Kejuan Miller wrote:
I'm tired of white people complaining about being in a war all the time and pointing to drug dealers on the street when those "dealers" may be me, just waiting for the bus or trying to get along. ... making fun of people who believe anyone who is a person of color along Franklin is a drug dealer or there buying drugs or who knows what some people think. I got news for you: we're not. We're just trying to get by, and your hyping up the drug problem and making it sound like I live in a war zone just makes the police and everyone else look at me as a Black man as a problem.WM: This long statement by Mr. Miller, which I abbreviated poorly, has a lot of truth in it. There are any number of people who make the assumption that a gathering of African American males is an instance of "let's make a drug deal." It is especially easy, if one is so inclined, to make that assumption at every moment at Lake and Chicago and Franklin and Chicago.
It's not uncommon to have a huge number of people on the corner of Lake and Chicago. Two old established bus lines cross there, both of which lines are heavily used by all the diversity of people the city contains.
There could very likely be drug dealers among all those people trying to get by and trying to transfer buses or stop into the businesses there. At various times there have been pick-pockets, petty thieves, prostitutes, income tax cheaters, embezzlers and whatever else people can do to get themselves in trouble.
I have had neighbors who made that assumption about African American males and who also assumed that I agreed with them. In the midst of that knee jerk racism, there are also drug dealers who get on the Chicago bus at Lake and deal on the bus, getting off at Franklin. There are drug dealers who lurk and deal to passing cars and passing pedestrians. There have been young moms with babies in strollers, and some of those babies had drugs in their diapers. There have been kids on bicycles who traded bicycles with other kids, the drugs being carried in the frames of the bicycles. Some have carried drugs in their boom boxes. I doubt there's one trick that hasn't been tried. In among all that are the folks who live in the area, take the bus, stop at the shoe store, go to the Workforce office, etc.
It forces African American males into an awful position. It is assumed by many that if they recognize, by a nod or a word, another AA male, they are, by definition, one of the drug dealers. In my estimation, having had an office at Lake and Chicago for three years, that it is a dizzying prospect to sort folks out even when you're watching every day, all day.
At the same time, I know Jim Graham isn't blowing smoke when he says there are drug dealers under his windows in his side yard. I have had those incidents myself. Prostitutes have hunkered in behind my trash bins to do business, or leaned into cars parked in front of my house to do business. People have used my recycle boxes to defecate--in the middle of a brightly lighted area, mind you.
Concurrently, three young girls who are at the stage of raging hormones, can be standing on the corner cat-calling passing males--for whatever reason. They're just playing, even though I think it's a dangerous game. There can be 4 or 5 kids on bikes ripping around the corners cause it's a summer night and they don't have to get up for school the next day, a whole family coming back from the grocery or laundromat. It's busy on main drags and on the areas they abut 24/7.
WizardMarks, Central
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