People often talk about racism in America and how America has a black-white society. We have all discussed what we perceive as the problems of race and issues of color; until recently the black-white divide has been a very accurate way to view race relations in the United States.
In recent years, things have changed and the straight line dividing whites from blacks has been forced into an awkward curve. Instead of simply dividing black people from white people, it serves to separate young black males from the rest of society. Because of that, most of us black men grow up with an us-against-the-world mentality.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1995, 1 in every 8 black men in their twenties is in jail at any given moment and by 2004, that number had risen to 1 in 5. Even though national crime rates have plummeted, the number of black men in jail has actually increased. It often seems like young black men are caught in a vicious cycle of poverty, violence, and criminality. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the number one cause of death among black men ages 18 to 24 is homicide.
Young black males often find themselves stuffed into stereotypes on the bottom rungs of the social order and must regularly battle overwhelming odds to reach social acceptance. People claim that we don't try hard enough to succeed and that we're lazy. They say we innately want to do wrong but so many times there is a lock on the right door and we're stuffed into an ever shrinking room with three exits. Millions are lined up at the first door that leads to a recording contract but only a select few will ever get through. With a little hard work, slightly more will squeeze through the door that leads to a career as a professional athlete. Too many find themselves rushing through the biggest door that leads to a life of crime and drugs and eventually jail or worse.
Even those who make a perfectly legit living as professional athletes or recording artists still struggle to gain the respect of a public that doesn't hesitate to label them as thugs for even the smallest mistakes. “Thug” has seemingly become the N-word.
Never have I heard anyone but young black men called thugs. People have managed to get around a word that has been deemed socially unacceptable and replace it with one that even black women use to describe black men. I've often been told, “I thought you were a thug until I started talking to you,” or “I didn't know you were smart.” Someone who has never even spoken to me, even had the nerve to say that I was “glorifying the thug mentality.”
I'm not saying that men who fit the mold of a thug don't exist - some deserve that title - but when I'm walking down the street, what leads someone to classify me as a thug? Is it my hair? My clothes? I think I dress fairly well and anyone who has been around an actual “thug” can testify that they don't usually wear nice collared shirts on a regular basis. The only conclusion I can make is that people look at me and think “thug“ because of the color of my skin.
It hurts to be labeled as the scapegoat for so many of the nation's problems and to be automatically deemed the worst in any group, and maybe on some level we've played into the stereotypes and not tried hard enough to break them, but I don't feel that the public as a majority have put significant effort in trying to look deeper than those stereotypes. People still tightly cling to what they want to believe so they can have fall guy, so we need to work doubly hard to prove them wrong instead of taking the blame.
