While 27 seems to be the magic number for rock stars and entertainers, 17 appears to be the golden age when young black men step into their own dark netherworlds. And while the luckiest of us might avoid a pine box or jail cell, it’s at this age-or sometimes younger-that the guilty verdict delivered to our skins is handed down and the social prisons that have been built for us begin to close their gates with increasing speed.
“I suddenly understand that I, along with my friends, are now fully-grown monsters. I mean if criminality had a color then it was the same complexion as us. If criminality had features then it would look exactly like our reflections in the mirror. If criminality had a dress code then it would wear its pants, shirt and shoes exactly like we did.”
This telling except is from an essay published on Oakland Local a few days ago. The author, a regular OL contributor, published fiction writer and UC Berkeley graduate, is describing his first official run-in with the cops at 17. While he and friends are chilling outside of their parked cars, two black and whites roll up with questions, menacing overtones and plenty of “just gimme a reason” posturing. It’s at this moment that the author realizes the reality of the manhood he now inhabits-one full of criminal stereotypes, unconscious racism and an uphill battle against ingrained negative perceptions.
They say the world is your oyster, but for many young men of color in this country, the world can just as easily be a prison yard. Welcome to general population, bruh.Reading this heartfelt account, I admired the writing and the honesty as much as I empathized with the cold realizations and his shear pissed off-tivity at the underlying situation. And I also thought back to my own coming of age cop run in. Similar in enough ways to be comical if it weren’t so goddamned serious.
I was 17 and stuffed into the back of a friends hooptie making the usual Friday night, nothing to do rounds around Richmond, VA. We were making our way through Gilpen Court for some party or some group of girls or some random teenage misadventure when we came up on two cop cars blocking the middle of a very narrow street. No roadblock, no emergency, just the dudes in blue shooting the shit during their downtime.
Now what happened next was stupid-admittedly so-but teenagers are hardly known for their tact in potentially sensitive situations. After sitting behind the cops for about 10 minutes, my man behind the wheel gets agitated. I mean, how hard could it be to just pull the car to the fucking side of the road and let us pass, right? So D honks his horn, and immediately the four young black men sitting there in a beat up old car become targets.
As the car in front of us slowly moves to one side we’re struck with a brief feeling of relief. While we’d never had direct run ins with the law ourselves, folks were from the hood. And we were in The South. And even before that night we had all realized that the line between black and jail is often a short one, even when the line between the truth and a policeman’s retelling could be wide as the James River that flowed through the middle of the city.
Taking all this into account, our relief lasted about as long as you’d expect: the approximately 30 seconds it took us to go down two blocks and round the corner to sit idle outside D’s mom’s house. Also, apparently, the exact same time that it took to call in reinforcements from every single police station in a 3 county radius.
One second we’re releasing our collective breaths, joking and making plans for the next stage of the night. The next we’re on the ground and handcuffed with an army of 5-0 search our car and bodies while D’s mom cries and screams in the background.
After what seemed like forever we’re lifted up and released with warnings-one stated and one nonverbal. As the officer is unlocking D’s cuff he leans in smiling, almost like a friend, and advises him to “clean that car up, it’s a real a mess in there.” But what the four of us heard was much less friendly and much less nonchalant:
“Welcome to the world, boys. You’ve just been introduced to power. Doesn’t it sting? Doesn’t it burn like a sonofabitch when it slaps you? Well, get used to it, because that’s the way it is. This isn’t about right or wrong, this is about us vs you, this is about control. And this was to let you know that we’ll always have it. That we’ll always win. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Welcome to general population, fuckers.”
These two stories, and those shared by many young black and brown youth, have become a rights of passage of sorts into our collective manhoods. During tribal times, young men were sent into the world to face nature and return more whole and ready for the world. Now, young men are shoved into the crossfire of community violence, poverty and police brutality and made to dance, shoulders already heavy with the weight of social injustice. The question we must ask ourselves-all of us-is what this means for the future of young men in this country, and what we can do to stop it.
