Judge showed the prejudice that lurks inside

Tacos on South Street draw a crowd

In this country, the phrase “big Black man” can carry a connotation of dangerousness and otherness.

When spoken by white people, it adds to whatever story they’re telling a context of fear that is unspoken but understood.

 “I was scared” — that is what is meant when white people like me say “big Black man.”

It sounds like this:

“He was a big Black man, but he turned out to be the nicest guy.”

“The street was dark and this guy was walking behind me — a big Black man.”

Black men don’t have to actually be big to be described this way, as former Whitehall Justice Robert Putorti demonstrated before he was removed from office earlier this month.

In 2015, while presiding over Whitehall Village Court, Putorti pulled a loaded gun on Brandon Wood, who was appearing before him on criminal charges. While approaching the judge’s bench, Wood had stepped over a line where defendants are supposed to stop. Putorti pulled the gun and told Wood to step back, which he did.

Wood was 34 at the time, 6 feet tall and 165 pounds. I’m 5’11” and 175 pounds, but to my knowledge, no one has ever described me as “big.”

But a few months after he pulled his gun in court, as Putorti was describing the episode to another judge, he described Wood as a “big Black man.”

That other judge said later that Putorti seemed to be bragging. 

At a 2018 meeting of the Washington County Magistrates Association, Putorti told the story to a few other judges, calling Wood a “large Black man.”

Then, in a more recent conversation with his supervising judge, Putorti described Wood as “a large Black man, about 6’9” tall and built like a football player.”

Putorti’s record of comments about Wood’s size are laid out in a Court of Appeals decision from two weeks ago, which affirms an earlier decision by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to remove Putorti from office.

Stories change over time, but how they change can be clues to how the storyteller perceives the world. In Putorti’s retellings, Wood transforms from his actual unremarkable size to an extraordinarily large and strong and, consequently, dangerous man.

Ironically, as the Appeals Court points out, when Putorti told the story, he did not mention Wood’s crime — menacing his wife and another man with a knife. In Putorti’s mind, Wood’s actual scary behavior was overshadowed by the greater threat — his blackness.

The tendency to see Black men as threatening simply because they are Black has caused untold suffering and grief in this country. 

You have to want to get rid of this monster in your mind, or it will stay there, waiting to emerge at the worst moments.

Putorti admitted to the commission he had “no reasonable basis” to fear Wood and yet, he said, he “subjectively feared for his safety.”

When Putorti pulled his gun, Wood certainly did have a reasonable basis to fear he was about to die.

Wanderings

Walking in Cole’s Woods on Friday — an unseasonably warm end-of-October day — we saw a little snake enjoying the sun on the trail.

Throughout the woods, leaves were coming down, sometimes in a shower, filling the air with the soft crackle of their descent as they brushed against branches and each other. Is this why we call it “fall?”

Afterward, we went into town and tried the tacos at the new Mexican restaurant on South Street, Taco Kings. They were good, and the place was busy, which — fingers crossed — could be a positive sign for the street’s hoped-for renaissance.

A stream of customers was ordering lunch on Friday from the new Taco Kings restaurant on South Street.

We ordered three shredded chicken tacos (left) and three grilled chicken tacos, along with a couple of bottles of soda. It was delicious.