MANSFIELD: My Brother’s Keeper

By Mansfield Frazier

While President Obama’s initiative to assist young men of color is indeed noble, as Jamelle Bouie writes in The Daily Beast, accomplishing his worthwhile goal will prove difficult at best, and virtually impossible if new methods aren’t utilized to solve the systemic problems of this long-neglected demographic.

See Bouie’s article here. (As a matter of full disclosure, I occasionally contribute to The Daily Beast.)

To wit: Twenty-two years ago I cooled my heels in the Village of North Randall’s jail for close to six months as my federal counterfeiting case wound its way through the court system. The police chief was a kindly old-timer that loaned me his personal portable typewriter so that I could begin my writing career. While I can only recall his first name, Angelo, I’m forever indebted to him … I never stopped writing.

In return, the chief expected me to work as the jail trustee. In virtually every lockup in the country, prisoners are assigned the duties of passing out the food, cleaning products for the cells and personal items like toothpaste and toilet paper … jobs no cop or other jailer care to do.

Within a few weeks I just about had total freedom in the loosely run jail. When one of the other nine prisoners (it was a very small jail) had a visit, whoever was on shift at the desk out front would just as likely to call back for me to take the key from the hook and open the person’s cell door (mine was never locked) as they were to get off their lazy asses and do it themselves. Stay with me here, this is leading somewhere.

While the jail staff was pretty cool, you couldn’t say as much for the police officers. Over a period of months they got used to seeing me around (I also emptied the trash and mopped their offices once a week) and spoke pretty much with unguarded tongues.

They had what they jokingly called the “Give them a number early program” and here’s how it worked (and perhaps still does): Whenever a juvenile was arrested for something like shoplifting at the nearby shopping mall, they were brought over to the police department. Just about an equal number of white and black kids — male and female —got nabbed every week, since such juvenile behavior is universal.

But, in every instance — and I do mean every — when a white kid was caught (sometimes the same kid or kids more than once a week) their parents were called; they were given a stern lecture, and allowed to go home with their parents with no charges filed.

But in every instance where the juvenile was black (no matter if it was their first time or not) charges were filed against them. And I do mean every. The cops’ sick theory and logic went something like this: Give them a number early, so they’ll get used to it, conditioned to interacting with the justice system … and having a record of them in the system makes it easier to track them later on. True story.

Now, I’ve been out of those kinds of penal environments, as well as America’s mean streets for over 19 years — as my dear departed mother used to deadpan with sardonic wit “thank God, and two or three other good white folks.” But I continually hear from young brothers that this type of mindset is still all too prevalent and pervasive in many police departments across the country.

By criminalizing young men of color at an early age, white cops know they are limiting the competition for the good jobs that they want to go exclusively to their own kids. A brutal assessment to be sure, but supported by plenty of anecdotal evidence.

Putting an end to unnecessarily dropping the legal hammer on kids of color — often just for the hell of it — would be a good place for the president to try to start his initiative. When they do stupid and juvenile pranks, just treat these black and brown kids as if they were white.

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The president went somewhat self-referential as he announced the My Brother’s Keeper program. Telling how he wasn’t always focused on his studies and his evidently regular experimenting with mind-altering substances. And, while such personal revelations are nice, and are supposed to serve as a cautionary tale, the president’s formative years were pure heaven when compared to those of the youth he is advocating for. He didn’t go hungry, have to avoid street gangs to go to school, or learn to dodge bullets simply to stay alive.

If he, or anyone else, expects to make an impact on these youth via mentoring, they damn well better have similar life experiences somewhere in their past.

To wit: A few years ago a program was started to train residents of Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Agency (CMHA) estates in building trade skills so they could qualify for entry-level jobs on new building projects the agency had in the works. A good friend of mine was named to head the program, and he brought me on to assist him, knowing that I had construction experience in my background and knew the language of the streets.

The pilot program went so well, administrators at the college it was being run through figured they didn’t need us after the first semester; they could do it on their own. The problem is, this institution has an absolutely horrible retention record with its regular students, and it only got worse with these project residents.

Here’s why … when my friend ran the program the first thing he had me make very clear to the participants was, if they didn’t show up to class we would soon be banging on their door and dragging them out by their heels. “Don’t make us do that, but we ain’t bullshitting.” After having to prove it a few times, this they came to understand.

When the college took over they put a very nice young middleclass black man in charge of assuring attendance, but the problem was, he was born and raised in the suburbs and was scared shitless of even setting foot into the projects, let alone banging on someone’s door. The project soon failed, and of course they blamed the participants, who else?

If the president’s plan is to be successful, he’s going to need help from some brothers like Gregory Terrell, Raymond Pride and Sharriff Muhammad. They have been active right in the heart of the black community where the problems are most pronounced.

Out of their offices at 6116 Woodland Ave. their outreach efforts are being felt in every inner-city neighborhood where trouble exists. “We sat down with these young men and we asked what it would take to stop these unnecessary killings and robberies and killings from spreading through our city like wildfires throughout the city,” said Terrell.

The young men, because they respected these older brothers who live in the communities, and have gone through some of the same hardships they are experiencing, opened up to them. “Individually, one by one they all stood up and respectfully announced who they were and what community they came from. They all spoke of the bloodshed and how much they themselves would like to see it come to an end,” he said.

One young man from the St. Clair area said, “When I open up my refrigerator and I see nothing but roaches and my child is crying ‘Daddy, I’m hungry,’ I have no other choice but to try and take from another.” The real issue has always been poverty, and the only thing that cures poverty is a job, and like the saying goes, “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.”

Mr. President, we have some men in black communities all across the country that can sit down with these at-risk young men and get their attention; we know how to talk to and mentor them. What we need to be able to offer them is hope in the form of honest employment. In the end, wealth building in black communities is the only real solution.

 

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.

 

 

 

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