A few weekends ago, I attended my cousins’ high school graduation. They went to a minority-majority school in a southern city. I looked up the demographics because I was curious, and it’s 70% black and 92% nonwhite.
I don’t think I expected anything out of the ordinary, but at the same time I didn’t know exactly what to expect.
It took place in a sports stadium. We had to wait in line to get in. I’m not sure how or why the heat felt so much more oppressive hundreds of miles north of Tampa Bay, but it did.
We had to wait in a line outside for maybe 10 minutes or so before we could get in, and while there was a palpable difference inside, the air conditioning either wasn’t working or was severely underperforming. Most people began using programs as makeshift fans.
I initially sat by my aunt and sister, but a woman came up to me shortly after I’d gotten there and informed me she had saved the seat for her son. I immediately got up and found a new seat in a nearly empty row in the nosebleeds where my mother, grandmother, great aunt, two cousins and a cousin-in-law joined me. At first it didn’t seem like we’d be able to fit in the same row, but two men next to me offered to move down so we wouldn’t have to split up.
They played the national anthem and had some kind of military demonstration during it.
This was about 5 days after Karmelo Anthony’s conviction, and a part of me wondered if that would affect anything.
I’m not someone who thinks the internet is real life, but back when the Austin Metcalf/Karmelo Anthony story first gained traction last year, I remember seeing people that I knew in real life defending the killer. Of course, these were people I hadn’t spoken to in at least a decade and a half and barely did when we were in proximity. But the idea that anyone I thought of not as some random interchangeable idiot online but an actual person could have those beliefs completely disoriented me.
And because of that, I was much more weary of encountering the derangement I’d seen on social media up close and personally.
But the National Anthem went on as usual. No boos, no rumbling, no “protests.” Not everyone stood up, but it seemed like most people did. I was actually pleasantly surprised when the stadium exploded into applause at its conclusion.
Besides that, I didn’t see or hear of anything that would have gone viral on Twitter for all of the wrong reasons. As far as I know, there weren’t any fights, outbursts, or inappropriate displays.
Following the Karmelo Anthony conviction, someone posted something along the lines of “how dare you judge black people based on the way 90% of them behave.”
And while I know my anecdotal experience doesn’t negate everyone else’s, I think that person had it wrong.
I don’t think 90% of black people are completely unreasonable degenerates.
I think the issue is that in 90% of the videos you see online of unreasonable degenerates, the culprits in question are black.
And while that might sound like I’m saying the same thing two different ways, they’re actually different problems.
Black people absolutely commit crimes at a higher rate than the rest of the population. Some activists will try to explain it away with bad math or “socioeconomic factors” but anyone with a basic understanding of statistics knows this isn’t really up for debate.
But some people have conflated probability and predictors, and as a result, have developed an irrational, borderline hysterical disposition towards black Americans.
To be clear, I understand why a white person would triple check that they locked their car doors in a certain neighborhood, or might cross the street when they see someone that fits a certain description walking their way, or why they might follow me around a store.
The data tells us that the majority of offenders will look like me, but people have confused that with the belief that the majority of people that look like me are offenders.
And on some level, it’s an easy conclusion to come to even if the logic is flawed when there seem to be infinite examples of one race embodying or embracing the worst of human behavior.
I think about the footage of Karmelo Anthony supporters outside of the trial, harassing Austin Metcalf’s family and shouting incoherently. I think about “teen takeovers” and Spring Break videos. I think of stories I’ve read of people being killed or close to it for asking for simple consideration.
But some people are all too eager to gloss over the fact that black people that want to live in the civilized world are often the victims in the 52% of violent crimes committed by the the 13% of the population they belong to.
It was black Shatavia Willis that was shot 8 times for asking thugs to stop setting off fireworks near children at a playground in Brooklyn. It was black Kyla Hurston that asked a group of “youths” to “stop the foul language” and was beaten mercilessly and thrown off of a bus like a stowaway in a box car. It was black Kevin Cooper that died protecting his 4-year-old grandson after Zyaire Carter, Ty’Davion C. Burton, Jayden J. Sarinana, Jordan Perkins and one identity-protected minor impersonated police officers before breaking into his home.
And I’m sure there are much more recent headlines available, but I mentioned these because they stuck with me mentally long after I initially read them.
I actually think I understand the predicament better than most based on the environment I was born into versus the one I’m in now.
I grew up in a normal middle class neighborhood in pretty much every sense. If you walked a mile in one direction, you’d hit homes that were valued at over a million dollars long before 2020 and if you walked a mile in the other, you’d hit the projects.
The house I grew up in was about 3,000 square feet and had 5 bedrooms. Some neighbors were black, some neighbors were Vietnamese, some neighbors were white. For the most part, it was a quiet street where nothing really happened. I never felt unsafe coming home after dark. There was a liquor store around the corner, but there was never anyone loitering outside of it.
A few years ago, I bought a house in the ghetto with the hopes of gentrification and now I live in a kind of neighborhood I didn’t even know existed when I was a kid.
I had been exposed to the country, because that’s where my mom was from. I’d been exposed to much more stereotypical city living visiting my biological father, who lived in an apartment outside of New York City. But I’d never seen anything like this before. It was like a Boondocks sketch come to life.
People seem to litter recreationally here, tossing their junk on the ground after walking past two industrial dumpsters. Drug dealers and their clientele are a constant presence. There are always groups of men standing around and doing nothing.
A lot of the people here seem to either embrace criminality or turn a blind eye to it.
I feel like I came of age in the quiet circumstances that never make the news and later found myself in a caricature of the worst my race had to offer.
And I think both America and black America are held hostage by an overwhelming unwillingness to confront the bottom of our barrel for what it actually is.
I’m speaking generally, but it seems like the standard reaction for a lot of black Americans when faced with the failures of our community is to deflect to any anecdote they can find of someone of a different background doing the same thing, to cry racism or worst of all; to make excuses for chaos and calamity.
And our inability or refusal to hold ourselves accountable has resulted in a mentality that protects felons, endangers the innocent and makes all of us look guilty.
There are a lot of people desperate to explain away black depravity with fantasies of desperation and survival. They convince themselves that every drug dealer has a heart of gold and had no other choice to provide for his family, or that the murderer was “bullied” and “acting in self defense” without a shred of evidence to support it. And then have the nerve to wonder why we’re treated like the criminals collectively condoned.
A culture that refuses responsibility doesn’t respect itself, and shouldn’t be surprised when no one else does.
In other words, the longer black people take up for evil, immorality and indecency driven by tribalism, the longer we’ll all be judged by the evil, immorality and indecency we defend.
what do you think?