It appears that it is open season on shooting and jailing African -American males, just because within the thought process of certain White folks, they are thugs and deserve to be shot. One talk show host on the Fox station even stated, “If they dress like thugs they should be treated liked thugs.” This underscores and reinforces the physic of “just shoot them.”
What some have of done is take the word “thug” and make it replace other words that they know should not be spoken in public. But the hate is still the same,
So often we are bombarded with all of the bad news about our Black boys that our trend of thought can become tainted and might influence our thoughts, that they are indeed thugs.
Occasionally on Sunday after church, on the way home I stopped at former Lion football star Jim Thrower’s Mickey D’s at Mack and I-75. I love their fish sandwich with fries and my rationale is that I am going jogging as soon as I get home, so I will burn up the calories.
On this particular Sunday, I got my food and on the way out and noticed the television on and some young boys were watching it. So I decided to sit among them and watch too. Initially there were about five. But as time passed, others came in, so there were probably about 15.
As they watched television they chatted about what was on and just life stuff in general. As I listen to their chatter, I noticed that there was no cussing and no loud talk. One interesting note, one fellow asked, is this Sunday or Saturday? Another answered, “It’s Sunday, dude, and you should have been in church,” and everybody laughed.
After about 45 minutes, I decided to move on. As I was walking past them one lad said, “Have a nice day, sir” and another said “Thanks for hanging with us.”
As I drove home, I thought, that was a great experience. I had many decades of age on all of them. But I just blended in and enjoyed the setting and listening to them banter back and forth. But most of all I felt the respect they showed.
Upon sharing this experience with a friend, Joshua McTerry, he gave some further insight on dealing with Black boys. Joshua heads an organization known as Support The Inner City Kids (S TICK). He is a student at WSU and for the past five years every week he and two of his partners, work with between 30 and 40 Black youth with many being Black boys between the ages of 10 and 18. He has an interesting approach of developing character and discipline through music. He teaches different aspects of music, which helps them, accomplish goals through teamwork.
In dealing with these Black boys specifically, even though they might have varying interests in life, he states they come together for a common goal of using what they are learning in music to “play together.” He stress es that you can’t quit in life. Every now and then one might get frustrated and walk out. But eventually they come back and apologize. He uses this as “life lessons” for you just can’t walk out when you get frustrated or don’t have your way. He tells them, “Once you start quitting in life, it puts you on the path of being a quitter.”
Joshua said, “These young men are by no means thugs. They laugh, tell jokes and talk about their problems.
All of our Black boys have some talents and abilities. It is left up to us as adults to tap into their positives. Their life potential is an asset waiting to be developed. We must fortify them from hateful small-minded folks who just don’t like Black folks.
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