Corruption In If Beale Street Could Talk By James Baldwin

Throughout the novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, written by James Baldwin, there is a common theme of corruption of the police and the racism against African-Americans in the criminal justice system. The main character Fonny, is accused multiple times of crimes he did not commit and because of this, his fate cannot be determined and he slowly loses hope for himself. The way that Baldwin writes this novel shows how much African-Americans suffered even after the civil rights movements in America. Fonny is wrongfully arrested and charged with rape as a result of the corruption of the police. For example, he was not even in the same area as where the rape was supposedly committed and when they did the police lineup he was the only African-American, which proves that there was

The woman who accused him, Victoria Rogers, only knew that the person who had raped her was a black male and since Fonny was the only black male in the lineup that’s who she chose. For instance, when Tish’s mother Sharon confronts Mrs. Rogers in Puerto Rico, she asks her if she was sure that it was Fonny that had in fact raped her and Mrs. Rogers replies, “Yes, I’m sure. They took me down there and they asked me to pick him out and I picked him out. That’s all” (170). Then Sharon questions Mrs. Rogers when she asks her how she knew that it was Fonny that had raped her if the rape had occurred in the dark and Mrs. Rogers claims that there were lights in the hallway and that’s how she knew, but in reality, the cops were the ones that led her to choose Fonny because they had it out for him. For example, the cop that came to arrest Fonny was the same cop who had previously accused Fonny of assault and battery. This occurred at a local farmers’ market when a junkie had grabbed Tish, and in her defense, Fonny pushed him to the ground, that’s when the white cop name officer Bell, approached the scene and immediately blamed Fonny because he was black. Luckily an Italian woman