Jordan Neely’s killing demands we all confront racism

Neely, a homeless Black man, was choked to death on a New York subway by a white man in May.

By ANTHONY EHLERS

On June 14, Daniel Penny was indicted for second-degree manslaughter for choking Jordan Neely to death on a New York subway in May. According to witnesses, Neely, a 30-year-old homeless Black man, was shouting that he didn’t have food or water, but also wasn’t threatening other passengers, when Penny, a 24-year-old white man, grabbed him by the neck. Two other passengers held Neely’s arms while Penny choked him to death. Should you be able to kill someone simply because you are afraid? Is that all it takes? Since when is being afraid sufficient justification to kill someone? Unfortunately, it seems like this is the direction our country is going in.

As I watched the footage of Penny choking Neely, I was horrified. At no point did Penny attempt to detain Neely. He simply walked up behind him and choked him to death. According to Juan Alberto Vázquez, the freelance journalist who filmed the killing, Neely held the chokehold for at least seven and possibly as long as 15 minutes.

Think about how long 15 minutes is, and how terrified Neely must have been. He was being choked by a person he never even saw coming. We watched as he struggled and fought for his life. Even after he passed out, unmoving, Penny continued to choke him.

The video is very disturbing: you are actually watching the death throes of another human being.

Sometimes when there is a video of someone being killed, the media won’t show it. Yet they continued to show this horrifying video over and over. I had to wonder why. Would they have shown it repeatedly if it was a Black man choking a white man? Somehow, I doubt it.

Can you imagine how painful it was for Black and Brown communities to have to watch the video of this Black man fighting for his life over and over again? Repeatedly airing a video like that one instills more fear into the Black community. It’s a subliminal message to Black men that says, “You can be killed at

The Police Violence Report found that police killed at least 1,176 people nationwide in 2022, making it the deadliest year on record for police violence. Black people were 24 percent of those killed in 2022 while making up only 13 percent of the overall population. And according to a recent report by the independent monitoring team overseeing the Chicago Police Department’s compliance with a federal consent decree, in 2018 and 2019 Black Chicagoans were nine times more likely to be pulled over and searched by Chicago police than white Chicagoans were.

Some people may ask why Daniel Penny would attack Jordan Neely. In my opinion, it’s what we see the police do all too often. All the police have to do is say they are afraid, and that gives them the right to kill someone. Similarly, Penny claimed that he was protecting himself and other passengers from Neely, who he said was shouting “threats.”

So Penny got up and tried to subdue Neely. The problem was that Penny, as a former U.S. Marine, is trained in ways to kill people, rather than subdue them, and he killed Neely. In doing so, Penny followed the decades-long example set for him by the police.

The police initially let Penny go without charging him. What message does that send to the Black community? Here is another white man, not even a police o cer, who killed another unarmed Black man—and he wasn’t even arrested!

Now, Penny has been charged with second-degree manslaughter and faces up to 15 years in prison. The decision to charge him with a crime that carries a lighter sentence than first-degree manslaughter or murder shows that the entire criminal justice system is racist. Had Penny been a Black man, he almost certainly would have been arrested on the spot and charged with first-degree murder.

Recently, a seventh-grade class read a piece I wrote, “The ‘tough on crime’ myth.” The whole class read it, and they had some questions for me, so their teacher sent me a list. Those kids are so smart, and they asked some great, insightful questions. One of them stopped me in my tracks. They asked, “How can we end hatred against Black people?”

I want to share with all of you what I told those kids. Here’s what I said:

To be honest, I don’t ever think you’ll be able to stop people from hating, but, there are far more people who do not hate, than those who do. There is no one answer to end hate, but there are things we can do. One of those things is to make sure that we see people who don’t look like us as human beings.

Everyone—Black, Brown, or white—faces similar problems. They worry about the rent and their car payments, and they want the best for their children. They want good schools, and nice neighborhoods, and they want to be safe.

I told the kids that one very powerful thing that you can do right now is to decide that you will never hate anybody because of how they look, and that you will stand up for people who don’t look like you. When you see someone doing and saying things that are hateful, you have to stand up and say, “No, absolutely not. We are not going to allow this.”

I know as young people it’s easy to think that you don’t have a voice, but you do. We all have voices. Don’t be afraid to speak out against hate, or write about it, and encourage others to speak out with you. Because your voice is loudest when it’s joined by others.

This is what I said to those kids, and I say it now to all of you as well. Speak out when you see racism and hatred. Let your voice be heard, and others will join you. All of us can stand up to bigotry, racism, and hatred together.

If we don’t, how can we expect our children to? v

@prisonjourn feat. DJs Derrick Carter, Michael Serafini, and Garrett David