I remember hearing a story
About a guy who got cops called on him because he was walking home and happened to be behind this young woman. She thought she was being followed he understood her fear but it still hurt.
He grew to resent the humiliation. He’s white, English his third language, America his second home. His resentment grew to outrage. After all he’s a decent human being who never hurt a fly. Why is he being singled out for walking too close behind.
And when I heard this story, as a black man, I didn’t hear the horrible state of sexual assault in our society. Or the actions the police took to defuse the situation. I thought “what did you expect, man?”
I didn’t think “yeah! How does it feel! Walk a mile in our shoes! Check your privilege.” I thought, “man that’s why you always cross the street.” I was raised that if it I looked wrong, I was wrong. Before Trayvon Martin, before the Baltimore riots, 1998, I was 9 years old my dad told me. “You’re one word away from jail, and one move away from dead. That’s just the way it is son, you’re a man, you’re a black man, and I don’t want to lose you.”
So when I heard that a boy wearing a black hoodie got shot in his own neighborhood, my first honest thought was “why was he out so late, alone? Are you kidding me?” My dad taught me to think about where I was, who I was with, where I was going, how I was going to get there. “If you don’t have a plan, someone else will make one for you.”
Emmett Till, nobody taught him that…
I hate that my father thought he needed to teach me that, and yet, how many times have I crossed the street, how many times have his lessons saved my record, or my life.
If I could help it, I would never walk within a stones throw of any woman I don’t know, by myself especially at night, and especially if no one else was walking that direction. I remember walking into a McDonald’s, buying an order of fries and throwing them away because two minutes earlier I noticed a woman do a double take at me, obviously frightened at the sight of a 6'2" 270lb black man not 20 paces behind her.
“Don’t mind me ma'am, just grabbing dinner.” I know that’s not right, I know it’s not fair. But women have every reason to fear me if they don’t know me. You can have faith in humanity, I do on a macro scale.
But I also know that women are assaulted and raped every other minute in my city alone, and cops are threatened and attacked every day.
I’m not handsome, I don’t have a disarming air about me, I am, at first glance everything everyone in this country is raised to believe what the boogie man actually is. So I don’t lurk under the bed or hide in your closet. I cross the street.
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