Roderick is a small retired black man in his mid 60s who attends Baltimore City Community College and a Baltimore County martial arts school where I train and coach. We see each other twice a month and every month he has at least one tale to tell of a black youth or youths threatening, challenging, extorting or attacking him. Here is Roderick’s life of retired adventure for the first week of September 2014.

“I have been practicing what you have told me, about the entire game being about not letting the situation go physical, even if it means humiliation.”

“Especially, since back in the day I have some assault charges for when I defended myself . I know the judge will just see that and his eyes will glaze over. These young hoodlums, if they got no record yet, will walk, and I’ll be doin’ time at my age, for defendin’ myself.”

“Lately it has not been the teenage boys but dudes in their early twenties. You know I thought that one day that when I became a senior citizen people would respect that and leave me alone. I did not bank on having to come here and train to fight for my life on the street in my sixties!”

“I live down in the City, Charles Village. I use the Bank of America. You would think it would be safe to use the ATM on a busy street corner around the way from the police precinct where there cameras and dozens of dudes just hanging out—the homeless type of dudes.

“I go to the ATM and take out my money—mind you it’s not just twenty bucks, but over a hundred. Before I even step away this young dude walks up to me and says, “He old man, I need a few dollars.”

I’m standin’ there with my life in my hands, my rent money, a roof over my head, and this thug is steppin’ to me wantin’ money, knowin’ that all I got is twenties.

“I said, ‘What?’

“He says, ‘I need some money.’

“That’s when I knew this wasn’t panhandlin’. It was stupidity or something worse. I said, ‘Get away!’ and I stepped off. Then he goes over to this gigantic young dude—a huge monster baby with no brains—and whispers somethin’ to him, and that big baby flexes all angry. Then you know what’s up. They marking me man. I can’t use that ATM no more.”

“So now, today, I need to get my money, so come out to the Bank of America out here, where, you know, it’s white. I figure I’m good. White boys don’ jack you for your shit—excuse the language.”

“I’m walkin’ into the ATM center, all enclosed, past this young dude—about twenty—who is with these two women, maybe sisters. He bumps me, bumped me when there is plenty of room around, and says, ‘Excuse me!’

“I said, ‘We good.’

“He says, ‘I said excuse me!’

“I said, ‘You excused.’

“He’s following me to the ATM, and I remembered what you said about witnesses—he got them women there. What kind of fool is goin’ ta throw hands under bank cameras with a policeman right around the corner? So I left, walked off saying I’ll find another ATM.

“I wait for a while across the way and then go back in. Don’t you know this fool—less than a third my age—comes back looking for me. I ask this man will he be my witness, tell the cops that I did not start this. He moves off, won’t even look that boy’s way—a grown man terrified of this young hoodlum?

“The one woman comes back and retrieves him and starts telling me how they are trying to keep him from going back to wherever they just got him out of. She was making nice but I know her and the other girl would throw me under the bus at the first sign of the law, and I would be goin’ ta jail.

“So, my question to you, is what bank to use? Would Federal Hill be safe.”

The following is the advice I gave to Roderick, now that he has awakened in a hobbesian world where every man’s hand is against him and leviathan punishes self-defense as surely as robbery.

“It’s not that simple. You absolutely had to stop using the bank downtown, because there, you are perceived as the high value isolated target. Your black so the cops aren’t on your side. You have money so the thugs aren’t on your side. Out here you are also alone, are in the same income bracket as the locals, and—what makes you an inviting target—is you don’t have any potential witnesses. A robbery on you in which you defend will just look like two knuckleheads from the city getting stupid.

“You have to go to an affluent white enclave like Federal Hill. You see, down there you’re poor. The black dudes that roll into Federal Hill are looking for a softer and juicier target than you. No black man gets attacked in Federal Hill. You will not slot as prey down there. I only use the ATM machine in the neighborhood where I live in extreme circumstances. Whoever you are you are most likely to be attacked in your own neighborhood, because the attackers operating there have decided that people living there are high yield and low risk enough for them to attack.”

“I’m going to continue to take your advice. I’m understanding that the actual physical defense means that your survival strategy has failed and that the whole idea is to keep it non-physical until it cannot be helped.

“You know, you come up thinking that life is going to be one thing. Then you get to where you were headed all your life, and it’s another. Life’s a trap brother, and old age is no joke! We get old and find out they comin’ for us. Ain’t that the biggest lie of all.”

What we are seeing through Roderick’s eyes and often through other stories related in the Harm City vein is the deterioration of a circumscribed warrior ethic.

In the time of Roderick’s grandfather black men in Baltimore had to develop a high level of combativeness to dissuade white attackers who would beat and even publicly kill lone black men for sport.

In the time of Roderick’s father whites had farmed out attacking blacks to the police, and being attacked and beaten randomly by cops was just part of growing up.

By Roderick’s day the cops had largely retreated to a business support role leaving the lone black youth or man at the mercy of black criminals.

Now Roderick lives in a war zone where the cops dedicate virtually all resources to combating black drug traffickers. This has cultivated a class of criminal that does not fear doing time [although they prefer not to] and use this as a lever against those like Roderick would have a deep aversion to getting locked up. The implicit threat of the street level extortionist is that the target of his threats will, if he defends himself, go to jail and/or prison and lose their ongoing source of income, emerging into the world homeless and jobless. [Most working class guys are two weeks pay from homelessness and three absences from a job loss.] The thug who gets locked up has no job based income to lose so risks less and can be bolder at the tactical level.

What has specifically placed Roderick on the urban crime menu is the reduced physicality of black youths, who are currently as combat ineffective as the cowardly whites have traditionally been, and therefore seek older and less dangerous prey.

The starkly predatory nature of personal crime comes courtesy of the geniuses that conceived of and have managed the Drug War. As the government goon squads have brought more and more ineffective pressure on the drug gangs, these gangs have evolved purely predatory second tier [not apex predation] behaviors, and, as the actual leaders of the community, have instilled this hyena-like pack ethos among the youth who come of age in their shadow; youth who are conditioned from the cradle to perceive their one and only value as a menace to less ruthless humans.

Good luck out there Roderick.