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OAKTOWN, CALI - Some change is needed, but I don't know how it will come about. Driving home from work this evening, I witnessed a scene that was senseless and cruel and left me feeling impotent because I could do nothing about it.
A group of young brothers -- the youngest was probably ten, the oldest fourteen at best -- were walking up the streets approaching an older man, also Black he was probably in his fifties, walking down. The tallest and oldest said something to the others then, as they walked past the older man, turned and slapped the man on the back, startling him and making him stumble forward. He swung around shaking and angry.
"Why you say my Mama yo!" the tallest boy shouted, backing away quickly. The other children laughed and started to run around the corner. The tall boy followed.
The old man took a few tentative steps after the boys. I could see that he was angry about their laughter, it must have been racing through his mind what to do. The kids had run off around the corner. Leaving him shaking.
I felt like getting outtah my car and runnin' after those boys, too. But what could I do? Pick a fight with a bunch of kids?
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What got me was the lack of respect they had shown that man, how they had just picked on him because they could. And that they thought it was funny to do it!
I know; I live in the city and I've seen a lot worse, so why should I get all agro about some kids pullin' a dumb, mean prank? I asked myself that driving home, too. I had been thinkin' all day about the article I had promised our editor and how it wasn't comin' and now all I could think about was that pack of kids, like a pack of dogs, victimizing that old man.
It was Black preyin' on Black again, the epidemic that is hurting us as much as any prejudice and any racial profiling is hurting us. I guess that's what got me going. Not that I'm sayin' it would have been any better if it happened to any old man of any race. It's just that that older kid who thought it was fun to smack that old man because he could was probably only a year or two away from feelin' like pullin' a drive-by, instead of run-by on somebody, because he could, and that somebody would also more than likely be Black, too.
I picked up the telephone and called Rod, our publisher, the other night 'cause its only days before he takes off on one of his (interminable) road-trips again, his odysseys, and I wanted to hear the sound of his voice. When I asked him about what was goin' on in Baltimore, he joked about there havin' been ten murders in that town in the last seven days. One where a brother was doused with gasoline and set on fire while he sat on his front stoop, followed by his crew shooting the driver of the car, which crashed into another car and sent a woman and her daughter to the hospital. The night before a two-year-old had caught a stray bullet in a drive-by. A couple of nights later a young man was stabbed in a gas station parking lot. There had been a running gun battle involving six or seven people that went on for a couple of blocks and left a lot of shell-casings on the street. Two were dead from that one as far as they knew when they reported it on the news, he said. All the victims and participants were Black.I gained a better understandin' of why Rod wants to get out of Baltimore.
But like my opening story illlustrates, stupid, senseless violence on any scale can happen anywhere. Baltimore don't own the franchise.
There has got to be some change... but I don't know how it's gonnah come about.
The worse part is, and bear in mind that I like rap music, there is music and attitudes out there that glorify the practice of our people preying on each other like them kids preyed on that old man. I can't get behind that, especially for a people who have to live like refugees in their own country.
Sometimes, it seems to me, that folks -- even our own folks -- forget that we had a hand in building America. We helped create its wealth from Day One, we fought and shed out blood and sweat in every single one of its wars, and we still make massive contributions to its culture. The only really American music that ever was was created by us, from jazz to blues to gospel to rock 'n' roll. We was always there, and not in no woodpile, but right up front.
I can understand the sentiments of some who want to leave America, just give up on it because of all the bad things that it seems like it's starting to stand for -- including the latest push to militarize outer space. But I feel like this is my country and nobody ain't got the right to try to chase me out of it.
But I see, too, that there's gottah be some change.
There's gottah be change among my own people. There's gottah be change among them cops in Cincinnati. There's gottah be change in New York City and Baltimore and Des Moines and Houston and Peoria and San Francisco, too.
It's just that to my way of thinking, maybe I should have gotten outtah my car... Maybe some of us have to go out of our way to make that change take place.
Peace out.
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