Bryce works for a Northeast Baltimore florist and was delivering flowers to an East Baltimore funeral home. After he left his car and began walking the delivery down the sidewalk two innocent unarmed black teens approached him from behind, and said the following:
IUBT #1: “Yo, what you gonna do ‘bout dat Yo?”
IUBT #2: “Oh I jack a muvafuca fo anyting.”
IUBT #1: “Yo, yo jackin; dis muvafuca fo ‘is shit?”
IUBT #2: “Shee Yo, I ‘bout ta jack dis bitch right hea!”
Bryce was carrying a large wrought iron-style steel-tube basket of flowers in his left hand at hip level, and had a thick glass vase of flowers couched in his right arm. As he heard the trash-talking cease and the footfalls come closer he turned, setting the basket down at his feet and cocking back the water-filled glass vase as a missile.
“They stopped right in their tracks and we locked eyes. I suppose the brave one with the mouth did the physics and decided that his skull was about to fail upon collision with the hard object in my hand. They just backed off, and they were a few steps away when the smaller guy—they were both in their mid-teens—said, “Yo, I thought you would jack anybody fo dey shit?”
Sadly enough this stillborn stupid moment demonstrates the extent of the motivation, planning and resolve of most black youth on white adult crimes, which are generally not displays of dominance behavior or predation, but bonding activities.
Boys, who have been abused by their mothers, neglected by their fathers since infancy, and told by one and all that they are ‘little men’ from diapers to cargo shorts are busily trying to invent a manhood matrix that will provide a ladder out of their pit of denatured despair. Here in Harm City attacking some large pale herd animal as a pack member seems to be the preferred rite of passage into thughood.
