An outspoken black kid in my class was arrested at my school in October for possession of a deadly weapon.  He is still going through the trial process for his arrest and has not been convicted yet, so that is why he is still in school.  He sits in the back of the room and constantly makes comments about “white America” and the media painting negative images about black people.  He dresses like a rapper out of an MTV music video, is constantly using his cell phone to send text messages in class and goes nowhere without his I-pod connected to him.  He makes snide comments and noises when he doesn’t agree with someone in the class and acts like the world is out to get him.  When he tries to make a point he gets emotional and is unable to articulate himself and ends up looking like more of a fool than he already is.

I dubbed this kid ‘Malcolm’ because he reminds me of Malcolm X.  Malcolm X, to me, was a black man who hurt his cause by being outspoken and violent and I often use it to describe a black person who turns me off to their plight by acting radical.  I am not racist and would never give a person with different colored skin any less of a chance than a white person but I can not stand people who hurt their cause by not thinking things through before they open their mouths.  It makes them seem ignorant and often these people perpetuate stereotypes.

His idiotic demeanor angered me and I assumed that he was arrested for good cause.  All I heard was “possession of a deadly weapon” and I instantly had no doubt he was guilty because I assumed someone who carried themselves as he did would be capable of that crime.  I know that I used a fairly logical way of judging him as a person but I was not smart about judging the situation.  I never once looked at the crime report and never once heard his side of the story.  Without those facts I should have never judged the situation.

I saw a documentary in class, which was made by a fellow classmate, about his arrest and his side of what happened the night he was arrested.  He lives in the dorms and was pulling out of the parking lot late at night when he rolled a stop sign.  He was pulled over and taken out of the car for questioning.  While he was being questioned his car was searched without the officers giving probable cause to him before hand.  They found a steak knife and an empty bottle of liquor in the back seat of his car.  They were going to charge him with having an open container of alcohol and possession of a deadly weapon but the cops “misplaced” the alcohol container evidence when it came to trial.  The black kid was then taken to county jail and thrown into a jail cell with level 3 felony criminals (which he is being charged as because of the steak knife).  In the three days that he was held in the county jail he was beaten multiple times and resided with murderers and rapists.  Something else I learned about this kid is that he has a 3.5 GPA is on a sports scholarship and is one of the best runners on our track team.

I learned that the cops who arrested him probably prejudged him as quickly as I did based solely on his demeanor.  Although the guy is an idiot and perpetuates his racial problem it gives the cops no excuse to profile him the way they did.  If I had been pulled over that night for rolling a stop sign and had a steak knife in my possession I would not have been treated as harshly as he was.  Although he makes things hard on himself by not thinking before being so fervent with his half-thought out opinions and carries himself as just another oppressed minority it still gives the cops no excuse to do what they did.  He is marked with a felony arrest now and may be jailed for one year in county prison for his crime.  What happened to him was unjust and is a failure of our system.

You’re an idiot Malcolm but that doesn’t mean you should be locked up for something so stupid as having a steak knife in your car.