The thing that makes ‘illegals’ criminals is by being here. Standing on this side of the line. It is a ‘crime’ that those of us born here cannot commit.
We can commit any other crime we want and never be seen as the kind of criminal they are. Because the kind of criminal they are, they were born that way. They didn’t choose it. Neither did we. They wouldn’t change it. Neither would we.
There are processes and procedures; ways to ‘become us’ properly. Cutting the line is not by the books, but it also isn’t violent, abusive. It doesn’t exploit anyone. It is not inherently criminal to seek refuge quickly. It is inherently human.
We should understand that. We can understand it without that meaning; ignore it. But to dehumanize, mock, kidnap, and disappear people under the guise of their criminality when the ‘crime’ is being, existing, we have a problem.
I know that problem. I wear that problem. I live in a conservative suburban hellscape (as a fellow melanated associate from just up the road, Titus, likes to call it). I live in the part of my metro that got built by the people with money getting away from ‘urban people.’ It was once a literal selling point that my town did not have any black people living in it… or allowed in it after sunset for that matter.
The way they talked about us making their neighborhoods less safe on the news in the 80s is why it’s not safe for us to jog in our own neighborhoods forty years later. The kids we sat next to in class every damn day decided we were the weird exceptions to Black people in America.
They were seeing the ‘real truth’ sensationalized on television, sitting at the dinner table with Dad and Grandpa nodding in agreement. They remembered the days just a couple of decades before when they never had to see us at all. Didn’t have to share a meal, a cab, a bathroom, or an education with us. Never questioning the beliefs, assumptions, and stereotypes handed down to them from their dads and grandfathers, who treated us like cattle, or dogs they couldn’t put down yet.
It didn’t matter that they had met none of us or spent any time with us challenging the narrative. It didn’t matter that you had a friend at school that “wasn’t like that,” did it? He/she/they were ‘the exception’ or just needed more time. Wait until you realize sitting next to that kid in class was a more unbiased experience with a black person than they’d ever had.
A narrative had already been set.
A narrative of lazy, fertile, criminal fell on a skin tone, an original heritage, an unshared border. It didn’t matter that their own fathers or uncles or brothers or husbands refused to work, dodged drafts; had second whole families across town, DUIs, prostitutes, addictions, and anger problems.
The people not to be like, were those Black people on the TV.
It didn’t matter that the high school science teacher, the youth pastor, and the town dentist all had the same proclivities toward abuses of power and consent, those were all individual monsters that were not in indication of the collective because the whole is just not that kind of people. These people get away with these crimes because they blend in. It’s always a surprise. That stuff happens to other people.
How could this happen in our tiny little community, right under our noses?
By contrast, I can’t tell you how many times the ‘surprise’ about me is that I know my father. I’ve never been arrested. I went to an elite high school. I’m an attorney licensed in three states. I can speak in full sentences.
That I am not an anomaly.
No, I’m not working the valet, this is my firm’s event.
Yes, officer, this is my car.
This is my neighborhood.
I wear the lasting effects of hundreds of years ago, when it became fashionable, funny, unifying, and American to look at a group of people as one singular characteristic, and then subjugate them for it. To dehumanize, mock, kidnap, and disappear Black folks under the guise of criminality when the crime was simply being; existing.
We have a problem.
Altar’d Thoughts 