Racial Profiling and the Loss of Black Boyhood
At 13, I was into chess and Dungeons and Dragons. That was the year I hit my growth spurt—and learned what it is to be seen not as a child, but as a threat.
At 13, I had just hit my first growth spurt. I walked to and from junior high with friends. I walked the same path every day with the same guys. One sunny spring afternoon on our way home, a police car came from nowhere, jumped up on the curb, and blocked us off on the sidewalk.
Shocked, we were stiff with fear when the two large armed and armored men stepped slowly from their squad car. White and clean-shaven as usual, they both had their hands already on their guns. They told us to stand against the wall. A couple of us tried to ask what was happening or what we’d done. They didn’t answer; they just kept asking, “Whe...