Fighting the Odds

By: Alden K. LouryBlack men are in trouble. Serious trouble.

I am surrounded by constant, painful reminders that many black men live violent, dangerous lives. We are murdered, imprisoned, unemployed and under-educated. We come from single-parent homes and have little or no contact with our fathers.

We live about 11 years less than the average Chicagoan, and our homicide rate is about 11 times that of white men. And we are killing each other. In 1998, Chicago police identified black men as the offenders in 173 of the 207 murders of African American males.

As a black man in Cook County, I am 17 times more likely to go to prison than a white man and 4.5 times more likely than a Latino man. The disparities are even greater for drug offenses. For every 100,000 black men in Cook County, almost 1,000 are in prison on a given day because of drugs, compared with 124 Hispanic and 17 white men.

These statistics are shocking, yet they have become strangely commonplace. Images of black men as perpetrators of crime are part of our daily lives, fed to us in endless and gruesome detail by the news media and the entertainment industry.

The alarm and outrage we feel seems no match for the overwhelming perception that change is beyond our control. Sadly, many people—including some African Americans—have come to expect such behavior from black men.

I am not one of those statistics. I’m not in jail. I’m 30 years old, and I’ve never been arrested. I have a college degree and a good job. Yet I am haunted by the numbers. With one wrong turn, one misstep, I easily could be added to the list.

I know all black men are not criminals, drug dealers or addicts. I know all black men are not jobless, homeless or lacking family values. Still, I live my life in the shadow of those perceptions, and I begin each day trying to counter those images and prove myself again.

This story, the first in the Chicago Matters series “Seeking Justice,” examines the crisis black men in Chicago face, as victims and perpetrators of crime. Statistics tell only part of this story. To fully confront the state of the African American male, The Chicago Reporter decided to begin with the life and experiences of one black man.

We decided to begin with me.

Flashing Lights
On a sunny autumn day in 1995, I was driving east on Interstate 80, traveling home to Chicago from downstate Galesburg, where I interned at a radio station. As the speedometer on my 1988 Chevy Celebrity crept past 80 mph, I noticed the lights of a state police car in my rear-view mirror. I pulled over and sat calmly, prepared to get my first speeding ticket.

A tall, white state trooper appeared at my window, all shining badges and sunglasses. He accepted my license and registration, then asked me to sit with him in his squad car. “I’ll let you off this time,” the officer said, but my relief was short-lived. “Do you mind if I search your car?” he asked casually. “Sure,” I said, a little puzzled.

I knew he was looking for drugs. And I knew he wouldn’t find any, so I didn’t object to the search. But his suspicion angered me. “You don’t have anything on you that you don’t want me to know about?” the officer asked, as if to say, “Hey, I’m giving you a chance to make this easy on yourself.”

“No,” I told him, as my blood began to boil. I closed my eyes and prayed, “Please. Please. Just don’t let him put his hands on me.” If he patted me down, I was sure my anger would spill over, and I would say or do something I would deeply regret.

The officer turned my car inside out, but seemed satisfied. “Have a nice day,” he said, and drove off. I was numb. I got in my car, started the engine and just sat there. It felt as if something had been taken from me, and I was powerless to stop it. I wished he had just given me the ticket. Driving to Chicago, I kept asking myself, “Why does it have to be this way?”

While it was wrong for that officer to assume the worst about me, I now realize I fit the “profile” of most suspects. Statistically, black men in Chicago—most of them young—are much more likely to be arrested for drugs or other illegal activities. As a result, contact with the police is part of our lives.

One year ago, in April 1999, the Chicago Police Department arrested 21,022 people; 57 percent were black men. And 60 percent of those black men were under 30. Of the nearly 4,700 drug arrests, two-thirds were black men.

Among my black male friends, it seems we all have our own “traffic stop” story. But in one sense, we are the lucky ones. Such encounters with police can turn deadly, as in the highly publicized shooting of Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo by four white New York City police officers. The officers, who on Feb. 25 were acquitted of murder and reckless endangerment, said they believed Diallo had a weapon.

“Part of Diallo’s problem is that he didn’t know the black-male etiquette,” said Darnell F. Hawkins, a professor of African American studies, sociology and criminal justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Hawkins said many middle-class black families teach their sons and nephews to “freeze” when confronted by aggressive police officers. “All activity ceases, even if it is a very rational activity like trying to show identification,” he said.

Jawanza Kunjufu, author of the series of books “Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys,” gave a crash course in “black male etiquette” to 35 black boys during a March 13 meeting of the Community of Men. The mentoring group gathers Monday nights at the Ark of St. Sabina, a youth center at 7800 S. Racine Ave., in the Auburn Gresham community.

“You’re going to say ‘Yes sir.’ You’re going to be very respectful,” Kunjufu told the boys, as he and five other adult male volunteers posed as police officers. The boys raised their hands high in the air as the men patted them down. “This is going to save your what?” Kunjufu asked. “Your life!” the boys responded in unison.

Most of the boys in the room were 10 to 14 years old, still years from taking a driving test, but Kunjufu emphasized the rules. Drive under the speed limit. Turn down the music.

It occurred to me that white people probably don’t think twice about such minor traffic violations. But black men can’t afford to make these mistakes.

“[Stereotypes] are there, whether at the surface or not, and African American men are very conscious of those,” said Mark P. Orbe, associate professor of communication and diversity at Western Michigan University. And some will alter their behavior to counter those perceptions, he said. “They may speak more softly, use space more cautiously, make sure there’s space between them and others—even shave off facial hair.”

James Waller, a psychology professor at Whitworth College in Spokane, Wash., has heard similar stories. While conducting research on racism around the country—including Chicago—he and his students expected to hear sensational stories. Instead, “what we heard were the debilitating consequences of living life with people’s expectations of who you are.”

I know exactly what he means. I’ve kept my distance from others, particularly white women, when walking down the street or to my car in the Grant Park South Garage downtown. I make sure my hands are not in my pockets when shopping. And I always feel compelled to buy something at grocery stores, even if I don’t find what I need. Otherwise, I feel this heat on my back, as if all eyes in the store are focused on me as I leave.

And while disgusted by the trooper’s request to search my car, I never would have refused him. If he suspected I was carrying drugs because I was a black man, then I wanted him to know the truth. I didn’t care if it took him all night to realize I was not a criminal.

Court Appearances
On Feb. 28 at the Cook County Criminal Courts, 2600 S. California Ave., I observed criminal cases with four of my Reporter colleagues. As we moved from courtroom to courtroom, the proceedings took on an eerie sameness.

Of the 907 people on the court docket that day, 65 percent were African American males, with an average age of 29, records show. About 54 percent of them faced drug charges.

At mid-morning, 12 black men in loose-fitting khaki jail clothes filed into the courtroom. All faced drug conspiracy charges. Five white court officers ushered the men into the jury box and then stood around them in a semi-circle, watching closely. Several of the men, most in their late teens or early 20s, waved to women holding children in the spectators’ gallery. Within two minutes, the hearings were over. Circuit Court Judge Colleen McSweeney-Moore set another court date, and the officers escorted the men back to the holding area. The women gathered in the hallway. “Well, it was short, but it was sort of a visit,” one said.

After the lunch recess, McSweeney-Moore began jury selection in the murder trial of Gregory Johnson, charged with shooting Eugene Perry on Dec. 2, 1998. The judge questioned about 20 prospective jurors at a time, asking where they lived, how many times they had been victimized by crime, and whether they believed they could hear the case fairly.

Defense attorney Gary Sternberg asked if anyone in the group had any prejudices. “Yes,” said a northwest suburban white man in his 20s. “I don’t try to be, but I’m sure I’m not 100 percent unprejudiced,” he said.

“Do you have any presumptions about this man?” Sternberg asked, gesturing toward Johnson, a tired-looking black man of 40.
“Yes,” the man said.

“What are they?”

“Well, he’s probably guilty if he’s charged with something so serious.”

“And does anyone else feel this way?” Sternberg asked.

“Yes,” said an older white woman, also from a northwest suburb. If Johnson made it this far through the system, it’s likely he did something, she said.

McSweeney-Moore had heard enough. “Let me remind you,” she said, “the law is that this defendant is innocent until proven guilty.” If anyone is unable to grasp this concept, she said, “I’ll send you down to civil court to sit for a malpractice suit that lasts five or 10 weeks.”

No one else admitted any preconceptions about Johnson.
Relaxing in his chambers after finishing the day’s caseload, Circuit Court Judge Michael B. Bolan said only 3 percent of criminal cases go to trial. The criminal justice system is not the answer to society’s problems, he said.

“The general public doesn’t want anything to do with criminals. They want them locked up and thrown away forever,” he said. Judges are bound by mandatory sentences, truth-in-sentencing and other laws designed to punish criminals and to protect the public. Some punishments fit their crimes, Bolan said, but drug sentences need to be re-examined.

“Obviously, it’s not producing the results we want. How do you treat them? Criminally or medically?” he asked. “We’re better off as a society spending more dollars on prevention and treatment.”
Bolan lamented the young defenders he sees in his courtroom every day. “Nobody’s ever told these people they can succeed at anything,” he said. “You look at kids with dead eyes. Nobody’s ever told them that they’d amount to a hill of beans.”

Lifeless Faces
In the receiving area at Cook County Jail, men—most black—are penned inside holding cells. They stare blankly from behind chain-link fences, bunched shoulder-to-shoulder on benches lining the walls or seated on the floor, their knees drawn close to conserve space.

My colleagues and I walked through long corridors, passing groups of men handcuffed in pairs. They wore the standard jail-issue garb, with “D.O.C”—for Department of Corrections—stenciled in black lettering on the back. The uniforms' stale beige color matched the walls of the jail corridors. And the men's faces were just as lifeless. “Thank God I’ve never had to spend a night here,” I thought. “Why do so many brothers end up here?”

As with the courts and arrest blotters, black men fill the jail. Nearly three out of four people there on March 23 were black males, according to the Cook County Department of Corrections. And nearly 56 percent were 30 or younger. More than 60,000 black men entered the jail in 1998—about 10 percent of the county’s black male population.

Across the nation on any given day, almost one in three black men in their 20s is in jail or prison, on probation or parole, according to a 1995 report by The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice think-tank based in Washington, D.C.

“If one in three young white men were in the criminal justice system, I think we would be having national commissions set up,” said Assistant Director Marc Mauer, who co-authored the report. “We would declare this a national emergency.”

Temptation draws many black men into criminal behavior. For 24-year-old detainee Linus Leroy McKinney, it was the intoxicating lure of fast and easy money from drugs. “You know what I see in here? I see a lot of users and a lot of wannabe drug dealers,” he said.

“I was addicted to drug dealing. I didn’t see myself working,” he said. McKinney said he began selling drugs as a student at Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss. He later dropped out and returned to sell drugs in Chicago, where he was arrested.
He is awaiting his fate on charges of drug possession with intent to deliver. He said he is eager to change his life “to be the son I was supposed to be to my parents and the father I was supposed to be to my son.”

Cornelius Coleman, 30, a tall West Sider with a goatee, has been in and out of custody for almost 10 years. He is awaiting trial on drug charges. “There aren’t any jobs out there. I got four kids,” he said. “If that’s what we got to resort to, I’ll sell some drugs out there. I’m not going to stick nobody up. I’ve got to put clothes on my kids’ backs.”

Despite unparalleled economic prosperity nationwide, more than 10 percent of black men in Chicago were unemployed in 1998, compared with 5.1 percent of white men and 7.9 percent of Latino men. And jobs may be out of reach for many young black males in Chicago. Two out of three black boys who entered Chicago public high schools in 1994 did not graduate within five years, according to data provided by The Consortium on Chicago School Research. Other males didn’t fare much better: 58.2 percent of Latino boys and 57.4 percent of white boys also didn’t graduate.

“The problem in the black community is a lack of opportunities, a lack of jobs,” argues Haki R. Madhubuti, founder and publisher of Third World Press, a black publishing company at 7822 S. Dobson Ave. “Drug addiction and drugs are not the major problem in the black community. The major problem in the black community is this loss of spirit,” said Madhubuti, author of “Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous?”

In his 1999 book, “Angry Young Men,” clinical psychologist Aaron Kipnis of Santa Barbara, Calif., found that African American boys who get into trouble “largely come from father-absent homes.”

Boys left searching for models of manhood often turn to their peers, and the results can be devastating, said clinical psychologist Na’im Akbar, who teaches at Florida State University. “Black men identify with fairly immature and superficial definitions of manhood because they’re learning it from superficial and immature people,” he said. “It’s how many gold teeth you have. How many women you can get pregnant.”

Black men sometimes degrade women, carry weapons and seek flamboyant symbols of power to affirm their manhood, he said. “To be packing is a part of the way to display our masculinity. To flash the money is not nearly as important as getting the flashy things that money provides. It’s a very tangible, superficial way of saying ‘Look, I’m on top of things.’”

Building Armor
The best way for black men to beat the criminal justice system is to just stay out of it. Black boys need to be educated by teachers who understand them and mentored by strong black male role models, Kunjufu said.

“If we can develop a black boy from infancy, then we wouldn’t have a problem. We would take them out of the city and not give them back until they were 18,” he said. “We have to strengthen our boys so they can protect themselves. They don’t have any armor.”

Such examples already exist in Chicago.

Hales Franciscan High School President Tim King described his school, at 4930 S. Cottage Grove Ave. on the South Side, as a large family with hundreds of black males as teachers, classmates and administrators. “You’ve got all of these black men reporting to each other, working with each other and we get along. The boys see that,” King said.

He said all of the school’s graduates in the past four years were admitted to college.

And for more than 30 years, BUILD, a non-profit based at 1223 N. Milwaukee Ave., has helped steer troubled youth away from gangs and the paths that often lead to incarceration—or worse. J.W. Hughes, a prevention specialist at BUILD, was one of those troubled youths.

“I was involved in street gangs most of my childhood,” Hughes said. “I sold drugs, did drugs, gambled.” At 15, he was shot in the head by a fellow gang member during a drug deal gone bad. Miraculously, the bullet did not penetrate his skull.

That was when he joined BUILD, met his mentor, Michael Johnson, and developed a friendship that would change his life. Hughes offered his mentor a stolen watch, but Johnson refused. “For the first time in my life I had met somebody who was an honorable guy,” Hughes recalled. “It was like, ‘Wow, that’s somebody who I want to be like.’”

Hughes went on to finish school and pursue a college degree, and now he lives for the moments when he can give back to someone what he learned from Johnson. “I love the look on their faces when they finally get it. When they finally see that it’s a dead end up ahead,” Hughes said. “A lot of guys don’t see that until they’re locked up or gone.”

Willie (Israel) Randolph finally saw it while serving a five-year prison sentence for armed robbery. Randolph said he considered himself a hustler but finally realized he was the one being hustled. “I wasn’t as slick as I thought,” he said.

Randolph now works with young boys, including nearly two dozen 10- to 14-year-olds who live in the Madden Park Homes and Ida B. Wells public housing developments on the South Side. Randolph and Rahim Tassin teach the boys the Sankofa Male Responsibility curriculum, developed by Useni Eugene Perkins, director of the Family Life Center at Chicago State University.

“We were born males, not men. We will become men when we learn the art and science of manhood,” the boys shouted in unison in a March 15 class at the Abraham Lincoln Center, 3858 S. Cottage Grove Ave. “We vow to do our best, to work hard and study so one day we can become strong, responsible and competent men.”

“I’m not a man,” 12-year-old Demetrius Blanton told me after a class. A man, he said, shows “maturity and respect.” He doesn’t admire the drug dealers and gangbangers he sees daily in Madden Park. “They’re stupid. They shouldn’t be doing that,” he said.

He made it sound so easy. Despite the depressing statistics, Demetrius stands a good chance of avoiding the life that has destroyed so many. His words filled me with hope, and he gave me reason to believe that black men can beat the overwhelming odds against them.

Even if we do it one 12-year-old at a time.