Existing Within a System That Won’t Save You
By: Stephonn Alcorn
Tags: Equality, Family, Black Community, BlackLivesMatter, Racism

A memory that often replays in my head is a family trip to McDonald’s on a school night. Largely thanks to my dad, I grew up on rap music—loud rap music at that. I forget what exactly what we were listening to, but some of my dad’s favorite artists were Tupac, Usher, 50 Cent, and T.I. We were driving our family’s Tahoe, music loud and windows down. This was normal. Black joy. As we pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot, we saw that a police car had followed behind us. I noticed my dad look into the rearview mirror, but he kept going toward the drive-through. As we pulled into the drive-through, the police car drove around us and went out of sight. We got our food a few minutes later and headed toward the exit. Not more than five seconds later, we heard a police siren and saw lights flash. It was the same police officer that followed us in, and he was telling us not to leave. We pulled over. He told my dad that we were being cited for disturbing the peace. For guess what? Playing rap music with the windows down. We were on a busy street before this, so I’m not sure what peace there really was to disturb. Really, all we were guilty of was being Black and trying to experience Black joy as a family.

Words were exchanged between my dad and the police officer. My dad wanted to know why we weren’t stopped when the officer first saw us, why he waited for us, and what about playing music with windows down was disturbing the peace. After refusing to answer any of his questions, the officer went back to his car. We sat there upset and wondered what would happen next. As a Black family, we sat in this moment. We sat in these feelings. Wondering, “Why us? Why today? On a school night?” Knowing that the only reason this was happening was because we were Black.

I finished my food in the car and began reading one of my Strange Unsolved Mysteries books. Reading, especially during moments like these, was a survival tactic. I could escape the system. I looked up to see another police car pulling into the McDonald’s parking lot. Both officers came to the window and asked my dad to get out of our car. After a few exchanges, my dad finally got out. He was faced with the same type of aggression that I had seen before, the officers berating, delegitimizing, and dehumanizing my father with questions about the car: “When did you buy it?” “Did you steal it?” “You sell dope?” The car was ours. My father did not sell drugs. As a Black person in moments like this, you’re taught to keep quiet, to accept this treatment, and that if you just stand there, they won’t find a reason to arrest you and you can go about your day.

The Black community has normalized this type of treatment. Not because we think it’s how things should be but because it’s easy. Fighting is often too hard, and you never know what the end result may be. The one time you fight back could be your last. I think in that moment, my dad was tired. He was tired of being harassed, hunted, and targeted. He was angry. He was mad as hell, and in that moment, he fought back. Not physically but verbally. The next thing I knew, he was being thrown on the back of the police car and arrested. This was in a McDonald’s parking lot in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Just as I had done times before, I looked around and saw white and Black people outside and inside of McDonald's. Many people were watching, but no one did anything to help. They simply watched and were paralyzed to inaction.

The only person who did anything was my mom — imagine that, a Black woman showing up when no one else does. She got out of the car and demanded answers, fearing nothing. My mom is maybe five feet tall and less than 100 pounds, but she was a mother to four Black boys and was tired too. I watched my mom demand answers from the officers with anger, frustration, and pain in her voice. She, like my father, said too much, and she, too, ended up in handcuffs and was slammed against a police car. This is the image I’ll forever have ingrained in my head. My parents both slammed to the back of a police car for doing nothing, a regular school night disrupted, and the joy we wanted to experience like a normal family snatched away. Four Black boys in a car watching their parents dehumanized, belittled, and stripped of any dignity simply for being Black. My parents, sitting in opposite police cars, sitting in their Blackness, and aware of what the system had just taken from them.

The system won’t save you.

A nuclear Black family (a mom, father, and children) is unfortunately significantly less common than it is for white families, and to have an occasion like this ripped away from us was a heavy reminder that no matter how hard we tried, we existed within a system and that as Black people, the system determined when you could experience joy, and the system snatched it from you.

My brothers and I sat there. Scared, crying, and numb. At eight and 10 years old, this wasn’t new to my brother and me. We had seen it before. But each time, we had our mom; this time we had no parents. That night, the system chose to take them both. My mom was allowed one phone call, and she called my aunt and uncle to come pick us up. They brought us home and took us to school the next morning. They told us that our parents would be home soon and that everything would be okay. After spending the night in jail, my mom picked me up for school later that day — a smile on her face and happy to see us again. But, this is what it is like to be Black in America. To experience this degree of trauma, and because it will not be the last time you experience it, you must prevail. You have to pick up your kids from school the next day with a smile on your face.