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.In the eyes of the stereotypically racistpolice, an individual s blackness is the sole evidence needed not to considerhim the suspect of a crime, but make him its patsy.The officer s assessment ofall wealthy black men as being dangerous to the nativist society is shown tobe as reductive as a social paradigm that allows for the existence of the notionof the white lawmaker as sole protector of decency.Effectively, the police willprotect nativist interests in a project that reduces their own racial profile toits most embarrassingly dated notions.They proceed to plant evidence for a broad spectrum of potential crimes,including spattering blood from a potential murder victim and plantingfemale pubic hair from a potential rape victim.The scenario is clearlydesigned to recreate the details of the O.J.Simpson murder trial.Indeed,Sergeant Hicks evokes that instance of racist police procedure almost imme-diately. It seems like every time we frame a rich black guy he s out on thestreets again in no time.It s just like O.J.Do you know how hard those copsworked to frame him? The tireless hours they put in, and then he gets offbecause somebody messed up and said the n word out loud too many times,a dismayed Hicks exclaims.As noted in the PBS Frontline documentary The O.J.Verdict 10 Years On, in the eyes of many, the Simpson case andits verdict had more to do with race than with the guilt or innocence of thespecific perpetrator.A wealthy black man, within the context of that trial,came to represent the racial profiling to which many African Americans feelthemselves subject.Effectively, Detective Furhman s racism in the O.J.case,his eagerness to protect nativist interests, was of greater importance to theU.S.television audience than the question of Simpson s guilt or innocence.In fact, in The O.J.Verdict, an African-American shopowner explains, they framed a guilty man. In the South Park episode, Hicks is cast in the roleof Furhman, and Jefferson s wealth takes precedence in the eyes of the policeand the community over his ill treatment of his son, Blanket.The real irony is that Jefferson himself does not appear to be black.LikeJackson, his appearance and manner do not conform to any specific racialstereotypes.His speech is childlike and his visage androgynous and ageless.His accent, like Token s, is neutral and geographically unplaceable.And hisskin is only a slightly darker shade of the cartoonish white of most South Parkresidents.On discovering that Jefferson does not physically register, Detec-tive Hicks, who has already expressed some confusion about why he andother policemen have such a passion for framing wealthy African Americansfor crimes they didn t commit, vomits.The implication of this is simple: Thefunctional racism instilled by nativist hegemony in its vassals, the police, isdetermined by three factors blackness, talent, and wealth.Removing one of140 Lindsay Colemanthese elements not only disables the police from considering wealthy blacksas aliens, but undermines their conceptions of self and other.Hicks remains impotent until he discovers that, whereas Jefferson maynot appear black, his racial background confirms his actual status as a bloodalien.Reinvigorated, he rushes to Jefferson s house to arrest him.But themoralistic Kyle, like his father, has attempted to form a bridge between thenativists and the alien.Jefferson, enlightened by Kyle on the loneliness ofBlanket, agrees to give up his wealth.In the final moments of the episode,Hicks racially inflected nativist project is thwarted completely.Although hemanages to certify Jefferson s fulfillment of the three elements needed forpolice harassment, Jefferson has now renounced his wealth, and he now failsto fulfill the criteria necessary to activate Hicks compulsive racist profiling.So too does his abdication of wealth destroy the dualistic oppression of theessentialist project.Not only does Hicks discover that he cannot execute thepersecution of his office, but he also finds himself temporarily liberated fromthe patriarchal pressures of his profession
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