Black Youth, The Face of Crime in America

For years, we have seen and heard the statistics about young Black men and crime. Street crime is a highlight on newscasts and on front covers of newspapers. However, white collar crime goes undetected, unreported and unpunished. Let me just take you back in the days of my youth for a second. At age 16, my mother decided to move to California. Within a matter of weeks, I had moved from the heart of the hood, to a luxury apartment in a lake shore community in Oakland, California. All of my neighbors were White adults, most were in their 40s, 50s or 60s. I had trouble sleeping at night and could not figure out what was the cause. Bored to tears, I moved back to Chicago and the first night there I realized what had been missing -- sirens from fire trucks. I had grown accustomed to hearing fire trucks because there was a fire in the hood almost every night since as far back as I could remember. Later, I learned that these fires were intentional and were used to burned down buildings so that the White absentee landlords could collect the insurance. If anyone drives through Woodlawn even today you can see empty lots where brick buildings burned to the grown. Guess what? Not one person was ever charged with arson or fraud. So let's go Black to the future. Since the 70s when I was growing up the jails and prisons went from being filled with White men to being filled with Black and Latino men. The reason is not that Black people have become more criminal, the reason is that more things are a crime. That bag of dope that would have made you have to do probation or worse case weekends in the County Jail (y'all forgot about that, huh?) will now get you six years in Illinois Department of Corrections. Sisters are doing time for writing a bad check or two. Now, they want to lock up the little brothers for letting their pants sag below their waist. Now, anyone that knows me, I will yell out a car and tell a young brother to pull up his damn pants and will pull over if he says the wrong thing out of his mouth. However, a silly as it is and as dumb as it looks, he is not committing a crime. For almost five years, you could not walk anywhere without seeing a White girl with low rise jeans and a thong with her butt cheeks showing. Now, that is obscene, but you did not have people writing laws to lock up the little White girls. Even though White boys let their pants sag to the law would not be enforced against them. White police have always empathized with White youth and see their crimes as harmless acts of delinquency. However, petty laws like letting ones pants sag or loitering would be strictly enforced in the hood and used to create additional charges like resisting arrest or mob action. It is time that we begin to stop allowing our children to be arrested and caged as if there were animals.