Run

Excerpt from Chapter 3

“Derrick, how did you get home from school so fast?”

“I ran, Grandma. I’m training for track – we are going to roll in states”

“Listen, don’t run through the streets baby”.

“But Grandma, why?, First, you said…”

“Because they will kill you”, she interrupted abruptly

“What? Who will kill me? “

“The police” she said

“They will shoot you and say you were running away from a robbery or something”

I stood in silence for a moment, trying to digest what I just heard

“Yes, ma’am”

She closed the door and retired to her bedroom.

Later that night, I lay restless in bed, staring up at the ceiling. I was perplexed.

This woman watched me run before I even learned to walk.

“Dee, that boy needs fresh air. He has a lot of energy; he can’t be cooped up in this place all day while you work”, she would say to my mother.

“Maybe you should get him into some sports”.

And so they both agreed, I was too destructive for indoors.

The cub had outgrown his cage.

If they didn’t get me outdoors soon, someone was going to lose a finger.

So they pooled together funds and signed me up for everything.

And boy, could I run.

I could run across fields, around bases and down courts.

I could run up stairs and over hills.

I could also climb, skate, and bike. But above all else, I could run

And run I would, with every chance I got.

And Grandma was in the bleachers cheering me along with every chance she got.

I could always single out her voice from the noise in the crowd. “Run, run, run faster baby”.

I can remember searching her out while taking the field for my first high school football game. I had no doubt she’d be there

My grandfather later told me that said she watched the entire game with her hands over her eyes, still screaming “Run, run, run faster”.

“But Grandpa, how did she…”, I started

“I told her when you had the ball”.

“Oh OK”

Grandma had only agreed to allow me to play this dangerous sport she despised because I begged and convince her that I would run so fast, the other team would not able to tackle me.

And that is what I did. I ran and no one could tackle me.

A promise is a promise.

I was not aware of it at the time, but that day I received my first real lesson in racism.

I had heard about racism while growing up

I had seen the cops harass the dealers. I watched the news; racism always seemed to be a topic

And of course, there were the 1985 bombing on Osage avenue that killed 20 blacks and the controversial trial concerning Ali Muhammed and the death of a Philadelphia police officer, which is still ongoing.

These events gained national attention and they happened right in my backyard, yet I grew up under the impression that I had no direct exposure to the Racism. After all, none of my the men in my family had ever beaten down by the cops on national TV like Rodney King or bitten by dogs during protests.

 

No, we were able to AVOID racism –  or so we thought.

The adage was simple, walk a straight line and you’ll be fine.

When I became a man later, I would discover that these social rituals are a large part of how racism actually works.

At the time of this talk with my grandmother, I was in my senior year at Penn Wood High School. I had already run my way to a full scholarship at one of the best universities in Pennsylvania.

Shit like this just did not happen every day for kids from the hood. Apparently, I was different. And running was my ticket. I had free tuition, and a one way ticket out the hood

 

In Philly, we didn’t have fields or facilities to practice running.

We ran through the streets.

I earned my scholarship running  through those streets.

I once joked that I touched every square inch of West Philly with my feet.

Why was she telling me to stop now? I had to run. Running made me.

Another 2 hours elapsed. I lay there, now tossing and turning

What made her so afraid?

I was a 17 year old student athlete who had no previous run-ins with the police. By all accounts, I was a good kid, I reasoned.

I shrugged, maybe she’s just becoming nervous with old age

Without answers, I sighed, rolled over and eventually fell asleep.

 

When Mom and Dad first moved to Upper Darby in 1991, it was an all white neighborhood at that time.

I thought this odd, considering how close in proximity it was to the all-black neighborhoods where I spent the first 9 years of my childhood.

The county line that divided Philadelphia and Delaware Country is an unkept patch of grass, the width of 6 city blocks called Cobbs Creek Parkway.

Our first apartment in Upper Darby was a walkable distance from family in Philly.

Our walks from West Philly to Upper Darby were like transporting through a time portal.

Once we walked past the abandoned cars, stepped over the broken glass and avoided heroine needles, we would touch down onto freshly manicured lawns and white picket fences – civility. I can recall watching in awe as the home owners watered their lawns while their children shot at baskets that were suspended from their garages. It seemed like paradise to me

We originally moved to Upper Darby to “get me into the better schools and away from trouble in the city”, mom said.

But these schools is where I would get my first exposure to racism.

I got odd looks but for the most part, kids were nice. I would get into the occasional scuffle with the kid who learned to repeat after his parents. I considered these offenses “sticks-and-stones’”.

Kids fighting in Philly schools was the norm, so when I transferred to Stonehearst Hills Elementary in 4th grade, I didn’t think much of punching another kid in the mouth for calling me a name.

Before we moved across the tracks, mom warned me.

“People out here like to call black people the n-word. They are racist. You are allowed to defend yourself but don’t initiate trouble”

“What’s the N-word?, What’s a Racist?”

“You’ll find out soon, babe”

I could tell mom was not yet comfortable with having this conversation with her nine year old son.

She was only twenty five years old at the time; she was still learning to navigate the world on her own. Nevertheless, I guess you could say I was prepared for what was to come in Upper Darby schools.

I can still recall when I lost my Nigger Virginity. I was actually surprised; it did not hurt as much as I had expected. I thought “this is obviously more of a reflection of this kid’s character than mine”. That’s when I learned that blacks are mandated to get upset at this offense – and so I did, I played my part

 

In Upper Darby, there were fields – more space for me to run.

The more athletic I became, the less interested the white kids became in scuffling with me. I was a really good fighter. I had experience;  At 9 years old, I probably had 30 notches under the belt.

I listened to mom. I  did not instigate but trouble managed to find me.

The last time a white kid called me a nigger, I was 10 years old.

That poor kid and his father learned a painful lesson about the family name he had defaced. After that incident, I earned the reputation as “the one black kid you should not call a nigger”. Everything else was still on the table though

The racist parents would eventually moved to better neighborhoods.

The new suburbs were towns located three to five miles safely outside the reach of blacks, like us, who were entering the white suburbs.

The new suburbs were not accessible by SEPTA, mass transit.

The new suburbs had nice malls and no black people, yet.

 

In Philly, there was no place for me to run, other than directly into trouble.

That’s the only reason we were headed to Upper Darby to begin with.

You see, we were a family of runners.

Mom ran track before dropping out of high school to raise me and  Dad ran point guard for the basketball team.

Eventually, mom would be running away from Dad and Dad would be running away from the law.

The whole family was running low on cash; ramen noodles were a staple in our daily diet. I can still taste the oriental seasoning from those aluminum packets. Nineteen cents went a long way in those days.

We were on welfare and we were running out of hope.

So, we ran to the suburbs for a chance at a better life

There is just something about that word, “better”.

We really believed that the water was fresher and air was cleaner on the other side of Cobbs Creek.

We were running away from our problems in Philly and running head first into a different type of problem only 5 minutes away – Racism

Over the next four years, we were constantly moving back and forth, in and out of Delaware County – but mostly out it

We had a taste of what it was like to live in middle class

After Dad ran away for good, mom couldn’t afford to the rent on her own

By my count, I lived in 14 different homes before starting high school. Mom always told me that I had more life experience than most men twice my age.

“All that moving in a 2 mile radius; where the hell were we going?”

Amidst the running, I managed to thrive in some pretty hostile environments.

I had brains & braun and now, at 17, I had the biceps to match.

I was street wise and book smart.

To the local dealers and gangstas – I was the chosen one, a prodigy, one of those kids who has a rare chance to make it out of the hood. By the way, labeling a kid with promise is an urban cultural phenomenon that is pretty difficult to put into words. Ultimately, the kid becomes untouchable –  everyone consents, he cannot be enlisted to a life of crime. So the streets left me alone to do my thing – sports and school. And grandma followed suit, she gave me just enough spending money to avoid the temptation to hustle crack. The kids who didn’t have support? Many of them are now dead, in jail or unrecognizable due to how difficult their life has been.

I was becoming a man and I had one last sprint and I was determined to run away from the city life once and for all.  I was on my way, running towards the good life – blazing through my track meets and football games as if my life depended on it.

After scoring well on the SATs, I was starting to feel like I had outrun the odds. I was a student-athlete. I had no previous run-ins with the law.

So what the hell would pre-empt my Grandmother to react so strongly to me sprinting a 2 mile stretch across the safe streets of Delaware County? It was a feat I had conquered countless times already.

I would later learn that Grandma was teaching me a lesson that day. It’s a lesson I have carried with me throughout my life and to be honest, it has probably kept me alive.

The message, simple; her delivery, brutal.

“You can’t out-run a bullet, son”.

The thought of bullets piercing my body sent a chill down my spine; it was a terrifying thought. Why was she doing this? This is not love, I thought.

My reaction was her desired affect, I am sure of it.

Grandma had raised three sons previously.

I was an unexpected fourth thanks to the years I spent running my mom crazy

I was becoming an adult. I was flying the nest and she knew I didn’t intend on a return.

This talk was part of my travel package.

It was time to have downloaded into my conscientiousness the fear that I would need to navigate a world unsafe and unintended for me – otherwise the consequences could be catastrophic.

Gruesome images of my bullet-riddled body would force me to  understand the fragility of my life, as a black man in America.

Grandma understood it was time for my childhood fantasies to come to an abrupt end – and for my own good.

She figured she would rather hurt me with words than to receive a call informing her that a rogue cop hurt me as a result of my lack of understanding. I understood that most cops are good – but this is a numbers game.

Grandma had a special way of communicating with all of her children. She never sugar coated anything.

“If you have sex with that girl, wear a condom – you don’t need any children”

“Grandma, we are not…”

“When you do – you hear me?”

“Yes Ma’am”

She seemed to relish brutal honesty but I can tell that this conversation was a difficult one for her to have.

I was her baby boy, the prince of the family.

Mom and Grandmom protected me from birth – and now they would no longer be able to do so.

When I got my driver’s license later that year, my training would continue.

“Hands on the wheel, No-sir, Yes-sir, Don’t give them any reason to get aggressive with you. They will shoot you if they are uncertain. You understand?”

“Yes, Ma’am”

At 17, There was no bar mitzvah money. No new car. No pool party.

My inheritance was a crash course  on how not to get yourself shot by the cops.

As a black boy, This was my rite to passage, the only thing my parents owed me.

Ironically, this lesson was given 9 years after the first time I was called Nigger by a white person because despite popular belief, name calling is not racist.

This was my indoctrination into systemic racism that embodies America and its bloody history against blacks.

That night, the woman who had loved me as her own, who and trained me to run as fast as I possibly could to avoid being tackled, ended my childhood.

No more running. It was time to cross over.

I was no longer a black boy. I was a black man and running in the wrong neighborhood would get me killed.

And with that, her lesson was complete.

“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but bullets will really hurt you”.

The next morning, I got up and had breakfast.

I sat down on the stairs to laced up my running shoes.

Grandma met me at the door, wished me off and gave me a big hug, as she always did.

There were no words exchanged. I can tell she had been crying for hours.

Today, I would be walking a slow pace. I would have time to process every word that was NOT said to me about my life and its worthlessness.

As I walked past the dark green freshly manicured lawns and the white picket fences, I took it all in and it finally began to sink in. No one would ever stand toe-to-toe and exchange punches with me again

They would be shooting at me instead. I was a black man.

“Baby, you cannot outrun a bullet”

 

 

 

Chapter 4

So, what is racism?

Well, I can tell you one thing racism is not – adolescent ignorance.

Before Grandma taught me how to keep bullets out of my torso, I thought..

“I’ve dealt with being called names before.

I’ll just stay away from the handful of bad apples and not do anything illegal.

When pulled over, I’ll comply with the cops and I get myself out of the situation.

I’m smart. I will excel in school, get rich, and hide in the burbs – beat the system.

I’ll be fine”

I was a fool

In hindsight, I had not even a basic understanding of how sophisticated the system of Racism in America really is.

Today, I view racism as an infectious virus of ideologies, even more contagious than COVID-19.

Like COVID, racism relies on its hosts to infect one another via transmission. And like any virus it relies on its host to be unaware that he or she is hosting

Society only sees  the symptoms of this infectious disease. The length of the list is long and numerous.- ranging from awkward interactions to violent encounters with people of all races.

My grandmother was a host to the virus without her knowledge of it. As a black woman, the virus used her body for a singular purpose, to communicate to all of her sons how unsafe the world is for us. Upon careful inspection, the messaging was pervasive on all forms of communication.  “Don’t go here. Do do this. Don’t do that. It’s unsafe. Make sure you…basically, the world is theirs, not ours. We are visitors, thread lightly….” And thus I became to understand that awareness is the opposite of privilege

Grandma instilled these fears in me. So does every other black woman who raises boys in America. These women deal with levels of anxiety that would hospitalize most suburban moms. They fear for the lives of their sons each and every day and this is what makes racism so damn effective.

I did not grow up under the pretense that life would be fair for me or that I would ever be safe in America. Quite the oppose in fact – I was taught that I would be hunted – without fail. “Derrick, you are fast, strong, and intelligent. They will kill you first” she said.

Moreover, while most kids were playing with dolls – I was never allowed to fantasize about the way things should be. This is what they were.

White people, even good ones also host racism unknowingly. Their pervasive symptoms are silence and personalized moral conflicts. I see it daily. Most have something to say but there really is no upside to them saying anything. They run the risk of alienating family, friends, neighbors and co workers with unpopular opinions.

To blacks, it appears as if Whites don’t care.

But there is power in numbers. Given that there are over 250M white Americans, ambivalence is a weapon often used to make racism effective. Whites assume because they are not directly apart of the problem, they are un-impacted Racism and reject the idea of being labeled racist – even if they are indirectly host racist ideologies.

They are infected.  Racism has crippled white culture.  It is silent and deadly. If it weren’t for our ignorance, the system could not work – and it does very effectively.

Racism is transmitted through messaging. I’ve have lost count of the number of black men who have been wrongfullyly murdered, unfairly prosecuted or imprisoned over the years. This number is only trumped by the number of unreported incidents.

The message is clear. We all agree, that the world is not safe for black people and thus it isn’t. Once a person adopts this mentality, they have subconsciously accepted the racist ideology.

When asked my opinion about recent events in the news –

No, I am not shocked by latest black man to be killed at the hands or knees of a white police office.  This is not news to me because I was taught well.

Despite popular belief, these events have always been the norm – have always exposed powerless blacks and silenced whites. No, not right and definitely not just but part of who we are as a country.

I start with facts because in order to win a game (i.e. change), you first must understand the rules. And rule number one is that the game is rigged. If you attempt to shoot a straight shot at crooked basket at the carnival, you mustn’t expect to win.

The game is rigged by keeping our perspectives separate. Even our education system teaches us that blacks and whites have different struggles from birth. You believe one thing and I believe another. It doesn’t teach us that we are inflected with the same issue.

I personally think the vehicle for which whites to gain compassion through is by educating themselves on how they have been used and manipulated. That way they will learn to also see themselves as victims rather than perpetrators of racism.

Racism requires power.

Only a select few whites have power.  And blacks should learn that most whites do not have power, except in numbers.

This repetitive series of events serves to reinforce how racism has been perfected in America after Apartheid in South Africa. In America, Jim Crow taught these principles pretty well and racism is more or less reduced to a news cycle, a profitable one at that.

When I see a black man dying in the street on CNN, I don’t see news. I see a form of terrorism distributed through a paid media platform – a reminder that  “you could be next. You are unsafe here. Your marching and protesting are futile and you really cannot do anything about it because you have no power” etc. etc. – except this doesn’t reflect the reality of so many black people living in America.

But we all buy in – blacks through fear, whites through silence and that’s how it works.

As the countless number of hopeless black people stand idly by, waiting for politicians to change their faits, waiting for their economic relief checks to arrive, waiting government officials to solve their problems, and waiting for some white person of influence to finally champion their cause, I have terrible news. Help is not coming – it never will. White folks are waiting too!

Only the next news cycle is coming to replace the last. The next news cycle is about COVID-19 or economic recessions or Elon Musk launching missiles into outer space. – anything but you.

As time passes, we will realize that Black suffrage was in vogue in 2019-2020. We’ll probably revisit it again in 2039, if we are still around then.

Grandma was a woman of few words – God, rest her soul – but her teachers were profound.

Her teachings catalyzed in me, an understanding of how War actually works.

Today I know that, from gunpowder to nuclear war heads, modern technology will always be weaponized against the lowest class of citizens on the social pyramid.

Today, blacks are at war –  not because we are black but because we are poor and our allies are behind in their understanding of their involvement in the plight.

America is built on the principles of capital, land, free labor and weapons. Without resources, blacks are casualties who are caught in the cross fire. We are not the main target – we don’t even own guns. We have nothing of value from which to take but our lives on these streets.

The infrastructure and wealth that America holds has already been built on the backs of free labor and continues to be built through private prisons. America has a past for which it is seemingly unwilling to atone. Where does a society place my people – a population of angry, broken, uneducated, and unskilled, impoverished people if not prison? Well, this is where the killing begins. This has all been done before if you study war.

But before you go read Augustus or Plato, first ask any white person how they feel about blacks, and he or she will most assuredly admit they have no hard feelings towards blacks. It’s always the others.  I’ve always questioned, where are these other people? Where are the racists if no one is racists?

I could only hope that my white friends are not referring to the handful of right-wingers showing up at rally’s or who participate in hate groups? Like us they are the minority – the 10% of people who make enough noise to make the news are pawns in the wealth game – prompted to illustrate a narrative that detracts from the actual issues we face as a civilization. While good poster children, radicals do not make for good racists.  Real racism needs lack of action, lack of empathy, silence, indifference and division.

Blacks are aware of how they are used and mistreated  in America, yet whites are not. Today, we are protesting in urban streets , begging to not be shot and to be treated equally. This, my dear people, is not my definition of progress. From Alexander-the-Great to the Hun Dynasty,  no group or individual in power has ever asked permission for power. Power is demanded, taken, not given.

Our leaders should be leading and driving change to ensure that quality of life is the same for blacks, whites and purples. In order to do this, economics need to be addressed and because of that I am not hopeful. There can be no willing sacrifice with a common understanding of the problem. 50 years of marching – where are we going?

When Caligula finally conquered Constantinople after 23 failed attempts by preceding militaries, he put the decapitated heads of its residents on stakes outside the walls of the city. This act was an act of war. 

 

“We will kill you if you get out of line. Don’t you see”

Today, the same message delivered  on CNN, Facebook, Instagram other parasitic news.

The entire country tunes in to the horror. We watch and feel sorry for the headless. We feel sorry for that latest black man who lie lifeless, yet we don’t see our roles in putting him there. We internalize this reality, we communicate it in our messaging. We are all sick with this disease.

And this is how Racism is pervasive. This is how it actually works.

Where are the others? We are them! I am them. You are them. We are the non-movers, the unaffected – the people who avoided the racism while it hid within us and multiplied.

As the world reacts to the latest killing of an unarmed black man, George Victim-number-something-or-another, I find the latest news cycle to be void and empty of any meaningful content.

I get it,

I get to say “I don’t want that to be me”

and you get to say “Boy am I glad that’s not us”

and so it continues

I have seen the heads on stakes before. I already know everything there is I need to know.

Run black boy run. Run faster and faster.

 

 

, with love

Derrick Wheeler, 6/10