A Good Neighborhood

by Therese Anne Fowler

We’ll say no one can be known by only what’s visible. We’ll say most of us hide what troubles and confuses us, displaying instead the facets we hope others will approve of, the parts we hope others will like.

In her experience, some men—well-off white men in particular—were so accustomed to their authority and privilege that they perceived it as a right.

She started crying. Xavier did, too, silently, tears of rage and frustration and sorrow. Growing from this, though, was an even stronger determination for justice. Somehow he’d see it done.

even as he was pretty sure the boy hadn’t raped her.

For now, though, things seemed quiet. Decent folks had no awareness of all the rumbling that was going on in back-channel media, those dark spaces that are so comfortable for good ol’ boys with deep prejudice and hair-trigger tempers and vigilante mind-sets. Plans were being made. People were mobilizing from a garage not far from Oak Knoll, to make sure the rapist got what was coming to him, since they couldn’t depend on the law to get this kind of thing right.

Black men (and if you, biracial boy, aren’t totally white, you are for every intent and purpose black) were more likely to be wrongly convicted and to serve longer sentences than whites.

If Xavier went to trial, he was basically fucked.

We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary, said Malcolm X.

We all, regardless of the color of our skin, are bound by a moral duty to demand equal and just treatment for all women and men under the law. When the structures of law fail us, we are morally bound to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that the injustice is not allowed to stand, said Tom Holt-Alston.

He could see only one route now to the kind of satisfaction he required.