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Black in the Whitest City in America
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W
eeks back I was social media surfing
my brain cells into corpses when I
happened upon a picture of a crew of
young dudes from my hometown. Dudes who
like me were born and raised in the mostly
black snatches of Portland, Oregon, a city tout-
ed then and now in the media as the “whitest
city in America.” All of the photographed were
dressed in red gang gear, or “flamed up,” as we
say. The guy who posted the picture tagged it
with this (noted) run-on caption: “This is real-
ly f’d up 10 friends in 93 now only 5 remain
sad but true… b.i.p [blood in peace] homies.”
Though I would only consider one of the
photographed group a friend (he’s one of the
living) I knew of the others, and though it’s sad
that half of them, none of whom would be
beyond their early 40s today, are deceased, let
me keep it the realest with you folks: It isn’t if
at all surprising. Such was our warlike era of
pistols and pathos and misguided ethos and
what seemed very little logos that began some-
time around the late 1980s, right after the sem-
inal ganglife movie “Colors” hit our
dare-to-show-a-black-flick theater. Ours was
an era fueled by NWA, who made gangster rap
a marvel, an era that later found its most pas-
sionate spokesman in rap deity Tupac, who for
all his uplifting, seemed dead set on inspiring
a nation of the young, black and disenfran-
chised — i.e., us — to make Thug Life a way
of life.
As for me, I never considered myself a thug
or claimed a color, but as a small time/part
time dope dealer who hawked soft and hard
cocaine for most of my youth, I was close
enough to the streets to have been a hash mark
on either side of my city’s homicide count.
One particular close call is ever-present for
me.
It was dawn one summer morning, and I was
hightailing it out of the house of a young
woman who lived in one of those neighbor-
hoods the wise would warn thou shalt not
inhabit off hours, at least not without conse-
quence. From a block or so away I saw a guy
bicycling toward me in an all-black get up
replete with black wool cap. By the time I saw
who it was, an aspiring-toward-notorious gang
member, I had the good sense to be worried.
Word on the street was he and his buddies had
attempted a home invasion of the house I lived
in with my then girlfriend and her two kids, a
plan thwarted, thank God, by a neighbor who
threatened to call the police.
“I heard you was looking for me,” he said,
confirming word had reached him that I knew
he was in on the scheme, a truth that by our
code (more on this code later) meant we had
serious beef. He pulled out a pistol and aimed
it at my bony chest and stared with what I sus-
pected even then was the empty-eyed gaze of a
human who would do anything. “Cuz, you
looking for me?!”
I looked one way and then another, saw not
a single potential witness in sight. I recalled
the rumor I’d heard about him being hooked
on sherm (PCP laced cigarettes and blunts that
were the rage among gang members who “put
in work”). Recalled stories of him shooting
people just as easy as he breathed. I
dropped my eyes, and shook my head. “Nah,”
I said. “No, I’m not.”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice cranked, his pistol
shaky. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. ‘Cause
I’m a real killer!”
He was not, as we say, fatmouthing. If I told
you his government name what you’d find if
you cared to search is that he is now in a max-
imum security prison convicted of two mur-
ders, one that sent him to prison a year or so
after our conflict, and one he committed while
inside of a prison. And here’s an interesting
fact: both victims were his former friends.
In fact, he and I could have been friends. Just
a couple years prior we were skinny non-mus-
tached teens who attended the same high
school. We’d been enrolled in a class together,
engaged in conversations, shared what I
believed were genuine laughs. Like the crew in
the photo, dude who pulled the pistol on me
chose a color, but unlike them it was Crip blue.
Page 2 The Portland and Seattle Skanner March 19, 2014
G UEST
C OLUMN
Mitchell S.
Jackson
Bloods versus Crips. The murderers and the
murdered. We were friends killing friends. We
were family who on occasion killed family.
Before my city became famous for “Port-
landia” and white folks campaigning to “Keep
Portland Weird,” there was what seemed a
legion of young soldiers waging an inside war
and the rest of us trying our loyal best not to
get wounded.
vating a pistol-bearing foe. As in I stayed my
ass out of the hot spots: i.e, the afterhours
clubs, gambling shacks, parties with high
counts of gangster patrons. As in I never dealt
with a female who I knew to date gang mem-
bers and/or anyone in the street life who had a
rep for being grimy. As in I moved to a suburb
and kept my address private from almost every
human being in the universe. But what also
kept me alive was recognizing the paradigm
shift among us, that the time of “fighting a fair
one” (a one-on-one fight with no weapons)
was all but out the window. It was realizing
that, while other dudes were risking life and
soul to defend their sense of honor, I need-
ed (call it punkish if you like) nuanced forms
of courage. It was arriving at the immutable
truth that many times the most gallant thing I
could do was NOthing at all.
Ah, yes, deeds and tenets that kept me alive.
How, I say to myself. How, self, did we avoid getting
killed?
What can I say about the whole sad busi-
ness? My peers and I longed to make a life but
couldn’t see the means beyond a sport or sell-
ing dope. We craved love but were loved to a
dearth if at all. We ached for honor but had an
ultra-skewed sense of what that was and how
to earn it. Far too many forged atomic tough-
ness, took up arms as panacea, let bullets prove
their tensile strength.
And yet here I am with a pulse, free of the
penal system, making a life three thousand
miles from home.
How, I say to myself. How, self, did we
avoid getting killed?
There were practical ways born of what I
will claim as common sense. As in I had the
sense to, in the midst of conflict, avoid aggra-
But what, I say to myself. What, self, kept us
from killing?
To fathom the what, you must understand
our code (told you I’d get back to it), which
was some unquantifiable matrix: sense of
right, sense of wrong, sense of worth, family,
fame, faith, stature, allegiance, love, lust, lega-
cy, justice, grace, trust, strength, esteem, free-
dom, family, hope, ownership, pride, pride,
pride.
You must also understand the myriad ways
that code could be breached, the circumstances
under which you were or would be violated.
Read the rest of this story online at
www.theskanner.com