Thug 'Til I Cry

There was one section of Hook's article that really stood out to me: "Male violence is a central problem in our society. Black male violence simply mirrors the styles and habits of of white male violence." I couldn't agree more with that statement, and this caused me to reminisce about a very relevant story that I experienced in high school, so here is my tale: 

White-suburban teenage males often spend their summer nights smoking cigarettes in parking lots while their car subs resonate rap music––everyday suburban “thug shit.” It was always interesting to me why the thug lifestyle was so captivating to suburban high school boys who had been given everything their whole life, and in no way could even conceptualize what it meant to be on the “grind.” Yet, everyday they were hustlin’, or so they thought. What turned out to be a normal summer night of neighborhood cruising in my brand new, yet slightly old, 1996 Dodge Intrepid with custom rust blotches all over the hood, could not have ended more unfortunately. I pulled into a parking lot where I saw a bunch of high school friends posting up and parked next to them. We all hung out for a while and I did my best to ignore the rap music pulsating from their car sound systems that assumedly cost more than my car itself. They were all riled up about some kid from our rival high school that they wanted to fight that night––typical antics that I was always unenthusiastic about. Plans were formed, a location was set, and fifteen white-suburban males piled in to their expensive cars, turned up their Lil’ Wayne mix, and set out to their destination with nothing but delusional dreams of thug intentions. The two friends that I was with convinced me to follow them so we could watch the fight. We drove to the more ghetto area of Palatine until the caravan of cars parked in another parking lot. Everyone exited their cars and proceeded to "talk shit” about how tough and ready they were to fight––although, at the moment, no rivaling factors were in the parking lot. Suddenly, 30 African American males hopped the fence of a nearby apartment complex and began sprinting toward us with bricks and bats. It was an ambush, and all of the “gangster” white boys were immediately emasculated and began running to their cars to evacuate. I wanted nothing to do with this and began walking to my car, when one of the African American males grabbed my very lanky friend that had no chance of defending himself. I had no choice but to intervene, and before I knew it, 5 people were jumping me at once. I looked around and all of my “friends” had already fled the scene. How was it that the only person uninterested in the fight, which was myself, was the only one that was involved in the fighting? Luckily I somehow managed to defend myself without receiving too much harm (one other kid was curb stomped pretty badly), but all of my car windows were smashed with bricks and bats. It was a rough night, and an even more terrible conversation trying to explain everything to my parents.

        

This is an interesting story for analysis because there are many different communities involved in the violence that ensued. We first have an all-encompassing community of males that want to express their masculinity and act tough, and in this circumstance, they believe the best way to do this is through fighting/violence. In this community of males, the opposition of the two different high schools represents two different socioeconomic classes, as well as two different classes of race. In a nutshell, the fight was between middle/upper class white males and lower class African American males. Ironically, the white males looked to reflect their masculinity through the lower class African American community by listening to rap music and trying to act like gangsters, but when put into an actual circumstance where they were supposed to act “thug” and fight, they immediately ran. From my interpretation of this violent act, the white males wanted to fight so they could be more like the African American community, where as the African American community fought in what seemed to be a more angry and hostile manner––and to me, this meant they were fighting out of anger at feeling inferior to people of a higher class. They came with bricks and bats, having the intention of destroying all of the expensive cars that were parked in the lot (unfortunately they only managed to damage my inexpensive car). One question that has lingered with me, is whether or not this act of violence was an attempted push for white supremacy. And I don’t mean this in a sense that the white males were trying to act out of white supremacy by coming to fight the African American community. Instead of the white males fighting the african american males with the mindset that the white community is better, they went into the fight with the mindset that they are acting like the African American community––and doing it even better (if this makes sense). I received a reality check that night and questioned who my true friends were, but I believe most of the other people were unmoved by the event. When my “friends” were cowardly driving away, I could hear Lil’ Wayne fading into the distance over the sound of my car windows being smashed.