So my family has lived in this certain part of town for well over 50 years. The house I’m in now belonged to my great aunt and great uncle. It was a nice, quiet neighborhood. You wouldn’t recognize it now. Hearing gunshots at night is not uncommon, and every time my mother or I go outside, we constantly have racial slurs yelled at us. Several days ago, they were trying to take my cat, Artemis. They constantly harrass us for money, money that we don’t even have as we’re barely scraping by as much as we can.
It would seem the logical thing to do would be to report it to the police; however, if you’re white and live in the southern parts like I do, people will call you a liar or even mock you if you claim you’re being discriminated against or harrassed b/c of your race. People seem to think those things only happen to blacks, hispanics, or asians. Many of the people who lived in this area before have now left b/c of the distress caused by racial tensions. I wish I could move right now, but like I said we have no money.
I don’t see what they’re so pissed off about. I don’t see why they have to come into our yard and harrass us. We’ve never bothered them. We take care of ourselves, and mind our own business. We don’t walk all over their yard, and cuss them out. We don’t blast our music so it’s shaking their walls when they try to sleep. In fact, I’ve gone out on the porch with my stereo on, and can’t even hear it. I’m beginning to think that they think they can harrass us b/c they’ll get away with it. The sad truth is they probably will.
Actually, the logical thing is to report harrassment to the police. While the people you report will deny their actions, (as what miscreant does not?), I suspect that the police might be more sympathetic to your version than you are giving them credit.
Are there any neighbors with whom you get along who would go with you to the police station to substantiate your story, not for a particular report, but to ask for more police patrols to make all of you feel safer?
If the neighborhood is generally poor, there are probably many people of color who are also trapped there by poverty and who probably want a more peaceful neighborhood, themselves.
I’ve lived in rural, suburban, and urban VA and NC and have never encountered that attitude. I guess things might be different in the Deep South, but I’m interested in what experiences you’ve had that made you think the police will mock you and call you a liar for reporting racially-based harassment.
My family’s had multiple problems with the police department from my uncle’s murder being covered up to some other stuff I’d rather not talk about here. So I feel uncomfortable with them in general to begin with. I’ve asked relatives before who’ve complained of similar problems with racism in the past (my grandma lives a block up from me, and my mom) why don’t they report it to the police, and they’ve always told me that when they did report it, the police would either say there’s nothing they could do or they would mock them.
I don’t know any neighbors on this street we live on. My grandma lives on a street right up from ours, and I know her neighbor. That still might help maybe. But my grandma’s been living here longer than my mother and I have, and she’s tried multiple times to have the police help her, but they never do.
Baltimore has some dangerous neighborhoods, places where this sort of harrassment and violence goes on, often connected with drug dealing. But, despite the reputation of these places, probably 90 percent of the people living there are just poor, working people who are trying to get by on shitty minimum wage jobs and raise their kids to be good people. It’s the dangerous minority that harrass and hurt people, and most people living in those neighborhoods (of whatever race or ethnicity) want to live in peace. See if you can find some of those people.
When you’ve got some good documentation, type it all up. Proofread it for grammatical and errors. Proofread it again for style. Make it accurate and specific, and remove all emotional words from it (e.g., instead of saying, “The Smith kids shouted some nasty things at me and were very rude,” say, “Two Smith kids–I believe it was John and Kate–called me a ‘honky bitch motherfucker,’ and threw several pinecones at me. This occurred at approximately 4 pm, just after the schoolbus left.”)
Once you’ve got that written up, proofread, edited, and in the best condition you can get it in, stop by the police department. Be all smiles and “sirs,” dress in your most businesslike clothes, and ask them what the proper procedure for filing a complaint is. Have the materials ready to present; include wherever possible the addresses of the offenders.
If they still laugh at you, immediately on leaving make some notes about it, and be prepared to complain to city council, using a similar procedure to the one outlined above.
Nobody should have to put up with racist assholes.
My uncle was shot to death in a gas station, in front of his two kids. They were 10 & 9. Granted, no one mourned him except for the kids, but still. He’d been robbed at gunpoint 4 times before in the same place and made the mistake of trying to stand up to the guy.
The point? Why he was in Mississippi, of course. Never been there, but judging by their descriptions, it sounds like an awful place.
Does your city have a police Community Service unit? A police omsbudsman? Do you have a city councilman or ward leader (as opposed to an at-large council)? Any of these should be avenues to move the police.
I am also having trouble understanding exactly what is going on. Even in 2005, most large police departments tend to be staffed by a majority of white officers. Are you being laughed at for not having moved away? What is the nature of their racist remarks? (I am not doubting your claim, just trying to understand what is happening.)
Other avenues, if you are not getting served, would be to get hold of whichever TV station is most likely to act as muckrakers and ask them if they would come out and video you phoning in a complaint or following you to the precinct station to file a complaint. (Unfortunately, you just missed sweeps month when you’d have had a better chance of getting them to look for dirt.) If the TV stations don’t seem to care, try the newspaper.
How is it a non sequitor when the OP is in MI, Merijeek is saying he feels the same way about Mississippi, and I am putting in a personal story about horrible times in MI?
It’s just another example of the *way * MI is ass. So I think it fits.
I suppose I was unclear. Your post as a whole is at least tangential to the OP, but your conclusion makes almost no sense at all. What happened to your uncle (and especially to his children) is terrible, but that doesn’t mean Mississippi is an awful place; it means this one particular convenience store in this very specific community was hit up by some Bad People, and all of this just happened to take place in Mississippi. (It’s MS, btw. MI is Michigan. But Michigan is ass, too. )
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