The boy in the hoodie.

My boy, Isaiah on the way to school. . . .in his hoodie.

A boy was walking with a hoodie on. Walking through a neighborhood talking on his cellphone with a hoodie on. A man saw him and didn't like what he saw. The hoodie, the way he was walking, the all of it.

"Something's wrong with him," that man said. "He must be on drugs or something."

But he wasn't on drugs. He was simply on the phone. Talking to his girlfriend. With a hoodie pulled over his head. Did I mention that it was raining? Oh, well it was. Perhaps that could explain the hood on his head.

Perhaps.

That man who saw the boy kept watching. The more he watched the more he worried. He even called 911. 

"There's a suspicious guy out here," he told the dispatcher.

And that dispatcher listened and asked questions. Questions like, "What does he look like?" and "What is he doing?"  

And that man shared that he was a black male. And that he was walking. But that it looked suspicious.

The boy was talking to his girlfriend and felt worried by the way this man was watching him. "Run!" she told him. He agreed that this is what he should do. To get away from those scary, accusatory eyes that were on him. So that's what he did. He ran.

"He's running!" That's what that man told the 911 dispatcher. And through pants into the phone he repeated it. "He's running!"  

The dispatcher asked that man if he was chasing the boy. When it was obvious that he was, the dispatcher calmly told him, "We don't need you to do that." But he did it anyway. He sure did.

He chased the boy. And eventually he caught up with him. They scuffled a bit. In fact, they scuffled more than just a bit.

That boy was afraid. He was screaming out for someone to help him. Someone, anyone help. And then, a gunshot. Straight to the chest. 

And the boy was gone.

Just like that a boy with a hoodie, a cellphone and a pack of Skittles in his pocket that he'd just bought for his brother was gone. A son, a brother, a grandson, a friend. Gone. 

What happened next is even sadder.  The man who shot that gun said he'd done so in self defense. And without further questioning, he was let go. Just like that.

Somebody's son, brother, grandson, and friend was gone in an instant and it didn't even warrant much more investigation. 

Turns out that the boy in that hoodie didn't have any criminal record. Turns out that he was an athlete and a kind big brother who would run to the store to get candy for his little brother during halftime. Even if it was raining. 

It also turns out that the man who shot him had a history of calling the police. In fact he had called the police more times in that year before than many of us will in our entire lifetimes put together. He'd even assaulted a police officer before. He sure had.

But that part wasn't taken into consideration that day. That day when that man shot and killed that boy, all the police saw in his corpse was his hoodie and, of course, that suspicious black skin of his.

And this is sad. Very, very sad.

Yes, I think this was about race. Yes, it hurt me somewhere deep because that black boy in the hoodie could be my son or my nephew or my godson or the child of any one of many of my friends. And yes, being a black woman and a black mother of black sons, this cuts me straight down to the white meat. Yes, it does.

But all of this makes me sad for other reasons, too. I hate it that there are black boys in hoodies that do kick in doors and hold people up. I hate it that for many complicated reasons this country has so many black boys in hoodies that feel like they have nothing to lose. 

My husband was once pulled over on the side of a major street in Atlanta. Pulled over in his own car that happened to be a BMW. A "black man in sweats" had just carjacked a woman for her BMW that happened to fit the description of the one my husband owned. "Get down on the ground," the police told Harry. He refused. And fortunately, before it got ugly, they ran his license and plates and learned that he was not that "black man in sweats." 

But what makes me sad is that there was a black man in sweats somewhere. The one who did take that car. At least, allegedly there was.

That makes it hard for boys like Trayvon and men like Harry. And for children like Isaiah and Zachary? That sucks.

Yes. I want racism to go away. I want someone to run it out of town until it never comes back. But. Just as much, I'm tired. Tired of driving down the street and seeing my little brothers standing on corners with pants slung under their bottoms. I'm tired of seeing them passing tiny plastic bags filled with rocks to my sisters and aunties and uncles, too. I hate seeing their faces on the evening news or captured on hidden cameras in convenience stores wielding guns in scared shop owners' faces. Because that isn't helping things. At all.

Sometimes I hear a story about a crime and automatically start chanting, "Please don't be black, please don't be black, please don't be black--damn, he was black."  And I wish I could count how many times that has happened to me. But I can't. And that pisses me off that my boys and my husband  and people like Trayvon Martin and Troy Davis are up against this kind of reputation.

We've got to love on our children and build them up to believe that they, too, can be Barack Obama. Teach them, show them that they are more than sagging pants and poor choices. But that takes time and love and consistency. That takes nurture and resources and a belief that you can and are raising kings and queens. It also helps if you grew up with some sort of template of how to do that. And when it comes to blacks in this country, that isn't as easy as it sounds.

It kind of makes me think of the day I wrote about what happens when people don't "represent." Or rather, when they do represent all of us by doing things that make us all seem suspicious. And as long as that continues, woe to the boy Trayvon Martin, and woe to my sons, too.

I'm sad. Sad that this happened. Sad that we are even talking about this again. Again.

I honestly think that man who shot Trayvon Martin was mentally off. No, that doesn't excuse him but anyone who calls 911 as many times as he had and who had assaulted a police officer is probably not right. 

And the cops who blew it all off? Who had so little regard for that boy's life that they immediately assumed that he had it coming? That chills me to the bone. Just like it chilled me to the bone when the police in Atlanta assumed my husband was violent enough to order him to lay on some dirty concrete just because he looked like someone who stole a car.

Sigh. I don't even know what else to say about all of this. It's just so layered. 

But I will say this:

Man, America. We've got to do better. Period.

***

 Now playing on my mental iPod. . . . if only more of our kids knew that they were this.