Young, Male & Black
I lived on the border of Ditmas Park, Midwood, and East Flatbush for a couple of years. It is among the most diverse neighborhoods in the United States. While Ditmas Park proper had been rapidly gentrifying over the preceding five years, Midwood and East Flatbush were still home to a great variety of ethnic groups. It was one of the main reasons we opted to move there from Carroll Gardens. Well, that and the significantly cheaper cost of living.
There were stories being reported on local blogs and in the newspaper about a young black man who was assaulting people in the neighborhood in broad daylight and stealing their phones. On my way to meet my wife one afternoon a black man, probably in his early twenties, approached me. I happened to be checking a text message so had my phone out. He asked me if I had the time. I looked down at my phone and thought to myself, “fuck, this is the guy. I’m gonna get jumped.” I told him what time it was and then he said, “can I ask you a couple of questions about this neighborhood?” I was clearly nervous, but my weird desire to be everybody’s New York City tour guide kicked in and I said “yes.” “What’s it like here? Are people friendly? Are there good places to eat?”, he asked. “It’s a great neighborhood,” I said. “Lots of families. People from many different ethnic backgrounds co-existing. There’re some pretty good restaurants too.” “Cool,” he continued. “My uncle is thinking about moving us here from Jersey so I just came to check it out. Thanks for your time.” “Yeah, no problem,” I said, still a bit sheepishly. “It’s a great place to live.” He walked away and I continued down Ditmas Avenue, disgusted with myself.
I had lived in and around New York City for most of my life. No person of color had ever done me harm. When I was sixteen, some friends and I were carjacked at knifepoint by a menacing white guy at JFK Airport. I was beaten as a young child by a white woman who looked after me. A white grade-school teacher smacked me around a bunch for reasons I can’t begin to fathom. A white piano teacher once slapped me across the face for incorrectly playing a piece he’d assigned me. I got jumped in a park by a group of white kids while visiting family friends in Connecticut. And yet, I feared this guy for fitting a hilariously, horrifyingly vague description of “Young. Male. Black.”
I read today that Philando Castile, the thirty-two-year-old Montessori school cafeteria worker who was murdered by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, was pulled over dozens of times during his years as a licensed driver. Of all the devastating facts I’ve read about his case, this is the one that stuck out most to me. I believe that most white people can not comprehend what it must be like to be pulled over a few times a year for no other reason than the color of your skin. This is institutionalized harassment and racism. This is how a busted taillight can lead so quickly to a homicide. I’ve been pulled over four times since I started driving in 1991. I was speeding in all four cases. I was only ever afraid of the cost of the ticket. The thought that my life may be in danger never crossed my mind. The cops let me off easy every time. I would venture to guess that this experience is typical for the vast majority of white Americans.
I consider myself to be an open-minded, well-informed person. I believe America was founded on a beautiful idea that it has never applied to all of its citizens. I believe hundreds of years of racist policies have caused a chasm between the black and white communities that will never be undone until white people start to have serious, mature and substantive discussions with ourselves, our families, our elected officials and with the black community. Until we start listening carefully to what the black community has to say, what BlackLivesMatter has to say (if you think “all lives matter” then you’ll listen to the group that is telling you not that their lives matter more than yours, only that they matter at all), we can not move on. And yet…And yet…I profiled a guy who fit the world’s shittiest description. I projected my own fear onto him. I assumed the worst about a man I knew literally nothing about besides the color of his skin.
My judgment of him had no immediate consequences. I was not armed with a badge, a gun and the authority of the state to arrest or shoot him. How many “young, black, males” were profiled by cops and harassed in the neighborhood around that time for “fitting the description” of a guy who assaulted a few people and stole their cellphones? How many of those guys ended up in jail for minor, non-violent offenses? This is the danger of bias. It poisons the well of interaction when the stakes are as high as life and death. White people need to take accountability for these biases. Police officers should not be allowed to pull the same guy over dozens of times in the same neighborhood for no good reason. How many white people would be cited for minor traffic violations if they were pulled over every few months? How many of us have gotten behind the wheel and forgotten our driver’s license, let our registration lapse, lost or misplaced our insurance card, had a broken taillight, or a small amount of weed on us? How many of us are dead because of it?
White people need to accept that our biases are problematic because we are still overwhelmingly in control of the government, the police forces, the department of justice, the legal system, the department of corrections, the financial system, the education system and on and on. Our biases, realized or not, regardless of our intentions, can have real life consequences over the lives of others. We are not the only group who harbor prejudice, but we are the group with the majority of the power. We should be joining the calls to change these systems and not be relying on the victims of its hubris and overreach to do so.
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