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Op-Ed Page 4 Clark A tlanta University Panther January 30, 1991 The Black Male: An Angry, Brooding Breed EDITOR’S NOTE: Following are excerpts of an article that appeared in the Washington Post. By NA THAN MCCALL Washington Post Staff Writer Makes me wanna holler and throw up both my hands: It makes me wanna holler and throw up both my hands. — From “Inner City Blues ” By Marvin Gaye Two Christmases ago, I went home to Portsmouth, Va., and some of the boys from my old days on the block — Tony. Nutbrain and Roger — dropped by to check me out. We caught up on the years, and their stories revealed that not much with the old gang had changed: One had just gotten out of jail, he said, “for doing a rain dance” on his estranged girlfriend. Another had lost his house and family to a cocaine habit. A third friend had recently gotten his front teeth bashed out with a brick in a soured drug deal. We learned that another old friend was back in town and decided to pay him a surprise visit. We crammed into my car, stopped at a store and bought a bottle of cheap wine — Wild Irish Rose. 1 think —just like the old days. I slid Marvin Gaye’s classic ‘What’s Going On?’ into the cassette player and, while cruising along, it struck me: It really was like old times — them passing the wine bottle from hand-to-hand; Roger and Nutbrain arguing and elbowing each other in the back seat; and everybody playing the dozens — trading insults left and right. When our friend answered the door, he seemed surprised but not glad to see us. Within minutes, we knew the reason for his nervousness. There was a knock followed by whispers and the stealth entry of a scraggly-bearded man and a disheveled woman. Clearly, the three of them were about to do some drugs, just like old times. Lately, with the mounting toll of homicides, drug abuse and prison stints threatening to decimate a generation of young Black men, I’m still wondering — not as an outsider but as one who came perilously close to becoming a fatal statistc myself. These days, my visits home have become occasions for mourning, soul-searching and anger. On one recent visit, 1 saw a story, splashed across the top of the newspaper about the police busting up a $20-million narcotics ring. Listed in the article were several people I’ve known most of my life. Trips to my old neighborhood, a large Black community called Cavalier Manor, bring a distressingly close-up view of Black America’s running tragedy. When I’m there, it dawns on me over and over again that this “endangered species” thing is no empty phrase. Most of the guys 1 hung out with are either in prison, dead, drug zombies or nickel-and-dime street hustlers. Some are racing full-throttle toward self destruction. Others already have plunged into the abyss: Kenny Banks got 19 years for dealing drugs. Baby Joe just finished a 15-year bit for a murder beef. Charlie Gregg was in drug rahab. Bubba Majette was murdered. Teddy sleeps in the the streets. Sherman is strung out on drink and drugs. Since I began writing this story several weeks ago, two former peers have died from drugs and alcohol. Many of my former running pals are insane — literally; I’m talking overcoats in August and voices in their heads. Of the 10 families on my street that had young males in their households, four — including my own — have had one or more siblings serve time. One of my best buddies, Shane, was recently sent to prison. He shot a man several times, execution-style. He got life. Before I was 20, I’d seen people shot and was shot at myself. When I was 19, in a running rivalry with some other thugs, I shot a man in the chest at point-blank range. He survived, and the following year he shot and killed a man and went to prison. Many people are puzzled about the culture of violence pervading Black communities; it’s so foreign to them. Some wonder if there is something innately wrong with Black males. And when all else fails, they reach for the easy responses: “Broken homes?” “Misplaced values?” “Impoverished backgrounds?” Shane and I and the others in our loosely-knit gang started out like most other kids. Ebullient and naive. Yet somewhere between adolescence and adulthood, something inside us changed. Our optimism faded. Our hearts hardened, and many of us went on to share the same fates as the so-called disadvantaged. A psychologist friend once explained that our fates are linked partly to how we perceive our choices in life. Looking back, the reality may well have been that possibilities for us were abundant. But in Cavalier Manor, we perceived our choices as being severely limited. 1 think once we resigned ourselves to that notion, we became a lost and angry lot. Many of us could not bear to think about a future in which we were wholly subject to the whims of Whites. We could not see a way out of that. Morevoer. like many African Americans, then and now, we coudn’t make the connections that seem so basic in the world where 1 now live and work. There were plenty of role models in the neighborhood who were not our parents — teachers, postal workers and a smattering of professionals. But even those we respected seemed unable to articulate, or expose us to, choices they had not experienced themselves. Besides, they were unappealing to us as heroes. They couldn’t stand up to the White man. They didn’t fulfill our notions about manhood. Instead, we revered the guys on the streets, the thugs who were brazen and belligerent. They wore their hats backwards, left their belt buckles unfastened and shoelaces untied. They shunned the White establishment and worshipped violence. In our eyes, they were real men. When I think about how to explain the carnage amoung young Blacks in our cities — and how to stop it — 1 think about my hometown. In Portsmouth, Black males are assumed to have three post-high school options: the naval shipyard, the military or college. All of us knew that working in the system carried a price: humiliation on some level. Among us was the lingering fear that the racially integrated work world, with its relentless psychological assaults, was in some ways more perilous than life in the rough-and-tumble streets. At least in the streets, the playing field is level and the rules don’t change. Perhaps for the first time in this nation’s history. Blacks began searching on a large scale for alternatives, and one option, of course, was the drug trade, the urban answer to capitalism. "The drug trade is one of the few places where young, uneducated Blacks can say, ‘1 am the boss. This is wycorporation.” says Portsmouth Commonwealth Attorney Johnny Morrison, who has prosecuted some of his former friends for peddling drugs. There is no lack of work ethic in the drug trade. My best friend in school parlayed $20 into a drug operation. By the time we were both 18, he had employed a few people, bought a gold tooth and paid cash for a Buick Electra 225. College students couldn’t do that. My friend didn’t get caught, but others who were selling drugs, burglarizing and robbing did. I was one of them. Seven months after being placed on probation for shooting a man, my journey ended: Nutbrain, Charlie Gregg and myself were caught after holding up a McDonald’s. 1 was the gunman in the late night robbery, and 1 came frighteningly close to pulling the trigger when the manager tried to flee. After being searched, handcuffed and shoved into the back seat of the police car, I remember staring out the window and thinking that my life, at age 20, was over. How, 1 wondered, had it come to this? For nearly three years, I was forced to nurture my spirit and ponder all that had gone on before. A job in the prison library exposed me to a world of Black literature that helped me understand who I was and why prison had become — literally — a rite of passage for so many of us. 1 sobbed when 1 read “Native Son” because it captured all those conflicting feelings — Bigger’s restless anger, hopelessness, his tough facade among Blacks and his morbid fear of Whites — that I had often sensed in myself but was unable to express. Malcolm X’s autobiography helped me understand the devastating effects of self-hatred and introduced me to a universal principle: that if you change your self-perception, you can change your behavior. I concluded that if Malcolm X, who also went to prison, could pull his life out of the toilet, then maybe 1 could too. My new life is still a struggle, harsher in some ways than the one I left. At times I feel suspended in a kind of neitherworld, belonging fully to neither the streets nor the establishment. I have come to believe two things that might seem contradictory: that some of our worst childhood fears were true — the establishment is teeming with racism. Yet 1 also believe Whites are as befuddled about race as we are, and they’re as scared of us as we are of them. Many of them are seeking solutions, just like us. 1 am torn by a different kind of anger now: 1 resent suggestions that Blacks enjoy being “righteous victims.” And when people ask, “What is wrong with Black men?,” it makes me want to lash out. When 1 hear that question, I am reminded of something once said by Malcom X: “1 have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people and then penalize them for not being able to stand up underthe weight.” Sometimes 1 wonder how 1 endured when so many others were crushed. I was not special. And when 1 hear the numbing statistics about Black men, I often think of guys 1 grew up with who were smarter and more talented than me, but who will never realize their potential. Shane, who oftn breezed effortlessly through tests in school, could have done anythinghe wanted with his life had he known what to do. Now he has no choices. When Shane was caught in a police manhunt a couple of years ago, 1 considered volunteering as a character witness, but dismissed the notion because 1 knew there was no way to tell a jury what I was unable to articulate to a judge at my own trial: How could I explain our anger and alienation from the rest of the world? Most people, I’m sure, would regard Shane’s fate with the same detachment 1 feel when reading crime reports about people I don’t know. But I hurt for Shane, who will likely spend the rest of his days behind bars and who must live with the agony of hav ing taken a life. For those who’d like answers, I have no social formulas to end Black-on-Black violence. But 1 do know that 1 see a younger, meaner generation out there now — more lost and alientated than we were — and placing even less value on life. This new bunch is totally estranged from the Black mainstream. Crack has taken the drug game to a more lethal level and given young Blacks far more economic incentive to opt for the streets. One day not long ago, 1 spotted a few familiar faces hanging out at the old local convenience store. I wheeled into the parking lot, strolled over and high-fived the guys I knew. Within moments. I sensed that 1 was in danger. 1 felt the hostile stares from those I didn't know. I was frightened by these younger guys who now controlled my former turf. 1 eased back into my car and left, because 1 knew then that if they saw the world as 1 once did, they believed they had nothing to lose, including life itself. It made me wanna holler, and throw up both my hands.