I’m old enough to remember being denied access to restaurants just because we were Black. I also clearly remember the White waitress in a small Wilkinsburg restaurant who was so mad that she had to serve us that she slammed our water glasses so hard on the table that the water shot out of the glasses. It was all because of the color of our skin.
Last week, due to bad weather I worked from home one day and happened to have the television on during my break and caught one of the court TV shows. On this particular show Judge Christina Perez is the judge. The case on this day involved an older White man who was the defendant and the plaintiff was a 17-year-old Black male with his mother. Apparently the young male had moved into a predominately White school district to play football and was living with a White family. On the evening in question, he was walking home from a teammate’s house to where he was living and the older White male, who is a member of the neighborhood watch, spotted him. The older male clearly said in court this person does not belong here. “We do not have any Black people in this neighborhood, he must be up to no good.” The young man was wearing his jacket with the name of the school on the back. The young Black man said he began to get scared because the car slowed down and continued to follow him, so he began to run towards the house with key in hand. When he got to the door of the house, the older man got out of his vehicle and was armed with a shovel. He took the shovel and beat the young man down to the ground.
The defendant explained that this Black man did not belong in the neighborhood and he felt he was preventing him from robbing someone’s home.
When the teenager regained consciousness the paramedics were there. He explained in court that he just wanted this incident to be behind him. The judge told the defendant he could have killed the teen, but the defendant said that is why he did not hit him in the head. However, he did hit him hard enough that he could not play football; the very thing he moved to that neighborhood to do.
This story saddened me so much; it reminded me of the Trayvon Martin case and many others.
One of the difficult parts of the show was to see this older White man repeat time after time that he did it because the teen was Black and he did not belong in the area. He did not know if new people had moved in he just knew he was Black. He showed no remorse.
The teen was awarded $3,000 for medical expenses. It has been 50 years since Selma, some things have changed and some have stayed the same.
(Email the columnist at debbienorrel@aol.com)
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