BlackMaled: The Crime of Being a Black Man in America

The other morning I was watching on TCM the 1940 film titled, “I Take This Woman,” with Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr. The reason I mention the story has only to do with a certain exchange of dialogue. A white woman asked the butler, played by the great, Willie Best, whose name in the film is of all things ‘Sambo’ if he ever sees spots before his eyes. Well, wouldn’t you know it, Sambo answers by pumping his fist and motioning as though he is tossing dice (spots) signifying that questionable behavior was the only way he could relate to what the woman spoke of. 

At the risk of beating a dead horse, some of you might recall the article I wrote in which I mention a scene from the movie, “Lincoln” where a woman purports that a black man would steal she and her husband’s chickens and his job once given his (freed slave) his freedom. Somehow being a freed black man translated into criminality on our part. However, what better way to justify keeping us in chains in 1865 or for that matter keeping us in chains, invisible or not, in 2014 than to portray us as something black men at our core are not, criminals. Yeah, I know, someone out there is all up in arms about me saying, “The man is keeping us down,” but just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean no one’s following me. Moreover, if what is happening throughout the ‘Justice System’, republican state houses and in Washington isn’t proof enough that black men continue to face the ire of mainstream America, well.   

Apart from resisting and wanting to whup his capturers behind, what crime do you imagine the first African male kidnapped for the purposes of slavery committed to give white folks that idea? Heck, ever since black men arrived in America we have been cast as murderers, thieves and potential rapists of white women. Notice I said ‘white women’ and not ‘women’ as in Black & Native American because the raping of Black & Native American women in those days didn’t count much like in present-day America. However, history does nothing to support the claims that black men were rapists. On the contrary, it was the white man who was doing all of the raping, e.g. Native American women, slave women, and little slave boys. That’s right, don’t for one minute think that white men raping little boys was limited to Priests in the 20th century.   

By the way, on the subject of stealing and murdering, what do you call casting a net over someone’s head and spiriting them away to another country against their will or displacing a people to steal their land? What do you call beating someone to death and having horses rip their bodies apart or the slaughtering of entire villages? Can you say “Trail of Tears?”     

The criminalization of the black male can be summed up in this broad-brush description, “If he’s standing around he’s lurking. If he’s sitting down he’s lazy. If he’s running he’s escaping or leaving the scene of his crime.” Makes you wonder what they allege we are doing in our sleep, dreaming of our next heist? The world views black males as criminals just because we are black. Classic example, the other day I was walking through a mall with a female companion and we passed a kiosk. The woman proprietor of the kiosk was offering eyebrow trimming or something. As my friend and I passed, the woman snatched her purse from atop the counter.    The purse was within arm’s length of my reach and I suppose the woman feared that because I am a black male I wanted her purse. Mind you now this was not a white woman, this was a woman of Indian or Pakistani descent perhaps. I wanted to tell the woman I was about to put something in there. My point is America has every race in the world thinking black males are criminals. But again, what better way to keep us from advancing at least en masse, than to have other races of the world and especially those who migrate to America view us as beneath them, which by the way is one of the main behaviors immigrants attribute to genuine assimilation, hate blacks.   

I’m reminded of that Richard Pryor skit about recent immigrants to America attending citizenship classes. Pryor spoke of how the instructor instructs the students in the art of saying ‘nigga’. The students rapidly repeat in unison, “nigga, nigga, nigga.” After-which, a student asked the instructor how they (students) will know when they have the correct phraseology. The instructor replies, “When you get your @@## kicked you’ll know you got it right.”

The most unfortunate aspect of this phenomenon is the rigged system that despite vigorous denials by those on the right, exist to make the fantasy that black males are criminals a reality. Lackluster education initiatives, school-to-prison pipelines, profiling, unfair sentencing laws, social service rules that encourage women to lie (in some cases) and discourage father participation by punishing the mother/child, and child support laws that encourage women to lie (in some cases) and punish father non-participation. For black males, this scene eerily resembles when Dolphins encircle schools of Tuna, leaving them no path of escape. Mistakenly believing that following the rules of survival and that going where authority leads means safety. The haunting reality however, is authority leads you out of the mouth of one enemy into the mouth of another (nets and other predators). For the Tuna, you either die and/or end up in a can. Either way you get swallowed up. For the black male, you either die and end up in a box or live and end up in the can. Either way you get swallowed up.        

~~~ Jay Arrington, The Maryland Daily Examiner