Uma Ramiah Photo
Kevin Walton doesn’t get in trouble. He does wear hooded sweatshirts. Does that mark him as a target, or does his Notre Dame high school hoodie get a pass?
That question arose as a Walton (pictured) and other high-schoolers gathered in the basement of Immanuel Baptist Church on Chapel Street to consider how the lessons of the Trayvon Martin case apply to their daily lives here in New Haven.
Another question: As a young black male, what can get you killed faster — your clothes, or your skin color?
“Trayvon Martin was gunned down,” said city police officer Shafiq Abdussabur, the featured speaker at the Wednesday evening event, which the NAACP Youth Council sponsored. “He was wearing a red hoodie, jeans — dressed like an average black man in America.”
Abdussabur, who wrote a book called A Black Man’s Guide to Law Enforcement in America, stopped and pointed to his own clothes: a dark blazer with matching pants.
“If Trayvon Martin was dressed like this, would he have gotten shot and killed?”
“Look around. Who are the police going to stop in this room?” Abdussabur asked. He pointed at a couple of adult men in the room wearing shirtsleeves and slacks. “Not him, or him.”
Then he pointed at some young African-American men wearing jeans and hooded sweatshirts. “It’ll be you, and you. And you.”
The hat, the hoodie and the jeans — and the colors of each of those items of clothing, each of those things means something, he said.
He pointed to the 16-year-old Walton, who wore a grey Notre Dame High School sweatshirt with green and gold lettering.
“Now you’re wearing a Notre Dame sweatshirt. That’s legit, that’s solid. I went to that school. People recognize that school as a good institution. But would you wear a red hoodie?” he asked. “Why not?”
Walton shook his head, saying no. “Because of the gang association,” he replied softly.
Abdussabur held up a brown baseball cap. “Even the brown hat. When blood dries, what color does it become? Oh yeah — this is a Bloods hat,” he said, referring to the West Coast gang that in recent years has taken root in New Haven and neighboring cities.
“You all have to be careful. The way we set ourselves up translates to the way police deal with us.”
A Black Cop’s Advice
“As a black male or female, you do not have a second chance to make a first impression,” Abdussabur told the group. “You have to think about how other people see you — what they’re assuming about you — and what actions the might take based on those assumptions.”
He explained the concept of a BOLO (or “Be on the Lookout”) announcement that goes out on the police radio about a perpetrator of a crime. Nine times out of ten, he said, it describes a variation of the following: black male, dressed in black hoodie, with dark colored jeans. And possibly in possession of a firearm.
“So what do you think?” Abdussabur asked. “If you’re told every day by someone else — you know, ‘black males dressed like this are dangerous,’ then yeah, they become dangerous in your mind.”
That’s not necessarily fair, he said. But at the same time, police aren’t sitting around sending out fake emails and just making up BOLOs about fictional black males committing crimes in dark clothing and hoodies, he said.
“This is the community doing what the community does. So this is what they’re looking out for. These are the facts. And so a black male in a hoodie automatically becomes a suspect.”
That can cross over into racial profiling and “nonsense,: he admitted, when police begin stopping that group alone — when they target only young people on bikes or ticketing for minor infractions.
“That’s when it becomes nonsense.”
But regardless, he explained, there are ways to stay out of trouble, and to stay out of the spotlight.
Facing Reality
Most of the young people gathered weren’t dressed in the sort of clothing up for discussion Wednesday night. But they said the talk was helpful.
“This was really informative,” said Amber Cross, a 17-year-old Wilbur Cross junior and president of the NAACP Youth Council. “It touched on a lot of the black on black problems we have in our communities. There’s really no unity anymore. People are just killing each other. We might think of a lot of this stuff as common sense, but a lot of kids weren’t raised with parents giving them this information. They might not know.”
Walton agreed.
“I think this is all really relevant to young black males,” he said. “And it’s true — I’ve been spotted out for my Notre Dame sweatshirt,” he said, “but in a positive way. People recognize it as a solid high school and they’re encouraging about it. I don’t think that necessarily happens with a black sweatshirt.”
Ebony Graham, 17, is second vice president of the NAACP Youth Council board. “This is something I think should be done in all the high schools, and especially in the higher crime neighborhoods.”
She said she sees it in real time every day at her high school, Wilbur Cross.
“If you’re dressed a certain way, or you’re acting suspiciously, you’ll be singled out by teachers or administrators. But if you’re dressed professionally, you keep your head down and walk with purpose — there’s no reason for them to stop us or question our behavior.”
But the Youth Council’s style and behavior don’t necessarily give them a free pass.
Kevin said he’d been stopped by the cops with friends, though he didn’t get in any trouble
Amber shared a story about her boyfriend, who drives a car registered in his mother’s name.
“His mom is white, and he was driving home with a couple friends late one night,” she said. “The cops pulled him over because they assumed it was a stolen car.”
He’s a good guy, she said. He doesn’t get into any trouble. “But the cops saw three black kids driving a car in the middle of the night, and they assumed it was stolen,” she said.
“That’s just a reality we have to face.”