Yusef Hawkins was only 16 years old when he died. Like so many others before him, he died a victim of a reality beyond his control: racial violence. Hawkins, a black youth from the East New York section of Brooklyn, was shot to death after being confronted by a racist mob of white boys in Brooklyn's predominantly Italian Bensonhurst neighborhood.
Hawkins was in Bensonhurst to look at a used car on the night he was killed. The boys who killed him thought he was the boyfriend of a white neighborhood woman who had broken off a relationship with one of the white youths and had started dating black and Puerto Rican men. The woman had planned a birthday party at her home that night which her black and Puerto Rican friends were planning to attend, but the party was canceled as word spread that some neighborhood youths were planning to start trouble. The white youths did not know the party had been canceled.
By the time Hawkins arrived at the street where the woman lived, a mob of 10 to 30 white youths wielding baseball bats and other weapons had assembled. At least one had a gun. Hawkins was chased, surrounded, and shot. The youths had no idea who Hawkins was, or whether or not he knew this woman. They were prepared to harm a person of color. Anyone would do.
Because of the national media attention Hawkins' death has attracted, the nation is forced to ponder -- once again -- just how sick it really is. Even more tragic is the gap separating the good intentions of some whites and the increasing rage of most blacks, a gap that Hawkins' death puts into stark contrast.
Unfortunately, there are no new lessons to be learned from the tragedy in Bensonhurst. Racism and racially motivated violence are easily recognized and readily condemned. But actions speak louder than words. Until there is intentional action by white America indicating that it realizes racism is its problem, any attempt to foster a humane context for race relations will be a futile effort.
Moses Stewart, Hawkins' father, summed up the frustration of blacks when he asked: "Who will pay for this? Who will pay?" Blacks, many times with white allies, have marched, sat in, held prayer vigils, initiated dialogues, and participated in civil disobedience demanding protection from racial violence. In spite of all these efforts, blacks far too often find themselves grieving over the loss of loved ones killed by racists. "Do the right thing," then, becomes more than a rhetorical statement: It becomes a tactical question for survival in a hostile environment.
Consider the riots that erupted in Virginia Beach over the Labor Day weekend, when 100,000 black college students from across the East Coast descended upon the resort town for the annual Greekfest celebration, a fraternity affair. Can you imagine hundreds of local and state police and the National Guard being called out to cope with the mostly white students that invade Florida each year at spring break? How is it, then, that hundreds of law enforcement officers with night sticks, gas masks, helmets, automatic rifles, police dogs, and helicopters can patrol the streets of Virginia Beach and randomly arrest and beat blacks for simply being on the sidewalk?
When 100,000 additional people are in a space unable to accommodate half that number, it is reasonable to expect that problems will occur. It stretches the imagination, however, to believe that all 100,000 of those blacks, or even most of them, were instigating violence and looting white-owned shops. It must be understood that the inability or unwillingness of law enforcement officials in Virginia Beach to distinguish between actual troublemakers and folks wanting only to have a good time dictates that race must have been the sole criterion on which to judge. As in the case of Bensonhurst, anyone would do.
A revealing statement by a Virginia Beach merchant strikes directly at the heart of the issue. "Normally about 25 percent of our business is black, but this weekend we, I mean whites, found ourselves in the minority ... We felt threatened." And when white America feels threatened, it responds with legally sanctioned violence.
But when black America feels threatened and becomes threatening, white America says that it stems from a "bad attitude." So who protects black people? Not the police. And to what extent can it be assumed that blacks will continue to be victimized by this double standard?
PERHAPS THE MOST FRUSTRATING aspect of racial violence is that it is a many-headed monster. The social and political violence faced by blacks every day is more subtle but just as damaging as overt physical violence.
A new report, A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society, published by the National Research Council in Washington, D.C., analyzes 50 years of progress by blacks in all facets of life. There is very little new information in this report, and the conclusion is not surprising: "Full assimilation of blacks in a 'color blind' society is unlikely in the foreseeable future."
Such a dismal prediction is tragic, in part because incidents of racial violence are on the rise, the Supreme Court has reneged on its promise to protect blacks' rights, and racism and racial equality are not on the U.S. political agenda. But such a prediction evokes a greater tragedy which is in fact an irony.
The explosion of crack and other drug dealing among the black underclass and its accompanying violence will always be seen by many whites as a reason why blacks cannot participate fully in society. At the same time, however, participation of the black underclass in the drug culture is actually rooted in its inability to achieve legally the materialistic success of the wider culture. The point is that the black underclass in America is more American than we think -- capitalism's bastard child. We created it but want nothing to do with it.
When seen in this light, President Bush's drug plan is not only shortsighted, but also hypocritical. America created a drug problem that it can no longer ignore. Yet it persists in dealing with the problem as if race were an entirely separate issue. "Get a job," conservatives say. "Find ways to enter the middle class" is another line.
The fact is that if folks in the inner city could get to the middle class, they would be there. How can an already desperate class of people trust leaders that do not hesitate to send millions of dollars, tons of weapons, and scores of military advisers to Colombia, while attempts here at home to raise the minimum wage as incentive to keep kids off the street spark a battle between Capitol Hill and the White House?
Money poured into law enforcement and jails, drug rehabilitation centers and education, affordable medical care for mothers with crack habits and their addicted unborn children, is needed; but it serves only as an immediate first step. It does not take blacks out of the ghetto, nor does it remove the stigma of race from a society whose values are warped.
Anthony A. Parker was assistant editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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