"Daniel, 'The System' is not your friend."

These are the words that continuously rang loudly in my ears from my maternal grand-aunt as an American transplant of the African diaspora, striving to become a member of the academic professoriate.

In a state like Indiana, Black men fall victim to the school to prison pipeline often. The state promotes itself as having a system that works, but as an American male of color who identifies as quare (A variance of 'queer', a quare man is a self-identified queer form of masculinity, in lieu of social politics and their effects on gender and sexual identity.) I often queried: “What is it that exactly works, and in what ways does this system actually promote change, not just for the state itself, but the African American population at large who does not benefit from this systematic progression?” For 31 years, I have yet to find a concrete answer to this question, even while living in the state of Indiana all of my natural life, until I dealt with police brutality this past summer.

At the present time, I am a Ph.D. candidate in a well-ranked department at a Midwestern university conducting research about Black mental health reform, and its effects on the gender labor of Black males attempting to survive in urban metropolitan areas. However, my status as a candidate for my doctorate is currently in question due to a series of events that I will expound upon, with the intention of helping another Black male possibly find a solution to being considered a negative statistic by governmental standards. I speak by those standards, because I have been a willing participant in the educational school system since I was five years old, and although I have matriculated finely as a scholar for roughly 25 years, I never truly thought about how deep this system can chew up and spit out Black men from lower-income communities, such as my native hometown of Gary, Indiana.

In short, I felt I was a special anomaly, one who felt that if I kept my heads in clouds of philosophy, and my feet in research-based mental institutions, I could finesse bullets and fireballs like Jerry Rice in fields of play. As of June 12th, I have been unemployed, having taught as an Assistant Instructor for three years between 2013-2016, leading to a seasonal position as an Instructor of Record in the summer of 2016, all the while volunteering for the local community radio station as an audio engineer and resident disc jockey for two years. I was also working on building my portfolio as a photographer, and my communications imprint as an urban phenomenologist. In essence, I was made and was well on my way to being “PH.inisheD”.

I went to my former place of employment, to inquire about possible opportunities for hire at the time. However, I was told that they did not have the money to fund my dissertation research, regardless of offering women (without my qualifications as a scholar) the opportunity to teach coursework for the academic year. I realized that although being culturally aware of the afro-political and cultural practices of the diaspora, I would be victimized as a trope, much like the daguerreotypes popularized by Louis Agassiz to construct a narrative for Black men to be deemed as inferior due to their physiological differences to their white counterparts. I was deemed a threat by a Black woman, because of my physical stature as a Black male, and my attitude towards not willingly engaging with my “peers” in a social manner while at work, and ultimately becoming an indentured servant to the other members of the department. I was irate for a great deal of time, but I persevered with the hope that my research would show that I was capable of being an academic scholar for hire. However, the conversation between us escalated into raised voices filled with profanity; mine stemming from the fear that I would become homeless and penniless wandering the streets looking for something to eat. The conversation I had with her was one where I questioned if I would still be a part of the “family” that was the Department.

This definition of family left me in a confrontation with the police, which I recorded, where she felt threatened for her life, resulting in her asking that I be persecuted for aggravated assault (for cursing at her in an office space). I would later learn that she said that I blocked the entrance to her office, which left her fearful enough to get me banned from the department I spent 13 years cultivating research for, as well as the entire building I matriculated a great deal of time in learning about the various scholars of my ilk: Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Baldwin, whose corporeal narratives incited me to write about this incident. Disgruntled and suicidal, I left the premises. A few minutes later, during my journey home, I was cornered by the police department in my town at an off-campus location. I was told that they received a call (in lieu of the situation with faculty) that I was going to harm myself, and asked me to go with them to the hospital and that I was under arrest. This was the third time within a week that I was approached by the police, once at my place of residence, and again at the office. A police officer grabbed my arm, which in an impulse, I jerked away out of fear. A local white business owner saw me, and said to the cops, “It’s okay. I know him. Just relax man.” I screamed in response, “No! I want to go home!”

I started to wail up with tears, holding a piece of Panera Bread in my hand, which the officer saw as a raised fist of anger, prompting him to spray me in the face with a stream of mace. I screamed out attempting to cover my eyes, and the police officers strong-armed me to the ground, dropping what was in my hand. I was led to sit against a wall next to a storage garage. One of the cops took a gallon of water and poured it over my eyes, soaking my dress clothes. With my hands handcuffed behind my back, I was led back to the cop car, hitting my head on the top of the vehicle, as he took everything out of my pockets. As hot as it was that day, I was put in the back of the vehicle and strapped into the seat, with little ventilation to breathe. I felt I was going to die that day. The Asian officer eventually rolled down the window, and I found out that the person I confided in about my progression in the program was the one who called the police. I was led to the same psychological area I was sent to a week prior, where my mental health was evaluated. I was asked to give blood, and told that I could not leave without “giving them something.” I refused due to being RH+, but this did not please the nurse, who later asked for a urine sample, and that I take some pills to calm me down. Again, I refused, which prompted him to bring in two cops and three nurses to hold me down and stick me with a tranquilizer needle to subdue me. A female nurse attempted to snatch my phone out of my hand, scratching me in the process. I got up after I was pricked with the needle and demanded to know what I was given, but the police officer told me that I could not record. This is the same police officer I spoke with a week before who knew he could not keep me without probable cause. He opened the holding area I was in, and another cop approached me, and choked me to the ground, dropping my phone, and leaving me there, crying in desperation for God to help me. I would later be told that I would be admitted to the psych ward of the hospital for 72 hours, and if I didn’t oblige, I would be strapped to a hospital bed.

While I was in the hospital, I was forced to take antipsychotics and antidepressants to subdue my mental outbursts, and only could call a certain amount of people, most of who did not answer when I did. The nurses wanted to take photos of me “for their records [which surprised me, because I didn’t need to do this any other time I was in a hospital or mental institution]. However, I was released on good behavior, but not before I received a correspondence from the police, telling me that the Board of Trustees banned me form all university property for a full calendar year, and if I set foot on campus again, I would be arrested for trespass violations. I had a judicial conference with the Student Advocates Office, where I was told I would be charged with three counts of disorderly conduct, two on-campus, and one off-campus, namely due to resisting arrest and my verbal outbursts to my former employer. My character was defamed, and my future as a scholar was in jeopardy. I have since contacted the Board of Trustees, and the Student Advocates Office to appeal, along with the President of the University, two Indiana House Representatives, and ultimately chose this avenue to speak about my situation. The resolution for me was disciplinary probation for a year, as well as mandatory counseling with the university’s Counseling and Psychological Services, however, I am unable to set foot on campus to receive it, and if I do without a police escort, I will be arrested. My support systems-my fraternal organization, my Masonic organization, and even my family, were not available to help me, however, the lack of support led me to believe that these support systems knew this would occur to me at least a year in advance, which led me to wonder, “Was this a system that ‘worked’, and if it were so, I gather if it worked to police voices such as my own?”

I would later find that my gender labor had a great deal to do with my arrest, along with my subversion of the queer male trope that people perceived quare men such as myself to not be plagued with. You see, in Indiana, political respectability rings loudly in the societal lexicon. In Indiana, you could be graded and tested harshly based on how you look. In Indiana, one could be abused or killed like the many Blacks who to the oppositional gaze have no face, and much like the man who seeks to frame his image with one of respectability, and what one looks like says more than enough for someone who doesn’t care what one says. In actuality, I represented the guiling brute who lacked control. Ironically, this very philosophy perpetuated the very double standard Black males struggle with, such as being killed wearing a hoodie and holding skittles, or a physically large Black male tackled to the floor with his internal organs compressed against the concrete, provoking him to scream, “I Can’t Breathe.” I knew that this could very well be my fate, but I never once thought it would be a member of the Black “family” who would give me the most enlightening experience of my corporeality, that all Black lives may not matter after all, even to my own community.

institutionalized racism

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