It’s A Criminal Assumption, And Unfair
America’s Most Wanted.
I gave three young men that collective nickname as soon as I saw them clustered around the front door talking to my oldest daughter.
The second or third time I heard myself say it, I stopped to ask myself why. I didn’t like the answer much.
Partly it was because they are young, their car old, their clothes fashionably baggy (though not sagging off their backsides).
But mostly, I think, it was because they are black.
Polite, decent guys, as I later learned. But black.
Much has been made in recent years of the alleged criminality of young black men. Cabbies use it as an excuse to deny them rides, shop owners to forbid them access. We’ve all heard the dismal statistics: Blacks are 12 percent of the population, yet 45 percent of those arrested for violent crime. The vast majority of those are men.
Because of those numbers, it has been argued that the cabby and the shop owner do not act out of racism, but from pragmatic self-preservation. Just the other day, nationally syndicated columnist Richard Cohen wrote that because of those numbers, “invidious generalizations are to be expected.”
But consider: Males in general are a little less than half the U.S. population yet make up almost 90 PERCENT of those arrested for violent crimes. Damning numbers. And yet men in general have no trouble hailing a taxi or being served in a store. Where are the “invidious generalizations” about them?
The question is not entirely facetious, and, no, I don’t deny that young black men are the justice system’s best customers. But even so, it troubles me that some of us blithely accept “generalizations” about them.
And that one of those is me.
I know I am not the only one. Nor does it end with Richard Cohen. The fact is, we ALL blacks included - make terrible, unsupported leaps of logic in which black men are guilty until proven innocent. I wonder what that tells the decent, ordinary man who asks for nothing but to live his life, unmolested.
And I am angry with myself because I know better, know the insidious ways America teaches blacks to hate, fear, doubt, belittle and limit themselves. I know the psychology of self-loathing and how it plays out in the epithet we call ourselves by, the self-questioning we subject ourselves to, the way we worship “good hair” and “high yellow” skin.
Problem is, I thought knowing these things made me impervious to their effects. But apparently, it does not.
America’s Most Wanted.
Thankfully, I never said it in front of them. So I was able to sit there with a straight face and only secretly shame the day they came to my house and spoke in rueful tones about being harassed by the cops. It seems four squad cars swooped down on them because they had a cracked taillight.
Freeze that picture. FOUR squad cars. A cracked taillight.
It wasn’t the first time it had happened. Insanely, it would happen to them again that very week.
One of the guys - a quiet-spoken 22-year-old I’ll call Will - sought me out a few days later. We talked for hours: his job, his fiancee, hoops, hopes, history. And cops.
He’s fearful that one day, he’ll say or do the wrong thing, give the cops the excuse they need to ruin his life and cancel his dreams. “I have a bad temper,” he confided.
So I spoke to Will about invidious generalizations, self-fulfilling prophecies and the psychology of self-loathing. Challenged him to think how many times and in how many ways he as a black man has been told he is worth less. Black men have to be strong of mind, I told him, have to put what we know about ourselves ahead of what others “assume.”
And I voiced the question every young black man must eventually confront: What’s the point of doing right if I’m to be treated as a criminal regardless?
Do right anyway, I counseled him. Don’t give them the satisfaction of making you something you’re not.
Will seemed at peace when he left.
Later, I faced the mirror and kicked my own ass.
xxxx