Black Fatigue

I learned situational awareness very quickly one night at University.

It was sometime after 2300, I was talking to a co-worker at the entrance to his cubicle. Since I was focused on our conversation, I wasn’t aware that somebody had walked up behind me.

My first indication was when I felt somebody pulling my knife from my right hip pocket. Without thinking, I turned, blocked the arm holding the knife and started to punch my attacker in the throat.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you are young, have been training in martial arts, and are scared you are about to be killed.

Well, I pulled the punch because I recognized it was a cop. First time I’d seen a cop in the building in over 8 years of “living” there. Last time I saw a cop in the building.

It made me aware. To this day, I never leave my back to an entrance or place where trouble might come from. I walk into a location, I choose a place with my back protected and clear sight of most, if not all, the exits. It is just me.

Part of being aware, is knowing when it is time to be elsewhere. The clues are often right in front of you. Ally has seen me go from relaxed, to being on a hair trigger in just a few seconds. She’s seen me shift my stance, move, so I have cleaner shot lines. And I’ve never been in a situation where I needed to draw.

One of the first places I learned to avoid, was groups of blacks. It just wasn’t worth the risk. It is never worth the risk.

I lived for four years in a section 8 apartment complex. I wasn’t getting government assistance, but every unit in the complex was section 8 eligible, and most of the people living there were on section 8. In that complex, there were maybe three white families, including mine.

The house across from us was a crack house. We invited the cops to observe from my office if they wanted to. They didn’t. The dealers had a 1-mile straight view to the only entrance to the complex. If the cops showed up, they had plenty of time to ditch the drugs and guns.

I learned to avoid my neighbors. My kids’ bikes were stolen four or five times. Locked to a rack, locked in the shed. It didn’t matter. It was just something that happened.

So here is the thing, before I was in middle school, I never considered skin color in my threat assessment. 1 week in high school in Calvert County, Maryland, and I did.

I was coming from Rhode Island, we arrived in Maryland, my first day of school started with a 30-minute wait for the bus, followed by a 25-mile bus ride to the school. I was picked on every single day on that bus. I hated it. I hated going to school.

I was able to observer a half dozen black kids get off the bus, head into a tar paper shack that they called home. We knew they were on welfare. We knew because the house looked like that, but there were often 2 or 3 new Cadillacs in the (unpaved) driveway.

The gym teacher would open the locker rooms an hour before school started. Why? Because many of those kids didn’t take showers at home. They would take advantage of the school showers.

The school system was using merit grouped classes. They were labeled A through F. In class A there were 30 kids. One black kid. In B there were 30 kids, I think 5 blacks. In Classes D and F there were 30 kids each, and no white kids.

The school was at a constant low rumble of violence, never breaking out in shootings or knifings, but about once a week, some black kid would be expelled for starting a fight. Most of the targets of those fights were white kids.

By the end of the first month, I was tired of being around blacks. For the following years that we lived in Calvert County, my parents shelled out money they couldn’t afford to, so that my brother and I could attend a private catholic school.

I’ve been told that it is extremely racist to say “13 do 50”. Why? Because what it says is that while blacks constitute about 13% of the population of the United States, they account for around 50% of all violent crime. It might be all crime.

It is actually worse than that. About 6.4% of the United States population, black males, account for over 50% of violent crimes.

In reading the 2019 UCR, the raw numbers are 1,488,876 whites arrested for violent crimes. 779,089 blacks were arrested for violent crime. By the percentages, that 62.97% white and 32.95% black.

Simplifying, if there is a pool of 100 people, 13 of them would be black, 4 others, and 83 white. There would be 51 women and 49 men.

If that pool was pulled from those arrested for violent crimes, 51 would be black, 4 others, and 45 white. 73 would be men and 27 women.

The next “math” would be to say what the odds of a violent crime being committed against you by white, black, or other. This is not as easy, it depends on the victim’s race.

What is true is that where blacks congregate, there will be violence and crime.

Here is the sad part of this, it is likely that most blacks are good people. The issue is so bad that even if they are good people, we don’t know it.

We will often look at a bad cop getting away from it. Where are the good cops stepping up and putting a stop to the bad cop’s actions? It is difficult to find that person.

We see blacks acting out. Where are the people from the black community stepping up and putting a stop to the bad actors? It is difficult to find that person.

I’m tired of looking at a video of violence breaking out and seeing that it is blacks doing it. I’m tired of looking at looting videos, and before they even zoom in, I know that they will be mostly blacks. I’m tired of seeing kids and the elderly sucker punched by blacks.

I think many of us are getting tired of it.

My father used to say, “I’m color-blind by an act of congress.” When evaluating the sailors who served under him, he was blind to the color of their skin. He was taught to judge people by their character.

He and my mother taught me the same. Judge people by their character. I want us to start moving towards an integrated society where I can trust the person beside me to act responsibly, regardless of the color of their skin.