I must come out of the closet on something, i'm sure some people in my life have picked up. A secret i will now share. A secret that has terrorized me for many many years and shapes who i am and how interact with this world. It shapes how i feel in the world.
I am diagnosed with and treated for Social Anxiety Disorder. I have been since i was 17. I avoid people and places teaming with human life. Unpredictable... human life. And I had gotten pretty good at shuffling below my feet, covering it with a few feet of debris and I flourished for awhile, i felt normal for awhile- maybe even "cured" up until Christmas eve 2007 in Louisiana where while my neurotic self was looking for my cousins car and her in it, I was tackled by a team of officers, hand cuffed and thrown on the back of a police car while a crowd grew to see "what i had done".. i was barked at by tall white police officer who for the first time in my life called me "boy"- the southern definition- in which you know it when you hear it. It CUTS! He told me i would spend the entire christmas weekend in jail. and for what?
I had been "followed" by an undercover police officer, and I was trying door knobs. Which wasn't true. I was suspected of looking to steal a car or objects in it. Within the first 10 minutes i was quite cool headed. I told the yelling officer , his finger half an inch away from poking my forehead, that if they would immediately go and look at the wal-mart security camera footage I would be cleared(I used to work for this wal-mart and I know that all Wall-marts have extensive parking lot cameras due to the frequency in which crime occurs in them.) He responded with a bark back "I look at the footage YOU GO TO JAIL!" And as a Reasonable man, i took that it was Christmas eve in to account.I remained calm.. but... my package began to unravel with the unfolding of each minute. Then He put me in the squad car. It turmed from i was being suspected to I was committing criminal mischief. For walking..around.. LOOKING ..as if i were trying to steal a car or objects inside. It was further made crazy because I had only my wallet on me. I had no broken skin and no cars were reported broken into. The mere suggestion followed me..and even after that day I could not go into the Wall-Mart without someone working there looking at me crossly and with a hint of disgust. To them i HAD broken into a car. A worker even called my mother in Texas and told her that I had broken into a few cars, and resisted arrest! All of which did not occur. I had become a criminal without any crime being committed by me.
If there was one thing that would be the most awful thing i can imagine happening to someone with social anxiety disorder, other than being abducted by a serial killer and raped in a public space while two hundred people gawk after being scalped, it would be THIS. My sense of trust in the police as my protector was shattered that day. And later on re-shattered after i told my story to my black or latin peers and family members and got scoffed at with a "welcome to the club!"- "What you bitching for, this happens all the time!" followed by an equally or more harrowing story than mine. I was told that i was indeed...... PROFILED. So i best leave my pity party of one and join the hundreds of thousands if not millions who are targeted by police with the only probable cause being the color of ones skin, EVERYDAY.
When I was younger, a teen falling in love with music, i would not eat lunch for days until i had enough money saved to go to The Warehouse, a now defunct chain of music superstores, that was on the walk home from my high school. My mom would tell me not to go, or come home and put my book bag away before entering the store.I asked her why and she warned "I could be suspected of stealing- young black men get locked up everyday." and I hated her for this because I knew that i was law abiding i wouldn't steal. But I was also a teenager and she felt i should not put myself in a position as to where i would be accused. Truth be told, If you are reading this and a white person, minorities, especially African Americans and Latin Americans- especially Mexican folk sit around with each other and do talk shit at times about the police. They instruct their young on how to stay and look clean. "don't get involved with the wrong crowd!" and elders have many stories of how the world was in the 40's and 50's. I used to think my mom was superimposing her fears for me directly onto me up until the incident in Covington, Louisiana. Nope Nope, not anymore.
Afterwards i was angry for a good a year. My fear of being in public and teased turned to fears of being in public and tasered.(I was taking the BART a lot when the BART officer on New Years 2008 killed a handcuffed citizen) Perhaps I might forget to act a certain way-prehaps i'm wearing something that might make me look like a big hooligan. I paid attention to my dress. No more baseball caps. My aunt for christmas bought me a dreadful black polyester bomber jacket that was loose fitting and I refused to wear it because.. "Oh oh! I might look as if i have a gun in my pocket!" I do not wear jackets unless i really have to nowadays. I don't wear black or anything adidas like except for my gym clothes..and I make sure people know that i am going to the gym. When I approach my apartment, my keys are out. The incident had completely turned into this person living and breathing paranoia. I live in paranoia because I learned i do not have control over what others think and I can be a good guy- Never arrested before in my life- and still I can become a criminal.
Life is not the same for me. I am not living. Like I can't remember when i last smelled roses and plants and digested my reality slowly. No fear. Just peacefully existing . I remember the days in which i felt as if i couldn't walk slowly, and enjoy the air.. or stop to look at a plant. Or sit on the grass alone in a park and just rest. Those days long gone for fear I might be loitering. Fear I might look as if i am staking out a house for robbery, depending on the time of day or night. I can't rest. I can't walk slowly and let my guards down and just enjoy life like white people can. I can't enjoy the world. I can't walk on a sidewalk and pass by a white woman with dog and feel as if there might be a chance she might become unnerved by my presence and clutch her purse tighter or walk the other way. So if it's not for work. I do not leave home much. Especially in Texas. and half of this would be my condition and the other half the truth that it's not just me. It's a lot of Americans who don't feel entitled to be here. They are tourist. And it's despicable and sad.
Through therapy, a lot of reflection and medications I work through my "fear of people". Getting over that hump takes work...possibly more than some people who have been harassed by policemen , maybe not. In some of my conversations with people who have had unjust run ins with the law, it still leaves a stain that can't released with a couple of consecutive wash cycles and a cap full of bleach.
Two weeks ago the News that Arizona passed a Bill that required policemen to ask people whom they think are illegal viciously bit a nerve deep inside of me. Sb 1070 gives police officers the right to judge you and hassle you for proof you exist here. It would be one thing if this law required everyone to be monitored and asked to show their papers but it does not. I fully understand that Arizona has the worse border problems in the US because it's popular point. Many illegals DIE while trying to cross the border and get to civilization while avoiding being caught and deported. The Problems that Arizona is forced to endure matter, greatly so. But there is a need for a better solution. This solution that's on the table promises nothing but the treat of violence and upheaval and the abuse of legal residents who are Mexican Americans who will be told by the action of this law that they don't belong here. If you're Mexican American and already feel like a stranger in your own land, then you must prepare yourself to feel that again..and again. Every step you take and at any moment between foot fall and foot rise you could be asked..."Do you belong here?" and the chances of corruption by a police officer under this law is greatly promoted through the language of it.
So for two weeks This has been THE topic of discussion and outrage among those who see it as a step towards the back and not the front. I said i would write a proper entry, but i had to find a fresh approach to this. It seems that people do not understand the politics of this... so How about the human mechanics of this law and it's glaring faults. Here I use myself and my struggle as a doorway or bridge rather to understanding the emotional impact of racial profiling. And Hopefully it resonated with someone who might not ever experience the feeling of not belonging.. or someone who has but can't equate it to what many minorities in America feel when targeted by the police. It breeds pretty much, FEAR and LOATHING.
Side NOTE: (I post this on FB under the entry post in response to a conversation with a friend- This what i wrote about what sparked this entry)
ReplyDeleteLast night I walked to the store to get cigarettes and i craved something sweet and cold. The night was beautiful. There is a small lake by were i live and i decided to take that route. I kept wanting to sit near the lake.... I breathe... and contemplate and just enjoy the moonlight and the cool light wind and crickets and all that shit. And a car ... See Morecame and sort of followed me indirectly- it was circumventing the houses around the lake.. before settling at the end of the lake where i would eventually wind up, following the path through the lake to the store. He got out and shined his light towards my direction. He saw me. He got in his car and just sat there. I didn't flinch- or i would look suspicious. But i kept thinking.. why do i feel obligated instantly to act as if i am doing nothing when I am not doing anything? Why do i feel tense...and as if he waiting for me to cross the lake walk and pass his car. and really I wanted to stop. This is where i began to write this entry in my head. I felt... trapped... and so i made it to the store and bought a little more than i wanted to so it would be obvious i was going to the store to the policeman. Yes.. This is how i think.
So I left the store and passed him.. and he looked at me and I looked at him .. he nodded..and I nodded...and crossed the little lake towards my apartment. Once i crossed the lake he put his high beams on. They reach across the lake..and then he turned them off...and drove away.