We Speak for Ourselves

How Woke Culture Prohibits Progress

D. Watkins

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781501187841
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi afroamericani

From the row houses of Baltimore to the stoops of Brooklyn, the New York Times bestselling author of The Cook Up lays bare the voices of the most vulnerable and allows their stories to uncover the systematic injustice threaded within our society. Honest and eye-opening, the pages of We Speak for Ourselves "are abundant with wisdom and wit; integrity and love, not to mention enough laughs for a stand-up comedy routine" (Mitchell S. Jackson, author of Survival Math ). Watkins introduces you to Down Bottom, the storied community of East Baltimore that holds a mirror to America's poor black neighborhoods—"hoods" that could just as easily be in Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, or Atlanta. As Watkins sees it, the perspective of people who live in economically disadvantaged black communities is largely absent from the commentary of many top intellectuals who speak and write about race.Unapologetic and sharp-witted, D. Watkins is here to tell the truth as he has seen it. We Speak for Ourselves offers an in-depth analysis of inner-city hurdles and honors the stories therein. We sit in underfunded schools, walk the blocks burdened with police corruption, stand within an audience of Make America Great Again hats, journey from trap house to university lecture, and rally in neglected streets. And we listen."Watkins has come to remind us, everyone deserves the opportunity to speak for themselves" (Jason Reynolds, New York Times bestselling author) and serves hope to fellow Americans who are too often ignored and calling on others to examine what it means to be a model activist in today's world. We Speak for Ourselves is a must-read for all who are committed to social change.

PART 1

DOWN BOTTOM

1

WHERE I COME FROM

The homies and I like to sit around and brag about who had it worse—you know, who was the poorest, who went to the dirtiest school, and who came the closest to being murdered the most times. This is fun for us. You might hear one of us say “Walking to school on top of piles of broken glass and drug needles with busted shoes is a luxury, man! I had to walk to school on all of that without feet!” Of course, we all have feet. The conversations serve as a way for us to acknowledge our resiliency.

There is a lot of truth in our jokes. In fact, you might think of the jokes as a coping mechanism for dealing with hard truths. Some of us had it worse than others. People who are aware of our backstory always ask the same question, “How’d you make it out?” The answer is simple: luck.

Luck is the one thing that bonds us. It’s why I’m now a writer, why my friend Tony instructs free fitness trainings, and why my cousin Kevin works with kids. We are all from the street, but we were fortunate enough to avoid being murdered or getting locked up for fifty years for a crime we didn’t commit. Well, there’s still a chance for these things to happen. We still live in Baltimore.

I’m from the east side of town—my neighborhood is called DDH, short for Down Da Hill, or what many of us call Down Bottom. The row homes in my neighborhood cascade downward on a series of sloping hills. Like most of East Baltimore, or Baltimore in general, every family isn’t poor or soaring below the poverty line, but the drug trade has affected us all, creating many different realities.

Some of us fell while others were able to fly.

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS . . .

My A1 from day one was Hurk, Wop seen it all, and I crushed on Nay.

Hurk’s mother was a junkie. His father, we don’t know. Fathers were rare back when we were growing up. His living situation was always dysfunctional and kids around our neighborhood reminded him about it daily: “Ya mova smoke crack!” “You ain’t got no daddy!” “You dirty!” And so on. Hurk’s shoes would bust at the seams where the string unraveled. His clothes stunk. It wasn’t because the homie was dirty, he just didn’t have running water in his house. To add insult to injury, we would see his mom begging for change, digging in the trash, or following strange guys into an alley.

Wop, the big fella, was the first to grow a mustache and wear a size eleven shoe when we could loosely fit size sevens. He was a man-child, husky enough to play sports two grades up. At ten he smacked the wind out of twelve-year-old boys on the football field. On the basketball court, he could drop his shoulder in the paint and knock an older kid on his back as he took two steps into an easy layup. When we were on the court, Wop’s pop, Big Wop, would be our pretend coach, giving us plays to run and exercises to do in between his crack sales.

I like open shots. I can hit an open three-pointer from anywhere—half-court, the gym door, the locker, the parking lot, maybe even Texas. Put a rim in East Baltimore and place me in Houston, and if I’m open, it’s going down, baby. Nothing but net. That’s a joke. I do really like open shots—but when Nay watched, I forced it. Nay was the prettiest girl in East Baltimore. She was the ghetto Rudy Huxtable. Art in motion. God’s greatest accomplishment wrapped in an eleven-year-old-girl’s body. I was ten at the time, but I was ready for her. She and her friends would walk by the park while we hooped, and she’d scream through the gate, “Y’all can’t play no ball!” I’d look, acting like I wasn’t looking, throw sixty crossovers, take unauthorized shots, up and under three defenders. I’d go head up with Wop’s grown-man-sized left shoulder, slapping the pavement and popping back up in milliseconds, yelling “I’m aight, keep playin’!” When I scored, I always glanced at her for approval, praying she noticed. “Aye lover boy!” Big Wop would yell at me. “Pay attention! Keep your head in the game!”

Hurk was stick boney but better than us all. Holey shoes or not, it didn’t matter—his lanky frame would weave seamlessly in between defenders. He was the first to use the crossover effectively, dropping anyone who dared to play defense; the first to slap the backboard; and definitely the first to dunk. His little brother, Tay—three years our junior—was slated to be better; he was always selected before at least six older kids in a ten-man pickup game and no one really wanted to guard him. He would run you breathless on the court and had one of the best midrange jump shots we’d ever seen.

Guns banged every night, and crowds always form after the smoke clears. One night red-and-blue lights danced on my bedroom window, across the street sign, and on our basketball court. I went outside to join the crowd. The court was starting to overflow as the medics rushed in and plainclothes cops draped warning tape around the scene. Nay was standing alone by the gate.

“Hey, Nay, what happened?” I asked. She squeezed me tight and said, “Big Wop, Big Wop.” Big Wop was DOA; lost his life on the court he loved so much. None of us knew what to say to Wop. People always say, “Everything is going to be okay.” But is it ever really okay? Young black people get murdered all the time and some praying grandma always says, “It’ll be better on the other side.” But is it really?

Tay made the basketball team over at Oliver Recreation Center, but the coach yelled at him until he didn’t want to play anymore. His teachers yelled at him until he didn’t want to go to school anymore. He still played pickup ball, but we all yelled at him because he’d ask us to repeat things nine or ten times—we even started calling him Def Tay. Tay didn’t have a hearing problem. Hurk said some type of insect planted eggs inside Tay’s eardrum.

Even when Hurk’s mom lost custody of all her kids, they still hung around the neighborhood—Hurk eventually grew tired of the hand-me-downs and sob stories so he started slanging crack.

By high school, Nay looked ready for Vogue. Slicked baby hair pulled back into soft pigtails and barrettes transformed into bouncy wraps that covered her left eye like Aaliyah’s—the kind that older women wore. The little Air Jordans at the end of her bowed legs were trendy high heels now. By this time, she had a real Gucci clutch while other girls had fake ones. At ten years old, I didn’t have a shot with her, but there was hope. By fourteen, she was completely out of my league. Older dudes with Acuras and BMWs would drop her off at school. They were the hustlers.

Hurk paid $40 for his fitted cap, $450 for his gold teeth, $1,000 for his Cuban link, $900 for the diamond-cut Virgin Mary charm that dangled from it, $300 for his Coogi sweater, $600 for his white Pelle Pelle leather jacket, $90 for his Guess jeans, and $150 for his Nikes. He would wear all that to the basketball court. “It’s nothing!” he yelled. “I’m never wearing this again, who need a coat?” I hated that he hustled but loved to see him shine.

Hurk would often clown me for not getting close to Nay. I’d ignore the jokes, and Hurk would say, “You’ll never get her, she only like dudes from West Baltimore. They spend that cash!” Wop would laugh and guzzle his drink. It was usually gin, sometimes Hennessy, but mostly gin. By high school, he was drinking heavily—always telling stories about how he would’ve been balling at a top private school if his dad were alive.

I struggled through high school but had to finish because I wanted to go to college. Hurk was making a lot of money, so for him, there was no need for school. Tay followed in Hurk’s footsteps, throwing his basketball dreams away and blending in with the older kids on the corner just like he did on the court.

“I need some money, Hurk,” Wop said one day. “Show me how to do it, yo, please.” I tried to get Wop to hoop with me in a league, but he was in the streets now too. Hurk had him selling loose pills, and Wop messed the money up over and over again. “You need to go back to school up at Patterson,” Hurk laughed. “You can’t add, fat boy!” He took Wop off the money and made him the lookout before he eventually graduated to muscle. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, Wop was laying an aluminum bat across somebody’s skull. Then they started playing with pistols.

By tenth grade, Nay was pregnant by one of those West Baltimore dudes. The child’s father never came around to meet his daughter, but another hustler picked up the pieces. She had her second kid before the twelfth grade. Her new baby’s father was a baller too. He didn’t just drop her off in luxury cars, he bought her one. A white beamer with a light tint and a sunroof. She picked me up in it when we went to Wop’s funeral. Yeah, Wop went out just like his dad, gunned down a few blocks away from where his father passed.

I vowed to never sell drugs. Wop, like many of the dudes from Down Bottom, had wanted to go to college. Even though his dreams faded after his dad passed, he still had moments when he would tell me, “I’ma leave this corner and head off to college, bro, watch. I’ma be a big, UConn two-guard, watch!”

I enrolled in college and dropped out about two months later—ended up back on the block and even hustled with Hurk. We ran the streets slanging dope like it was legal. “I can’t deal with street guys anymore,” Nay told me after her second child’s father caught thirty years. “My mom is going to watch these kids. I’m getting a nursing degree and a good churchgoing college husband. One that wears church shoes every day, even on Tuesdays.” She stood over me frantically clapping. “One that wears church shoes from Sunday to Sunday!”

I wasn’t thinking about church or college, just money. Hurk was too—so much so that he ended up stealing from all of our friends, getting two of them shot, and almost getting me killed in the process. The dollar trumped the jokes, the laughs, the lost friends, the memories, and everything else. Dude banged his pistol in every section of East Baltimore all the way up until the cops grabbed him. They snatched up Tay too. Some younger dudes took his spot and the cycle continued.

You couldn’t mentor teens like us, who drove a new Lexus, unless you pushed a Bentley. However, Bentley owners didn’t drive through my section of East Baltimore, and if they did, the driver wasn’t hopping out and telling my friends and me to stay away from drugs.

Growing up we never listened to anyone positive, only the guys who hustled and showed us the rewards—the celebrity treatment, the money, the cars, and the clothes. Their advice made sense, so we took it and captured neighborhoods—we flashed pistols, drained property values, and pedaled poison. Some of us got caught and copped out to dozens of years, but we kept going. The money didn’t stop, so why would we? Some of us took bullets and came back to work. Some of us died. Still, after the funerals let out and the repast was over, we kept going. We never stopped.

Everybody in Down Bottom loved Snaggletooth Rib with the big gold tooth and the one heavy eyebrow that used to slang with us. He was the comeback king. Crack a joke on him and he had four ready to go for you. They were good ones too, the kind that put your insecurities out in the open for everyone to see. Rib probably would have toured the world as a famous stand-up comedian if we knew careers like that were obtainable. We didn’t.

One hot day, Rib plus about fifteen of us hung our heads deep in a dice game. Rib being himself was clowning the winners and losers, shuffling cash, and working the circle.

“Bet the twenty, bet the fifty,” he’d yell. “And I got one-dollar bets for the rest of you clowns, cuz y’all smell like poverty!”

A few more guys joined the game. One of them pushed a wobbly stroller. He parked it and laid some money down, which he quickly lost. A baby peeked out and squeaked a little. Dude said, “Hold up, son-son, I be right back.”

“Yo, you leaving your son to gamble wit us?” Rib laughed, pointing at the dude. “You gotta be top three worst fathers in the world! Raise y’all kids right! Y’all dummies don’t be like this dummy!”

“You always think everything funny, ha ha,” the dude barked back at Rib, pulling the stroller closer to his person. “You funny, right, Rib?”

“Shut up and keep losing your baby food money! Y’all both on the titty milk diet tonight.” Rib chuckled with a face-wide grin. You could see the rest of us laughing in the reflection on his big gold tooth.

Right there, the dude whipped an arm-sized gun out of the stroller and unleashed a parade of shots into Rib, spun around, then aimed it at the rest of us before snatching every dollar off of the ground. Rib died at the scene. We scattered and came back a few hours later to build a hood memorial of empty Hennessy bottles, teddy bears, and the “I Love You” balloons that the ladies liked to tape to the poles. We sang Tupac’s “Life Goes On.” We drank. We mourned. We wore RIP T-shirts with Rib’s face on the front and back. A...