Matthew Fowler's Blog
Lessons from the hood part 1 / Feb 21, 01:01 PM
A couple weeks after returning from Christmas break me and one of my roommates were walking home from the school we work at when we ran into a neighbor we had become friendly with. We stopped and chatted for a couple minutes. Before parting ways and heading home I shook his hand and said goodbye. Before I had could process what had happened a police car had pulled up and police offers were yelling for me to get on the hood of their car.
They thought they had just witnessed a drug exchange. Very few white people venture into our neighborhood except to buy drugs and I’ve been told it is common practice to exchange drugs in a handshake. Considering all this it didn’t bother me that the police came to check what was going on, in actuality they probably had more cause to search us then 90% of the people they stop. What bothered me was how the police officers pre-judged us, they had already decided we were guilty and they let us know it in their every action. When we did as they told us and put our hands on the hood of their car they felt like they needed to threaten us, when we told them what we were doing there they said “yeah right”, and they kept asking “Do you want to change your story before we find anything?”. Even more upsetting was the flagrant racism that under ran the whole encounter, the questions of “Have you ever been arrested?” to me and my white teammate and questions of “When was the last time you were arrested?” to our black friend.
As we walked away a half an hour later I wasn’t sure what to think about these cops. On the one hand they were trying to make the neighborhood safer and cut down the drug activity, on the other the way they treated us was reprehensible, inexcusable and caused more harm then good. We live in an area where there is no trust in the police. That crimes often go unsolved because witnesses lack faith in the police to do their job. After this experience I can understand why. When the police are making snap judgments about who you are, when the default is to assume your doing something wrong, when they don’t seem to care about you, why would you trust them?
And as I sat in the realization of how detrimental police encounters just like mine are for this neighborhood I started to think about my relationships with people down here and especially of my students. In about every class I help out in there is at least one or two kids who generally refuse to do any work. They will sit there and doodle or sleep and they won’t cause waves if you leave them alone. And I was struck with how little effort I, having been there 4 months already, had invested in them. One I couldn’t even recall what his voice sounded like. I had made snap judgments about them, that they would refuse to work even if I offered to help them, and that they weren’t worth investing in. And when I stuck myself in the position of that kid I had to ask why would they try. No one expects anything of them, no one shows the believe in them, so why when school already seems completely useless would they put in any effort? And in that moment when I was angry and frustrated and upset by someone else’s assumptions, I was humbled in the realization I was unintentionally doing the exact same thing every day.
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