The news this week broadcasted multiple images of groups of young people of color storming into stores and running off with armloads of stolen goods. They’re hitting high end stores, the Target and Walmart stores, as well as small businesses. Not surprisingly, Target announced that it will close seven on its stores due to excessive theft. Others will likely exit these neighborhoods too, leaving residents with fewer places to shop, higher prices, and fewer job opportunities. Actions have consequences and so does inaction.
While I sympathize with this youthful response to a system that has deprived them of a level playing field in which to thrive economically, I think family members and community advocates need to inform the young people in those videos that making away with stolen merchandise to sell on the black market isn’t winning. The system that failed them remains rigged to lock them up for their crime and to further punish their community.
I know all about this rigged system. It became clear to me as a teenager that the system wasn’t built to advance women nor black and brown people. From denying access to the necessities like decent housing and good education, to withholding the building blocks of wealth that come through high-paying jobs and capital investment, to flooding the streets with drugs and alcohol, to the over-policing and harsher sentencing of black and brown people, and to the media images that negatively portray blackness to the extent that the world blames our poverty on our cultural flaws and not on ongoing oppression and lack of opportunity. The reality is that poverty, generational trauma, and lack of opportunity inevitably lead to crime fueled by frustration, anger, desperation, need, drug abuse, and untreated mental health issues.
The Civil Rights Movement was a beacon of hope. However, I can point to how things really turned south after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. I felt that loss to my core. Our collective pain, frustration and hopelessness manifested itself in self-destructive violence and our communities never fully recovered. By the late 70’s, the promises of the Civil Rights Movement met with the reality of an economic and social system unwilling to change.
I observed the bars going up on the windows of homes. Liquor stores owned by Asian immigrants sprung up on most corners instead of grocery stores. I observed kids being beaten up for their tennis shoes. School fights became a daily occurrence. Sports became more important than school for most boys. My brothers had their leather coats stolen off their backs. I observed a woman being tied to a car and dragged down the street by her boyfriend. Drive by shootings and gang violence became commonplace as drugs became a means of mental escape and a major economic driver.
As a tween, I felt like I was stuck in a slow burning community, destined for death if I couldn’t find a way out. My mother knew enough to keep us in church and off the streets, but I eventually realized that the songs at church always pointed to heaven or Jesus’ second coming as the eventual relief from the misery this life seemed to offer. At home, my mother suffered physical abuse from my alcoholic father, and the church folks advised her to bear it as a submissive wife while praying for him. That wasn’t a serious solution. I was terrified of the violence that could end her life. And the police were no help. Every time they eventually showed up, they did nothing. I repeatedly begged my mother to leave. Then, finally, and with the help of her parents, she left my father and moved us away from the city.
That move changed everything. I was thirteen and for the first time in my life, I could see a bright future for myself. It turned out that living away from a community of color meant freedom from the fiery arrows meant to destroy lives and livelihoods. Government policies that sanctioned a lack of educational, health, and infrastructure resources while allowing high prices, drugs, bank discrimination, and excessive police presence were all absent. In the suburbs I discovered access to everything I needed to be successful if I just learned the new rules.
Rule number one was to take advantage of the highly resourced education being offered. Rule number two was to be persistent, brave, and exceptional. Rule number three was to keep my mouth shut and to pay attention to the silent cues. I learned that the way to be successful in a system rigged against women and people of color was to trick the system into believing you are a legitimate part of it. I learned to speak and write in the language of the system. I learned to dress for acceptance (AKA: to “dress for success”). I learned that I had to be doing better, not just as good, as my white counterparts to be recognized. I learned to overlook micro-aggressions, but to make note of the bias and work around it. I learned to value my few white allies who would mentor and later sponsor me. I learned to smile when I felt like screaming. As an adult, I learned to hide cultural indicators like family pictures or black heritage art whenever I wanted to sell a house. I learned to sue when it was warranted. I learned that humility is overrated, and that tactfulness would get me further than being direct. And I learned to always keep receipts and emails because insecure white folks will try to bring you down.
Donald Trump is correct that the system is rigged. He admits to benefitting from that system for many years. That system kept him out of jail despite his sexual assault and fraud. In his mind, “America was great” when women and people of color were oppressed and lacked opportunity and couldn’t do much about it. He now thinks it is “rigged” to give us access, opportunity, and power we shouldn’t have. Obama was his undoing. Not surprisingly, his rhetoric appeals to uneducated white people who failed to take full advantage of that system when it was available to them.
Trump is selling a revised system wherein he feeds his fragile ego by dictating how government is run, picking the winners and losers, and giving these poor white folks the hope that they will be the winners against those immigrants and people of color who are now competing to displace them. The problem is that his promises are empty. He has nothing to offer them when you dig deep enough. All he has is resentment against people like Obama who circumvented the rigged system and are now exposing him for the criminal he actually is. However, that resentment threatens to lead to violence and even genocide if allowed to proliferate.
While it is true that the system continues to be rigged against minorities, and wealth inequality remains a huge problem, there are ways to navigate it. Donald Trump wants to make that navigation more difficult for women and people of color. He certainly isn’t the person to fix this rigged system. If anything, he would like to reinstate and reinforce oppression.
The 2024 election is going to be about the survival of our democratic republic. Our current Constitution and system of government gives us with the opportunity to elect representatives who work towards creating a more equitable and inclusive society that is far easier to navigate to become successful. I’m hopeful that we can create a society where young people no longer feel the need to “mash and grab” to earn a living. To accomplish this, people of good conscience must vote.