ONE evening last week, I joined some friends for recreational beverages after work. These friends were all natives of a certain tribe — black men raised in the crack-era inner cities, now thriving in some other America. They were all college graduates (except me) and upstanding citizens of virtuous reputation. And like me, they were haunted by codes that aided their rise in the old world but might stunt their growth in the new.
We were in Chicago. The warm spring night had drawn out the merrymakers. Nate Robinson, whose Bulls had just buried the Brooklyn Nets, had made everyone giddy. But I was on guard. Back in my native Baltimore we called this fighting weather; in those first warm days of spring, you kept your clique close, your book bag closer and your head on swivel. My friends and I were winding down the night on State Street, downtown, when two drunk dudes confronted us. They were barely coherent, but the message got through: fighting weather.
I have all the repressed rage of a kid who was bullied — except now I have some size to match. At that moment, violent fantasies, wholly unmentionable, were dancing in my head. Contributing to those fantasies was a simple maxim inherited from childhood: "Thou shalt never be found a punk."
My friends, being like me, and doubtlessly pumped up by the presence of other males, felt the same. There were four of us and two of them. But against all our instincts, we let it pass.
Afterward, we sat around stewing in our anger. Collectively we were a doctor, a filmmaker, an executive vice president at a health care company and a writer. All of us are in our late 30s. Our places in life no longer allowed for barroom brawls. We may well have had the numbers, but we also had our new and invented selves.
For black men like us, the feeling of having something to lose, beyond honor and face, is foreign. We grew up in communities — New York, Baltimore, Chicago — where the Code of the Streets was the first code we learned. Respect and reputation are everything there. These values are often denigrated by people who have never been punched in the face. But when you live around violence there is no opting out. A reputation for meeting violence with violence is a shield. That protection increases when you are part of a crew with that same mind-set. This is obviously not a public health solution, but within its context, the Code is logical.
Outside of its context, the Code is ridiculous. Some years ago, I attended a reading by a black male author. There was a large crowd who'd come to hear him. A rowdy group in the back refused to give him their attention. He asked for it, quite nicely, a few times, but they paid him no heed. I could see the anger rising in his face, as the old laws worked on him. He was being disrespected. Again. Finally the author said loudly and menacingly, "Don't let the suit fool you." But it was the streets that had fooled him. Most tough guys don't live long enough for memoirs.
Outside of its context, the Code is suicidal. The violence committed by and against black men — regardless of class — is not weighed like the violence of other males. In America, the presence of melanin itself is too often a mark of criminality. I like to think that I've built myself up into something. I'm a writer. I've won some awards. I live in a nice neighborhood in New York. If I shaved more often, I might actually qualify for my local chapter of the black bourgeoisie. But had we gotten into a fight that night, every one of us knew how the police would have seen us, and what they would have done. Violence is wrong. Violence done by black men is more wrong.
The Code of the Streets, a term popularized by the hip-hop duo Gang Starr and the sociologist Elijah Anderson, is the code of men who have come to feel that they have nothing to lose. Much of the struggle with young black boys and teenagers today lies in getting them to see all that violence endangers. At 13, I could imagine not going to jail, not getting shot, being a responsible father. I could not envision much more. I could name careers and other paths, but I had no real sense that it was possible for me to get there, or how. Somehow I got there. And on arrival, I found myself in the company of others like me: an entire fraternity founded on the need to comprehend the folkways of a world we had never been sure we'd see.
Some people come up expecting to win. We came up hoping not to lose. Even in victory, the distance between expectation and results is dizzying for both. The old code remains a part of you, and with it comes a particular strain of impostor syndrome. You have learned another language, but your accent betrays you. And there are times when you wonder if the real you is not here among the professionals, but out there in the streets.
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