Mrs. Edelman's Child
Watch Column also appears each week on The Huffington Post.
How to Keep Our Black Boys Alive: Channeling the Rage
The recent spotlight on systematic racial profiling and police brutality
against Black boys and men has exposed a painful truth long known in the Black
community: just about every Black youth and man seems to have a story about
being stopped by the police, and all live daily with the understanding it can
happen to any of them at any time.
Dr.
Terrell Strayhorn is Director of the Center for Higher Education Enterprise
at The Ohio State University and a Professor of Higher Education in the
Department of Educational Studies in the College of Education and Human
Ecology. He also has faculty appointments in the Ohio State John Glenn College
of Public Affairs, Department of African American and African Studies, and
Education Policy, Engineering Education, and Sexuality Studies programs. But
none of these credentials mattered one bit when Dr. Strayhorn was pulled over
by a White police officer a week before he spoke at the June Children’s Defense
Fund training for college-age students preparing to teach at CDF Freedom Schools
®
sites across the country this summer. He shared this story with the 2,000 young
mostly non-White leaders because it was an integral part of his message for the
young teachers in training: “How to Keep Our Black Boys Alive.”
He’d just bought a beautiful new car. “So I’m driving my really nice car
because that’s what you can do in this country, right? You can work hard and
you can make good money, and then you can use your money to buy a car…So I’m in
my car, in my good hard-earned money car, and then comes a blue light in my
rearview mirror.” The promise of the American Dream was gone in an instant.
Instead he wasn’t even sure whether he would “live the next couple of
minutes”—“because my nice car, and my nice degree, and my nice money, and my
nice bracelet, and my nice looks, and my nice feel, my nice shoes—none of it,
none of it, none of it, none of it, none of it is a panacea for the problems
that we have in this country. And I watched an officer who does not know me
come up to my window and say, ‘Mister, I need to see your license and
registration.’ And I got ready to reach for it, and he reached for his gun—and
I said, ‘Oh, my God. I know how this ends.’”
Dr. Strayhorn had to make an immediate decision about how he would respond.
“I put my hands back and I said, ‘Do I have permission to do what you just
asked me to do?’ And the cop said, ‘Yes, you can now move.’” Only then did Dr.
Strayhorn go ahead and pull out his registration and license, along with his university
identification card, though the officer didn’t seem to care. “He said, ‘Do you
know why I stopped you?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Because you don’t look
old enough to drive this car.’ It sounded like a compliment, but then I had to
remind him—in my head, not out loud—that in this country actually, [when] you
get a driver’s license, you’re free to drive any car.”
Dr. Strayhorn knew he’d been stopped for no legitimate reason—a version of
the “show your papers” demands Black men have faced since slavery—and he was
furious. But he also knew that in that minute he couldn’t show it. That was
part of the lesson he wanted to share with our young leaders: “When you are
mistreated, deemed guilty before you are innocent, and oppressed by that form
of unbridled, misused power and authority, it is infuriating. It is offensive.
It is enraging…The rage just started in my pinky toe and it climbed all up my
body. But, thank God, I had what I’m going to say is the number-one thing: if
you’re going to teach [our children] anything—teach them literacy, teach them
numeracy, teach them vocabulary, teach them history, teach them political
science, but listen—teach them how to control their rage.”
He explained what he meant: “Don’t deny the rage …but teach them how to
control it. How do I control it? How do I channel it? How do I redirect it?
Because the word ‘rage’ means violently angry. But I love the second definition
of the word ‘rage.’ The second definition of the word ‘rage’ is impassioned
enthusiasm. You’ve got to teach them that there is ‘something inside so strong’
[the Freedom Schools theme song]. Tell them, ‘I know you can make it. I know. I
know it’s rough sometimes. I know. I know, I know, I know, I know it’s unfair
how police officers treat you, how some teachers treat you, but control and
redirect that rage.”
He went on: “We’ve got to remember that while we’re teaching them how to
control their rage, giving them the language to have that conversation, they
need words for that encounter with the police officer, that encounter with the
neighbor. The reason why people fight is because words are not present for them
to have the conversation. Give them the literacy tools so they can have the
conversation. Teach them rage is natural; rage against this thing; rage against
inequality—but control it in the face of authority that can take your life,
because the end of the thing is we want them to live.”
Self-control over rage at the right moment
might help save a Black boy’s life, though
even that has certainly never been a guarantee. But no matter what, the
critical next step still has to be channeling rage at deeply embedded
structural racism and blatant injustice into “impassioned enthusiasm” for the
larger fight. That larger fight can and must start with all of us by getting
ourselves organized and providing our children positive alternatives to the
miseducation in so many schools and the dangers on the street from law
enforcement agents. Dr. Strayhorn said: “What allows a young man to [have
enough control to] sit there and say ‘hands up’ is that he knows that while his
hands are up, someone else’s hands are on the job. I’m willing to put my hands
up if I know your hands are on something, right? So I’ll put my hands up if
your hands are on the educational problems in this country. I’ll put my hands
up so long as your hands are on the problem of inequality in neighborhoods. I’m
willing to put my hands up so long as my Black sisters and my White brothers
and my Native American brothers and my Latino sisters and brothers are also
putting their hands on the problem of racism … We fight for their freedom, and
if they know that we are fighting for their freedom, they are more willing,
they are more capable, they are more empowered to go through what they have to
go through.”
And, Dr. Strayhorn concluded, this all-hands-on-deck call to rage against
injustice and fight for freedom is for
everyone:
“We’ve got to pursue freedom and justice not just for Black people, but pursue
freedom and justice for Latino folks, pursue freedom and justice for Native
American people, pursue freedom and justice for gay people, for LGBT, for poor
people, for rich people, for tall people, for short people, for people who
don’t have anything at all, for first-generation people, for welfare mothers,
for everybody. Freedom and justice for all.”
That’s the message every child of every color who is “different” must
internalize to break the vicious cycle of deeply embedded cultural and
structural racism that pervades so many American institutions including those
too prevalent in the criminal justice system that too often takes rather than
protects lives.
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Marian Wright Edelman is President of the
Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind®
mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start,
a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life
and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and
communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.
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