Race Relations In New York City

2003

This past Saturday night I went to go score. Ideally, it's best to do that through friends, but none of my friends do anything more than smoke a little herb from time to time, and that's not my scene. The projects in the Bronx are particularly scary, and besides I've been burned with substandard quality a few times, so I took my wife's Acura (which is really mine, but pregnant lady gets the safer car) and headed out to Queens.

There's a few spots in Queens where I go, but the one I went to was closest. I parked my car and went around to the back, leaning against the trunk. It's a black neighborhood, so of course I look a little out of place, but that's really part of the point. Dealers know I'm not down here to hand out bible tracts.

Saturday night is usually pretty easy. The first guy I saw was selling rock, and this age of specialization, the one-stop dealer is largely gone, at least in the outer boroughs. Most guys selling rock aren't selling anything else, so I ignored him.

There were two guys slinging across the street, so I crossed the street and headed towards them. As soon as they saw me, one of the guys says "yo, you see, you see", and they both turned their backs to me. "You see" = U.C. - undercover cop.

This is not the first time this has happened to me. I'm white, male, in my thirties, pretty big and I have facial hair. Like every undercover narcotics officer in the tri-state area. I was judged simply because of the way I look, and let's face it - because of the color of my skin. If I were black and 19 years old, I would not have been prejudged and therefore shunned. But because of characteristics of mine beyond my control, these two dealers suddenly became two guys out for a stroll. A stroll away from me.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. longed for a day where "people would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character". I too share his vision, but when incidents like this happen, I fear we have a long way to go.