"Toys for guns, I got guns for toys
Silencers bring the heat without bringing the noise"
Talib Kweli & Cocoa Brovaz, "Gun Music"
Meet Bill Willis. Bill is a black man. Bill is a police officer. Bill is a good dude.
Suffice it to say, many black men have been almost trained since an early age to be suspicious and skeptical of any humane qualities of any given cop. No matter the officer's color, we've been spoon-fed a deep sense of mistrust and hypertension when encountering the law. But not every cop is a bad cop. I have known that my entire life. Just like people in general, you cannot immediately tell the real from the fake. It involves instinct, experience, and candor to really get to know someone. Yet, as much as some would argue this point, cops are not the primary threats they are made out to be in today's hoods.
On the other side of the tracks, when the block is hot, that means stay your a$$ inside. My man GhettoUprising and I were talking one day and we both came to the conclusion that it safer to be white in the hood, than be black. White sheets have been replaced by hoodies. It's a strange twist on a former urban myth. White folks didn't go to the hoods because they feared being assaulted or shot/stabbed or whatever. But if you really think about it, a Black man is prone to being a victim just about anywhere, and especially in his own backyard. It is a sad reality.
Nobody really wants to be shot in the hood. So Officer Willis created a documentary and it is available on YouTube in 6 parts. I encourage you to check out each and every single one of the clips when you have an hour to spare because the interviews are straightforward, the conversations full or real talk, and the topics is one that is always on my mind.
My mother came up to visit for the holidays. She got to see and hear me perform my poetry for the first time. I don't recall why or how it happened, but I admitted to her the inspiration for when I first started writing. It spanned back to my first year of college. It was around the four-year anniversary of a incident that occurred on the very street we lived on. Every year, I would get the most chilling sensations in my body that would literally shake me to the core. It was a night that left an enormous impact on my life. I just so happened to be taking an Honors English course and poetry came up and I just went at it. I have no clue where that piece is now, but it is a visual and literary reminder of the road we so often have to travel to find ourselves.
I have had a fear of being shot in the hood since that night. I have awoke sweaty and panting from dreams where I found myself sprawled out on a sidewalk as a crowd began to form. I live nonchalantly because I know how precious life is and yet, even i can take some things for granted. I am still trying to find myself and will probably forever seek my comfort zone. I can only hope that when I do leave this world, I did all that I could to make a better life for my loved ones and to positively influence the direction of others like me who started on bleak paths but ended up on solid ground without sacrificing anything but their free time. I see the God in you. Do you?
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