When I lived in Mississippi, I participated in Big Brothers Big Sisters, like many people do. I spent a lot of time with a young black child who lived in Jackson.
Today, that child, now a young black man, is going to prison. I want to say a few things about it. (Thread)
Today, that child, now a young black man, is going to prison. I want to say a few things about it. (Thread)
When he was a small child, he was sensitive and earnest. He grew up with a lot of family around, but he lived in a rough neighborhood. Some people bring some vibrancy to Jackson, but it is a tough town without the obvious attractions of Atlanta, Nashville, or Memphis.
Once, I bought a meal for a meth addict (a white lady, as it happens) who hung around his house a lot. That says a lot more to me now than it did back then.
I talked to someone in Mississippi once about mentoring this child, and he responded that he had done something similar awhile ago. He mused that the kid he’d mentored was probably locked up. Then he chuckled, in a sort of chagrined way. I think.
Anyway, the mother of the child I worked with did her best. She knew everything that could go wrong for him. But she struggled with health problems. His father was not around much and had himself spent time in prison.
One time I took him to a restaurant by a reservoir. Fried pickles, fried fish, wide windows over the water. He spent the early part of the meal looking around nervously. I asked him what was up. He whispered: So many white people.
I left Mississippi before he hit his teenage years. He grew up. Our bond grew vague and distant. That was my fault. He struggled to stay in school. When I asked him about it, he had trouble even describing the difficulties he faced.
Then someone in his neighborhood, due to a childish but completely normal beef, shot him in the ankle. He recovered. The person who shot him was punished by the legal system. But I don’t think that’s the main lesson he took from the incident.
Before he got shot, he loved basketball. I'm not sure he could have parlayed it into a college scholarship, or whatever. But after he got shot, he couldn't play. After he recovered, I think he just wouldn't play. His talk about hoops faded, then disappeared.
He eventually dropped out of high school to get a job somewhere, at Waffle House, McDonald’s, anywhere. His mother fumed.
I went down to see him after that. He was still sensitive. I talked to him, as best I could, about what he was going through. He didn’t brush me off or scoff. But I was not with him every day. I think this fact was not too far from the front of his mind as we talked.
After that, I told him: I’ll buy you a plane ticket out of Mississippi, and you should live with us for awhile. We talked. We planned on it. But then his girlfriend, nearly a decade older than him, convinced him not to go. He stopped returning my calls. I was hurt. I had failed.
Next, he, or maybe just his friends, got into a running feud with another group of young men. I think he got scared of what could happen to him. I think he thought about getting shot as a child.
He convinced himself, or was convinced by his friends, that he needed a gun to be safe. He got one.
One night, the two groups of young men encountered each other. He shot the gun. He didn’t hit anybody. He claimed it was in self-defense. I believe him. (Maybe it’s more complicated than that.) But the police arrested him. I don’t know much else; it's unclear to me.
By this time he had a baby daughter. He wasn’t with the baby's mother anymore, but he was proud to be her father. He was about 19 years old.
I was distraught when I heard that he had been arrested for shooting a gun, not too long after he’d been shot himself. I helped keep him out of prison for a little while, but not for long.
I did not completely grasp his legal situation and how he was in a great deal of jeopardy during those months when things seemed to have stabilized. I should have pressed for more information. I don’t know what else I could have done, but ultimately I fell short.
In the interim, he got a job at a chicken plant. He seemed serious and sobered. I implored him: If you see a gun in the house you’re staying at, run away, and don’t go back. Don’t get a gun. Don’t hold a gun for a friend. If you do, you're getting locked up.
It was good advice, but it was simplistic. And it was too late anyway.
Recently he had a birthday. In fact, it was just a few days before the awful news that he was headed to prison. He was focused on getting enough diapers and food for his baby daughter. He posted pictures of himself with her, silly Snapchat filters and all.
His mother had been angry with him for some time, for a few reasons. But she tried everything to keep him out of prison. I can picture her frantic face. It was to no avail. Through a plea deal with the DA, she told me, he’s slated to be locked up for roughly 24 to 30 months.
I guess I can say that many people failed this child, including me. Throughout our relationship, I tried to teach him all the ways he could help himself. But then there was the way that perhaps seemed like the most obvious to him, the way he must have felt like he had to take.
I couldn’t force him not to see it that way. If I were a better and bolder person, I might have helped him avoid this. I think about the person who laughed when he remembered the kid he had mentored going to prison.
You can imagine how I feel about that now, years later.
You can imagine how I feel about that now, years later.
The world might see a young black man in Mississippi going to prison for a gun crime, and shrug, and say: That's incredibly unsurprising. But it’s his story, and mine. It’s a small, tragic piece of something important, something I don’t, and can't, fully understand.
I don't plan on giving up on him. But I do wonder how he'll be different when he's released.
This young man who’s going to prison today has a little brother who's about 12. The little brother loves football. I've only seen him once since he was a baby. When I did, he was a bouncy and bright kid, about 9 years old, looking at the world with kind, receptive eyes.
I asked his mother how this little brother is doing. She said he’s happy his older brother is going to prison for two years and not 25.
I told his mother the little brother should text me if he wants. Maybe we can talk about football. Maybe I should talk about his older brother. But maybe I should talk about anything but that. Maybe it will be too hard for him, or for me. Or for both of us. (End)
