I am the son of a black woman and a white man. Born in D.C. and raised on the border of Cleveland, Ohio. My town, Shaker Heights, was small and somewhat affluent. There were train tracks that separated the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Needless to say, I lived on the side of the have-nots. That’s not to say we were poor, but it wasn't easy to raise me and my little brother. That is me and that is where I came from.

Walking in my neighborhood and seeing the blue and red lights always put us on edge, as far back as I could remember. Every time we’d leave the house — and my mom was there — she’d tell us to make sure we had our hands out of our pockets and our hoods down. I used to scoff at that… But think about THAT; a mother having to teach her boys day in and day out to behave a certain way, that was not natural to us, so we wouldn’t come home in body bags. What I mean by this is: We wore hoodies, baggy jeans, and Timberlands. That was the dress code of my neighborhood. Why do we have to change our dress code? Why is it that Geraldo Rivera says the hoody is the reason Trayvon Martin was killed? Instead of blaming us for how we dress and saying we dress like “gangstas,” why not tune your police and your fucking mind to understand that’s just how we dress? We shouldn’t have to change how we dress to quell your fears. You should just accept how we dress and stop stereotyping us. For my mother to explain that to us as pre-teens, it struck a chord. We continued to wear the hoodie, but we took the hood off to avoid being attacked by police. I had to be told to keep my hands out of my pockets. Something as simple as that often goes unnoticed. But do you see… we have different lessons. I guarantee my white friends did not have the same chat of “regardless of how cold it is in Cleveland, keep your hands out of your pockets because the police will shoot you.” It’s disheartening and unfair.

Me (left) and my brother (right). I was 12 in this picture. Hardly a hardened criminal.

When you live in an area where the police look at you more as a criminal than a victim… you lose that trust in The Law. You look at them as the enemy with immunity. If I were beat up, why the fuck would I call the police if they’re just going to accuse me of starting it? You may ask what started my relationship with the cops: Skateboarding. Ooooh how I loved to skateboard. Landing 360 hardflips over benches at Shaker Towne Centre brought me so much joy. But that was often met with a broken skateboard at the hands of the police and steel on my wrists. My mom just simply could not afford to continue buying skateboards. So what’d we do instead? Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. I was searched almost every day, followed almost every day, and raided twice as a teenager.

Shaker Heights High School. My alma mater

One time that I was stopped really stuck out to me. It was me, my brother and three friends on the first day of my senior year of high school. I was done! I was going to leave that shit city and make something of myself. We all convened at my house before walking to Shaker High a mile or so through the winding streets of Shaker. Once we were all there, we took off, backpacks on our back and freshly fitted new school clothing. I heard the noticeable grinding of gravel under the Crown Victoria behind me and stopped. One female cop jumped out of the car with her gun drawn ordering us to throw our hands up. Seconds later, 7 more squad cars pulled up.

She barked at us “HANDS IN THE AIR!! WHAT ARE THE BACKPACKS FOR? WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”

In my smart-ass mind I’m thinking: “We’re a city of 35,000 people, everyone knows when High School starts, I’m a fucking senior and I’m going to school!” I told her, “We’re going to class… ya know, so we can leave this fucking city.”

Of course she says we fit the description of people robbing houses — at 0730 mind you — and detains us on the spot for an hour. We showed our schedules, emptied our backpacks and they still didn't believe us. It took the Superintendent of Shaker calling the police to tell them to let us go to school.

The folks in our convoy were all black, except for my brother who is mixed like me. We were walking through a more affluent part of the city to get to school instead of down Lee near the police station. We were stopped for being black. This type of behavior has happened to me in San Diego, Oakland, Cleveland and Centreville, VA. No matter who I’m with, what I’m wearing and where I’m going, I fear that I will always be subjected to “random” stops.

Ferguson

So how does this relate to Ferguson? Oscar Grant? Sean Bell… or even Tamir Rice? All of them could have been me. I’ve had SWAT at my house when I was turning 16 years old for a power drill; cops thought it was a gun. I’m not clear what happened to warrant the SWAT team showing up at my mom’s house. My friend was returning a power drill that I loaned him, and was carrying it up the driveway. Attached to it was a 12 foot orange power cable. Either someone drove by and thought it was a gun, or my neighbor called the police. What’d you do for your 16th birthday? Mine had me face down eating grass with a shotgun to my head.

I grew up in an area that was 90% black. We had nothing better to do than run around, ride bikes in 8th grade and drink 40 ounces when I was 19. I had a fantastic education and am blessed with being in the top 1% when it came to testing in my school system. But what about the rest of us? How can we… fix this? We need a REAL discussion about race. One that doesn’t have people at Fox News calling Eric Holder a racist for paying attention to these issues. We fucking matter too! We built this god damn country.

The conversation shouldn't start with Rudy Giuliani getting on TV to echo: “Blacks kill 93% of blacks” his quote was off, because 93% of us aren't dead, but black on black violence does result in 93% of deaths in the black community. The conversation should include that white folks kill each other 83% of the time. What is not taken into account is where these people live. If 71% of the United States of America is white, they are going to be more likely to live among other races than we are. We’re scrutinized more than the cop that shoots us. Nevermind what the cop was doing… focus on us. What makes US so violent? They portray us as savages and barbarians. We grew up in areas that we couldn't get out of. We can’t abort children because the far Right votes against it. We can’t get better jobs because our education is shit. We should just “pull up our bootstraps and deal with it.” I’ve learned that the mentality of toughening up yourself doesn't work for all. My folks on Kinsman — literally FOLKS like the fucking gang — didn't understand life outside of Cleveland. They could not do basic math nor speak properly. Was it THEIR fault? Nope. Not in my opinion. My school got more money because of the rich folks living there. They got shit because school funding was based off property tax.

Darren Wilson’s face after going to the hospital. He said he was “one hit away” from being killed.

We have a problem in the hood, sure. Chicago would stand up and say this. But we also have a problem where police still shoot first and ask questions last when it comes to dealing with minorities. When you have a police officer refer to a suspect as “It” and say he “looked like a demon” it reminds us of how black folks were viewed as barbarians in the past two centuries. Darren Wilson is lying and the grand jury was a Dog and Pony show to hopefully shut us up. That only made the situation worse. They teased Black America by making it seem like justice for our slain brother might actually be on the horizon. We “got our day” only to have it ripped away. Why didn’t Wilson hit the gas when Brown was in his truck? The Chevy Tahoe stands 74.4" off the ground, police grade tires and a lift kit would add another 6" putting it around 80". Michael Brown was 6'4"… for him to reach all the way into the car and reach for the hand gun would require Brown to be almost all the way in the truck. I’ve been stopped like that before, walking in the street. We’d walk in the middle of the street, there’ve been a few of us that have stolen items from CVS or Rite Aide like shitty plastic bottle grain alcohol for a cheap buzz. Cop would tell you to get on the sidewalk and you’d laugh or stare em down in the mirror. They’d immediately hit reverse on you to get their machismo back. The look in their eyes was insecure and self-righteous. What gives THEM the right to beat their chest when they’re checked? Because they have a badge? Fuck off. How is that effective or helpful? Wilson said none of this will haunt him. He shot 12 shots wildly in a residential neighborhood and hit 6 times . He shows no emotion in his interview with ABC. He is lying to his core, and it shows in his face. If I were confronted by the police, after I’d done something wrong, why in the fuck would I dare the cops to fuck with me? NO ONE does that. Even at the height of my smart-ass behavior, I never did that.

People are very quick to point out that it’s “not that many people that are killed by the police in America.” Sure, but that’s not the point. The police are here to serve US to protect US. In our areas they tend to think we’re guilty until proven innocent regardless.

We need these protests in Ferguson, Oakland, New York, LA, Seattle, Portland, etc. Enough is enough. We came here in chains, and are still getting gunned down like dogs. We’re in the age of Instagram, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. You can’t do anything without it going viral. Where the fuck was the outrage and vitriol when the white college kids started a riot at the New Hampshire Pumpkin Festival? It’s “one heck of a mess.” But when we riot, it’s “savages destroying their city.”

Ferguson Protests in August of 2014

We should NOT destroy our towns, but the hatred bottles up. The feeling of being helpless and ignored takes a toll on you. Living your entire life knowing that a cop can take your fucking life and nothing will happen, eats at you. It makes you feel less than human. What did we expect would happen? Ohio State riots when they beat Michigan, but that goes unnoticed. The San Francisco Giants win the World Series and my street is covered in so many fluids I got checked for ebola, and that went unnoticed. Violence is bad, but what can we do? We’re caged humans. Thankfully I got out… But my rage runs deep when I see black boys and girls murdered by the folks paid to protect us.

Being bi-racial, I thought Barack Obama would do more for us. To step over the lines and play favorites like the 43 Presidents before him. Any time he or Holder spoke on race, it was race baiting. Anytime they did not, they “hated us”. He is us. We never had someone that powerful growing up that we could look at and think: “That could be me.” Instead we look at Michael Brown and say: “That could have been me.”

I see that kid and that could have been me.

Ferguson protests, 2014.

“It wasn’t about Rodney King, it’s this fucked up situation and these fucked up police” — Bradley from Sublime