In a candid, and
revealing moment, Stanley “Tookie” Williams told
a visitor at San Quentin prison that he helped found the notorious
Crips street gang because he wanted to smash everyone, make
a rep, get respect and dignity, and that he wanted his name
to be known everywhere. He got his wish in more ways than
he ever dreamed of. The demons that drove Williams in his
reckless push for identity and prominence also drove him to
become the nation’s best known condemned prisoner. He
faces execution December 13 for multiple murders.
William’s
revelatory glimpse into his thug past tells much about the
anger, alienation, and desperation that have turned legions
of young black men into social pariahs, and that propel them
to wreak murder and mayhem in mostly poor, black communities.
But today’s Tookies didn’t crop up from nowhere.
The transformation in the early 1970s of the old-line civil
rights groups into business, and professional friendly organizations,
and black middle-class flight from the inner city neighborhoods,
left the black poor, especially young black males, socially
fragmented, politically rudderless, and economically destitute.
Lacking visible role models of success and achievement, and
competitive technical skills and professional training to
compete in a rapidly shifting economy, they were shoved even
further to the outer margins of American society.
Yet,
the Tookies instinctively know that the material goodies
suspended before them in movies, on TV and in advertisements
are the primary measures of an individual's worth in
a consumer-obsessed culture. They desperately want them
but they know that in many cases they can't attain them,
at least through legal means. This increases their frustration
and anger. The American dream may be a dream deferred,
but it's still a dream that many spend their lives in
futile pursuit of.
That
alone doesn’t explain the inner rage that consumes
many poor young black males. They are in a pathetic
hunt to live up to the perverse and distorted image
of manhood that American society reserves for white
men, and denies black males. Far to many young black
males have become especially adept at acting out their
frustrations at society's denial of their "manhood"
by adopting an exaggerated "tough guy" role.
They swagger, boast, curse, fight and commit violent
self-destructive acts. Their tattoos, signs, code speak
language, dress, gaudy colors, graffiti tagged walls,
drug dealing and gunplay are a ritual part of the identity
and power quest that once pushed Tookie to the streets.
The
accessibility of drugs, and guns, and the influence
of violent-laced rap songs also reinforced the deep
feeling among many youth that life is cheap, expendable
and easy to take. In far too many cases, police and
city officials throw up their hands in despair, or downplay
the crime and violence they commit as long as their
victims are other blacks. The exception is when there’s
a loud and pained outcry from residents over an especially
heinous and outrageous killing. The body count of unsolved
homicides in predominantly black neighborhoods in Tookie’s
old South Los Angeles haunts numbers in the hundreds.
The pattern is similar in other cities.
Police
say it’s because the witnesses and victim ‘s
relatives and friends won’t cooperate, but often
they do and arrests still aren’t made, and when
they are, the punishment appears less severe than the
punishment meted out to blacks if the victims were white
or non-blacks. The four victims Williams’ is convicted
of killing were white and Asian. The sense among young
black males that their lives are severely marginalized
fosters disrespect for the law and implants the troubling
notion that they have an open license to pillage and
plunder their community.
Williams
was long gone from the scene by the time the Crips devolved
and morphed into the hundreds of factions nationally,
and internationally, that have since become major players
in the gun and drug plague. The memory of the thug life
that Tookie helped spawn, as much as the public demand
by prison officials, California Attorney General Bill
Lockyer, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve
Cooley, and police officials, that Tookie pay with his
life for the murders he was convicted of, is why Tookie
is still roundly condemned by many.
But
Tookie feels deeply responsible for the Frankenstein
monster that he helped create, and has profusely and
openly apologized to the families of the victims of
gang violence in letters and taped messages. His contrition
is not too little too late, but it is still slight consolation
to the victims that his violent quest for identity and
manhood claimed.
The
Tookie that thousands are fighting to keep from a December
13 date with the executioner is not the same Tookie
that decades ago wanted to smash everyone. Yet there
are still thousands like him that do. A very much alive
Tookie who understands their anger and alienation could
help lesson their numbers.
Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for BlackNews.com, an
author and political analyst.
For
media interviews, contact:
Mr. Hutchinson at 323-296-6331 or hutchinsonreport@aol.com
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