Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree
EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY
IT’S TIME FOR THE BLACK COMMUNITY TO CHANGE OUR TACTICS
It’s time that episodes like the one in the above video be brought to a screeching halt in our community. The primary reason that kind of abuse is still taking place after over fifty years of complaining about it is directly due to the less than thoughtful response of our Black activists. We've been giving our so-called "Black Leaders" props for screaming at the establishment AFTER the fact, when a leader's primary responsibility is working within the community to prevent the abuse from happening in the first place. No army has ever won a battle by shaking its fists at the enemy, but all we seem to have defending the community's interest are fist-shakers.
After one of our young people is assaulted or killed, these so-called leaders are renowned for getting all dressed up and shaking their fists in front of the cameras for the photo op. But after the media loses interest they just slide back into their cubbyholes until the next murder - that is, unless they can catch a media interview during the trial. But what are they doing to make the community more safe when the cameras are off? Not a damn thing.
So we've got to stop conferring the title of “Black leader” on anybody who's photogenic with a loud voice. Because it ain't enough to tell each other "I am somebody!". If we want to stop being murdered, we have to do what needs to be done to drive that point home to the White man. So we need activists who are intelligent enough to understand the importance of working to reinforce the power of the Black community when the cameras are looking the other way.
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We need activists who are willing to work to organize the people, and place pressure on our churches to organize their congregations to step forward to improve the conditions within our community. It doesn’t make sense for our young people to be slaughtered in the street like cattle while our churches are only open one day a week long enough to collect tithes. And when they are open, their message tends to be, "Don't worry about it. When they kill you, the Lord will step in and give you comfort." Well, that's not good enough. We want to live in comfort while we're alive! So it’s time for these preachers to start earning their big cars and prestige in the community, and stop living on promises of the hereafter. We're tired of hearing their mouths. We want action.
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The time is long pasted due for our churches to come together and form consortiums of political activism and organize their congregations for political action. That way we can wield the political clout to control the police, our schools, and the other government agencies that have a direct impact on our lives. Currently, they pay little attention to us, so we've got to develop the kind of clout that will get the establishment's attention; the kind of clout where if a rogue cop gets out of line and the department is unresponsive, we can fire the chief and everybody in the cop's chain of command. That, I guarantee you, will solve the problem immediately, because even if the chief doesn’t give a damn about Black people, you can be sure he'll work to protect his own ass.
It doesn’t make sense for a cop to have a long record of abuse and still be on the street. So we’ve got to make sure the department is cognizant, and responsible, for the kind of people they hire in the first place, if for no other reason than to protect their own jobs. Because many of these cop don't join the force "to protect and to serve" in the first place. They join the force as a way to obtain a license to express their bigotry.
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So these are the issues that our activists should be addressing. Black activism can't be a part-time job. An activist must work full-time to prevent our young people from being murdered. He are she must be dedicated to putting themselves out of business. Because we don’t need one voice speaking for the entire community. We need the entire community speaking with one voice.
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We've also got to address the very important issue of the Black image. One of the reasons that juries allow so many rogue cops to go free after killing unarmed Black people is because they believe the ignorant-ass macho image that far too many young Black men tend to project. Far too many young Black men strut around bragging about being "gangstas". If that's the case, how do they expect the police to respond to them? But the only reason they try to portray themselves in that way is because they’ve been led to believe that that’s the only thing they have to bring to the table. We’ve got to correct that perception.
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I have only two friend's that I grew up with who are still alive. One survived because he started coaching young people in sports, and the other just got lucky. But the majority of my friends, many of whom could think me under the table, became victims of the Black experience. .
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MY FATHER, "MAC", AND MY
OLDER BROTHER, VIRGIL, IN 1966.
I WAS IN JAIL. |
Black people are brilliant. What we casually refer to as “soul” is actually intellectual creativity straining to be set free. So all we have to do is recognize that fact, and attend to redirecting our young people's intellect.
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I know that for a fact, because I’m the son of a lifelong drug dealer. All of the drug dealers I knew, and many of the drug dealers for miles around, worked for my father. That gave me easy access to the profession, and I began to exploit that access as a child. In fact, when I look back on it, I can't believe how young I was when I went into business. My father didn't start me dealing drugs, but being his son gave me early access to the resources I needed to start making money in that way at a very early age. As a result, between the ages of twelve and nineteen years old I spent as much time in jail as I did on the street. .
Like many Black youngsters, it never occurred to me to try to improve my stature in life by using my mind instead condemning myself to a life of stupidity. As far as I was concern, hustling was what people like me did for money. So like most kids, I simply emulated what I saw going on around me.
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I was arrested for the first time when I was in the 7th grade - that's right, the 7th grade! That's when I first met Sgt. Foster (who later, as a Captain, and commander of the 77th police Division, was instrumental in turning my life around). But I overheard him telling another cop, “I can’t believe this kid. He’s just out of grade school and he’s already at school getting rich selling drugs hand over fist." He couldn't understand it, until he found out who my father was. Thereafter, he went on a mission. He hounded me throughout my teenage years, and went out of his way to embarrass me on the street whenever he could.
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I showed up on the block one day when I was about 16 years old, and I noticed the fellas were giggling as I walked up. Then one said, "Hey, E, Foster was up here looking for you, and he said, he wanted you to have your ass at the police station at 9 o'clock in the morning - on the dot!" And he went on to say, "He said, If he had to burn one drop of gas looking for you, he was gon' kick your ass." Then they all started falling out laughing.
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Yeah, they were laughing, but they took Foster dead seriously, as did I, because because Foster was one of those cigar-chompin' White cops like you see on television, and he wasn't a street cop - he had underlings for patrolling the street - so if Foster showed up on the street himself, somebody was in trouble.
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And Foster knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that if he came out on the street looking for me, that made the fellas feel like I was bringing heat down on them, so it caused me problems. My father even asked me, "Man, what the hell are you into, bringing Foster down on everybody?" That sort of thing went on throughout my teenage years until I 19 years old and finally arrested with a briefcase filled with hard drugs - and for the first time, as an adult, so it wasn't fun-n-games anymore.
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But fortunately, I began to see the light at about 14 years old, and now it was about to pay off, as an adult. At 14 years old I was in Camp Oak Grove juvenile facility, and many of the White staff members there loved laughing at the ignorance of young Black kids. It was their favorite pastime. But what they didn't know was none of us were actually ignorant – in fact, one of the reasons that most of us were incarcerated was because our minds were so active that we were simply bored with being kids - shootin' marbles bored the hell out of us, so we began to experiment with trying to be grown. So the fact was, we weren’t ignorant at all, we were just undereducated. So even then, I didn’t like being laughed at. So I went on a mission to correct the situation that caused it. As a result, I can now laugh at people like their dumb asses - and I quite often do.
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So during that time I threw away all my “Archie and Friends” comic books and began to spend my time drenching myself in everything I could get my hands on to read. And eventually, one of my Black counselors, Mr. Cummings, who was studying to become a lawyer, started loaning me his law books to read, and that changed my life.
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Later, I eventually got a reputation as a "jailhouse lawyer". That made it possible to spread my hustle all over town when I was on the street, because I didn't have to worry about gangs. Between the knowledge I'd obtained, and who my father was, helped me to become known among all the gang members on every set. In addition, I was the youngest student at Jacob A, Riis High School, where most of the gangsters throughout Los Angeles were sent to keep them from corrupting the "normal" kids. My knowledge of the law also helped me with the older crowd, and I started helping many of my father’s friends with their legal cases. That made my father quite proud, and he started treating me like a peer, as opposed to my older brother, Virgil, who he treated like a son.
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As an aside, while Virgil and I were always as close as two brothers could be, I think Virgil envied the fact that our father treated me like one of his circle. But I always envied Virgil because he was treated like a son who was loved and protected. My father once told me, "Man, don't be influencing Virgil with this bullshit." That was painful, because Virgil was my older brother, and my father was acting like I was gonna tarnish him. He might as well have said, "to hell with you, you're already lost, but I don't want that to happen to Virgil." I never let Mac know that his remark was painful to me, because that would have seemed weak, but it did. But it also became a motivating factor in my life. It became a "I'll show his ass" moment in my life. It also made me cynical - to this very day, I never allow myself to get too close to anybody. It's me against the world, and I raised my son and daughter to embrace that very same philosophy.
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So, I was misguided young person, but I was always dedicated to the proposition that knowledge is power, and I've always known that knowledge was the key to ending up on top. As a result, later, as an adult with a family, I hired myself out to attorneys to do legal research and brief writing for them. When I started studying the law I had a young mind that soaked up everything, so as a result of that, and all the legal research and writing on the law I was doing, in many cases I knew more about the law than the attorneys I was working for. They used to call me all the time to discuss their cases, and I used to charge them a third of their fees to do their legal research and brief writing, and they were happy to pay it.
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So while I don't do many things well, God blessed me with the two talents that could sustain my life - an understanding of the law, and the ability to express it. So obtaining a knowledge of the law, and learning to write, has helped me to coast through my life. My kids never wanted for a thing, and many of the young people in the community can use their skills to do the exact same thing. But I've digressed.
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I was arrested at 19 years old with a briefcase filled with hard drugs - real hard drugs, and I represented myself in “Pro Per”. I tried to defend myself on technicalities, but it was useless, because the bust was clean, and they had me dead-bang. But the judge was impressed with my knowledge of the law at 19 years old, and Captain Foster showed up at my sentencing to tell the judge that "He's not really a criminal, he's just stupid." When I began to protest his calling me stupid, he told me to shut up, which I did, because I wasn't so stupid that I couldn't see he was trying to help me.
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So instead of simply sending me to prison, Foster and the judge took me in the judge’s chambers and offered me a deal. After the judge lectured me on wasting my life, he offered me a deal. He said, if I agreed to go into the military, he would hole my conviction in abeyance. Then, if I got out of the military with an Honorable Discharge, I could return to court and have my entire record expunged. I couldn't believe my ears, and of course, I agreed, because that meant I could walk of the court onto the street, and I hadn’t seen the street for several months - and hadn't expected to see it for many years.
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After a few weeks of sitting at home getting high, the time came for me to report to the military recruit depot in downtown Los Angeles. I thought I was going into the army, but what I didn’t know was the Judge was a former Jag officer for the Marine Corps, and somehow he got the marines to throw-out all of their regulations regarding accepting a high school dropout with a criminal record extending into childhood, but he managed to pull it off. Then as soon as I got into the Marine Corps they had me take the GED to get my high school diploma, and once I got through training, they then sent me to the Army-Navy Academy (the Marine Corps is part of the Navy). Thereafter, they gave me a job writing for my battalion commander, and later, the general.
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A good rule of thumb for a writer is to keep yourself out of your writings, but in this case, I decided it was necessary to make my point, and that point is, I’m not an exceptionally brilliant brother – in fact, when I was coming up, in terms of intelligence, I was somewhere in the middle among my friends. That tells me something very significant about the Black community – the community is filled to the brim with a lot of brilliance that’s going to waste. So our Black “leaders” need to be much more than just screamers. We need people with the knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence to tap into that valuable resource to drag our community out of the hole we find ourselves in. Because if we don't begin to utilize our intelligence, fifty years from now we'll still be fighting the same battle - if we're still around.
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In closing, and as an aside, after I came out of the Marine Corps, had my record expunged, and finished college, Capt. Foster wanted to sponsor me to join the LAPD. He said, “We need officers just like you”, and I was seriously considering it. But my late wife, Val, was an Angela Davis type of sister, and she said, “That sounds like a plan, baby, but tell me, where do you plan on sleeping at night?” So I passed on that plan, because I loved sleeping with that woman, and had no attentions of giving it up.
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| ERIC JR. |
But ironically, our son, Eric Jr., became a Special Agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration. I really wanted Capt. Foster there when he graduated from the academy. If it hadn't been for Foster, Eric would never have been born, because I would have been in prison. But unfortunately, Capt. Foster died just before Eric graduated from the academy, but he did live to see him go in. That’s the only sad part about this tale. Foster should have been there. I would have loved to have had him sitting next to me when the FBI presented Eric with his credentials, because that cranky-ass old cop was the reason we were there.
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KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
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