American Son: Highlighting the Social Issues and the Worst Fear Every Mother Has
American Son, a play developed for television by Netflix and Kenny Leon tells a story about an estranged interracial couple that reunites in a police station after their son was involved in what seems like a routine traffic stop.
The mother, Kendra Ellis-Connor, played by Kerry Washington impatiently demands to know about her son's whereabouts and the situation is downplayed by the patrol officer Paul Larkin who is played by Jeremy Jordan and is assigned to help her. Officer Larkin seems to have no answers for her son's situation and only really starts helping the family when the husband, FBI agent Scott Connor, played by Steven Pasquale arrives and like Kendra, demands to know the whereabouts of his son.
After being strung along for what seems like hours, the couple talks about their frustration and disagreements on their marriage and their son.
The movie takes a turn when Scott Connor receives a video on the traffic stop where his son was involved. Although it isn’t clear, it is enough to scare the parents and demand answers from anyone they see walk in the police station.
The movie ends in an unfortunate tragedy when it is revealed their son was killed in the traffic stop when the cop pulled his gun to shoot one of the fleeing suspects and the bullet ricochets.
Apart from being a mother's worst nightmare, American Son has a lot of underlying racial issues that are very present in today’s world with social injustice and the racism that is unfortunately still alive today.
Officer Larkin’s Downplay
American Son starts with a worried mother, Kendra who is impatiently waiting to hear back from her son while simultaneously trying to figure out why her car was involved in a traffic stop. Her situation doesn't get any better when a patrol officer, Officer Larkin is assigned to help her.
Officer Larkin offers very little help when he refuses to help Kendra with information, claiming there's a protocol he has to follow that forbids him from giving her info. Kendra, understandably so, does not take no for an answer and demands him to check his “computers” and “logs” to find out why he had been pulled over. Larkin budges and decides to help her with asking her questions about her son, but she quickly realizes that Larkin is treating her son, Jamal, more like a criminal than a victim, to what she suspects might be due to his name and skin color.
Asking questions like what his “street name” is or if he had any visible marks with his examples being “tattoos, knife marks, or gold teeth”, stereotypical for a gang member.
Kendra, who reveals she is a psychology professor, calls officer Larkin out for his ignorance and tells the officer that Jamal is a good kid with high grades and a bright future ahead of him, not someone who is likely to misbehave.
Unfortunately in today’s world, in what seems like a never-ending battle with racism, many African American parents are forced to deal with degrading questions and ignorance from those who are sworn to protect us. Although it is not always the case, it is more often than not.
Some may claim its the statistics or the person themselves that provoke the officers, but the sad truth is that African-Americans are sometimes treated like criminals before they are treated like people.
Larkin’s ignorance continues when he immediately reveals the information he left out from Kendra and happily obliges to her husband, who is both white and an FBI agent.
Confusing him with the liaison officer that is expected to arrive to sort out the situation, Larkin confesses to Agent Connor that Kendra is hard to handle and that she has gone from “0 to ghetto in seconds”. He reveals to Connor that Jamal had been stopped with two other black boys and that they were being held for questions in a neighboring police station. This is when Larkin reveals Jamal might have been pulled over for his seemingly offensive bumper sticker “shoot cops with cameras”.
Agent Connor Claiming Jamal Regressing Due to His New Lifestyle
When Agent Connor is introduced, it is revealed almost immediately that Kendra and he do not have a good relationship. They almost immediately start arguing over something small like proper English and grammar, before eluding to their marital problems and their son.
Connor claims his son has been regressing his life, by wearing baggy jeans, changing his hairstyle to cornrows and even rethinking his commitment to West Point, a prestigious military university.
Throughout the movie, it is seen Connor is a loving father but not really aware of his son’s life, mostly due to his work and problems with his wife. He buys his son his car and claims to have coached his baseball team but seems to be pushing Jamal to live like he wants him to.
Conor blames his son’s new appearance and his black friends for being pulled over and blames Kendra for her lack of parenting, but Kendra turns it on him by calling him out for his ignorance of what black people in America deal with.
This is what American Son is all about, a mother who worries about her son in the custody of the police. Jamal is 6'2'’ and at 18, is a full-grown adult. Kendra shares her fear and the extra precautions black adults have to make to be considered safe, precautions Scott would not understand being white and privileged. She lists all the innocent black males that have been killed and all the social, real-life issues dealt with being a black male.
Scott realizes her claims and apologizes but still doesn't seem to understand her overreactions, claiming that bringing up “Black Lives Matter” and racial injustice justs makes the officers feel bad and less susceptible to helping.
It can be argued that even his own father is guilty of oppressing his son by forcing him to grow up the way he intended rather than being himself, claiming Kendra is making him scared of the world.
The Face of the Race
In a tender moment with her husband, Kendra confesses that her son is enraged by Scott for leaving, doing everything from changing his lifestyle to contemplating West Point all just to spite his father.
She also talks about Jamal's depression and his awakening realizing he is a black man in a white society, being one of 3 black kids in his school that is predominantly white.
He claims to feel like the “face of the Race”, being the example for all black people and being stereotyped. He feels the pressure and is constantly trying to find a way to fit in without feeling the pressure of trying to be someone.
Kendra deduces that Jamal’s involvement with the unidentified black males in his car was him simply finding brothers he can be himself around and not have to worry about watching his back.
It is something minorities have to deal with on a daily basis, constantly trying to break free from some sort of stereotype and not being seen for who they are, rather their skin color. It is a lot of pressure and it is no wonder Jamal felt like he couldn't handle it, breaking down in front of his mom.
Growing up in the projects, Kendra understood the pain Jamal went through and attempted to comfort him. Unbeknownst to his father, who claims to talk to Jamal every day, Scott starts feeling remorse for any grief he might've caused his son.
Shut up and Do What You’re Told
Just moments after watching the disturbing video of her son's traffic stop the parents are understandably distraught and their patience is as short as ever. Luckily the long-awaited Liasion officer, Lieutenant John Stokes finally makes an appearance but it is too little too late.
After losing his cool, Scott is arrested for getting violent and shoving officer Larkin and the Lieutenant. While he is getting booked, Kendra is left alone with Stokes where he claims the stop was made worse by the teens talking back and giving the officer who stopped them a harder time.
Even though the Lieutenant is also African-American, he tells Kendra how threatening 3 black boys in a car can look and he sides with the officer who was “just doing his job”. He states that if the boys had just complied and kept quiet, the boys would be safe at home rather than in a police station. Kendra says she raised her son to stand up for his rights and that staying quiet makes things worse for trigger happy police officers.
She argues that black boys are raised to act tough to avoid showing fear and to stand up to those who are being oppressed.
This is a simple example of what divides the world today in this situation. Many claim that being quiet and cooperating with the officer is the best approach to getting through a traffic stop, but when we watch the news and see all the senseless shootings and beatings it is tough not to be scared.
Especially when the boys had been caught dealing with marijuana which is only legal for medicinal reasons in Florida, where this movie takes place.
The movie ends with the tragic news that Jamal had been killed by a stray bullet that hit him as a freak accident as he had been the only one that cooperated with the officer.
The question we as viewers are left with is if Kendra who represents those who feel that law enforcement is racist and the officers, including her husband, represent those who feel the boys were asking for the violence by failing to comply.
