wrongly committed of a violent rape in 1989.

As the story unfolds over four chapters, DuVernay takes care in exposing many horrific aspects of the U.S. criminal justice system that are still in operation today. Racial profiling? Yup. The impossibility of getting a job with a record? Uh huh. Biased judges and police? Lack of community support after discharge from prison? Unreasonable sentencing of minors? Yes, yes, and definitely yes.

Eventually, I psyched myself up to watch the fourth episode.

Focusing on sixteen year-old Korey Wise and the living nightmare he experienced at Rikers prison, the final installment of the miniseries put U.S. prisons on ultra-blast as insidious beasts that are content to only churn out only more pain and suffering. Wise wasn’t even in the park at the time of the crime, yet he somehow suffered the grimmest punishment of all.

As a youth in an adult prison, he was shuffled into solitary confinement, ostensibly for his own protection, but really because the system could not have cared less about him. His experience was harrowing, and indefinite periods of time in solitary confinement should not be the norm for anyone, even those serving time for actual crimes.

Unfortunately, solitary is used far too often as a containment tactic, especially for inmates experiencing severe mental health issues, and it’s an inhumane practice that borders on criminal.

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It’s all so excruciating. But we must not look away. Of course the Central Park Five deserve our attention after what they’ve suffered through, but even after Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salam, and Antron McCray were exonerated, hundreds of thousands of men and women still remain at the whims of an often capricious and unjust system. By the conclusion of the miniseries, pain transforms into rage. We must bear witness to these injustices so that we may find the power to change them.

When They See Us hurts to watch, but it hurts much in the way that pressing on a blackened bruise hurts. The damage has already been done, but one thing that can remind us to steer clear of pain in the future is to feel it fully in the present.

Our skewed justice system causes untold agony for millions, and if we don’t fix it now, wounded communities will continue to fester. Giving in to numbness and catharsis is not an option. The only way out is to experience the pain and let it guide us to a place where we can collectively begin to heal.

Note: Have some pent up pain and rage after watching When They See Us? Why not channel it into something productive? Support the good work from the fine folks at the Vera Institute of Justice, donate to your local chapter of the ACLU, or check out how to get involved in passing helpful legislation at the Innocence Project.

When They See Us is available for streaming on Netflix.

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When They See Us hurts to watch. That’s exactly why we must.

By Erin Qualey | Jun 14, 2019

While When They See Us is often physically painful to watch, it’s a vital and powerful piece of media that makes strides in paving the way for change.