Knock Out: The Story Continues

Knockout. It’s been going on for years. We have seen it more and more in the last few weeks. For those of you who do not know what you have is groups of young black men that walk down the street and look for a marker, an unsuspecting victim, and one of them runs up on them and attempts to knock that person out. The goal is not just the knockout but to be what’s called a “One Hitter Quitter”. In other words, knock someone out with one punch.

Now will someone please drop me that Ether Beat?

The more this story brews, the more riled up I get.  Truth be told: I am in full Ether mode. For those of you that do not know what an Ether is here is the short story. Ether is a dis song by Nas against Jay Z. The term Ether was made a verb by YouTube personality and Atlanta talk show host Tommy Sotomayor. In this sense, to Ether someone is to verbally tear them apart so hard that it burns their soul.

No. Put the Ether Beat away. I need to talk about this rationally.

Now as some of you may know this Knockout story has been going on for a few years. According to some stories as long as 4 or 5 years back. It has only in recent weeks come to the forefront as it spreads across the nation and the media has reported on it, and I use the word “reported” loosely. These days the story seems to be that there is no Knockout. Then you have people like this New York City council-woman-elect Laurie Cumbo coming out and saying that Knockout is happen because of Jewish Success. And still others are calling for “Let’s explore why young black youths” are doing this.

Additionally, there are some that are claiming that Knock Out is not something that is exclusive to young black teens but that there are others of various ethnicities and races that are taking part of this “game”. Where? When? Worse yet, there are people that are just out right denying Knock Out. Be it in the form of not even acknowledging it happening all the way to the conspiracy line of thought this is fabricated story meant to take the medias focus off of other issues in our government (The Myth of the Knock Out Game).

Now there are so many angles we could explore this Knock Out phenomenon. And for as many angles as there are each and every one that I am aware of really upsets me. There is the aspect that was brought up by AlfonZo Rachel that this is the product of liberal entitlement (Why the Knock Out Game was Inevitable). There is the payback aspect someone is going to pull a weapon and kill one of the assailants as brought up by Tommy Sotomayor (Title NSFW and Strong Language Used). Then there is the aspect that Earl Hall brought up about the potential for escalated violence against blacks up to and including race riots (a long short but not out of the realm of possibility left unchecked) (Broadcast Date 9-Dec-2013).

I want to bring up a different angle.

As minorities, be it black, Hispanic, Asian, or whatever, for the most part we really have to bust our tails to be taken seriously. From my own personal experience, to be viewed with any level of respect we cannot just been seen as equal to our white counterparts but we have to be better just too seen on equal ground. It is not right but it is a simple fact of life that needs to be acknowledged.

The first things that one person sees of another person are physical attributes and skin color just so happens to be one of them. I recall being at a Wal-Mart when there was an older gentleman that was eyeballing me as if I owed him money. Not really sure what that was about. But what I do know is that at some point someone that looked like me had rubbed him the wrong way. Once you have encountered someone looking at you that way you tend not to forget that look and the why behind.

At that time, I was walking by with my infant son, and I politely excused us as we walked by. But for some reason he struck up a conversation with me. Now I like to fashion myself as someone smarter than the average bear and someone that has a semi-decent speaking ability. As such we talked. And it was a wonderful conversation. Perhaps he struck it up because my son is cute. Perhaps he did so because he wanted to see my reaction. I tend to think it was the cuteness of my boy. But what happened during that conversation was amazing. His entire demeanor changed from that of a defensive posture to that of talking with someone with trust.

We discovered we were both Marine Corps veterans. Each with three children of our own and that we were so happy to exchange stories about. We had the same political leanings, yes we were in the sporting good section.

The point of the story, is that a simple “Excuse me” should have done. There should have been no test. No "Let’s see how this turns out". There should have been no strange looks. The fact of the matter is that when the youth of minorities communities go out and act the fool it makes it that much harder for those of us that want to take care of our own.

Again, we have to work that much harder to not just be on equal ground but that we are not seen as the thugs that are portrayed on YouTube, in the media, or in television and movies. This is what upsets me most. Stereotypes used with wisdom saves lives. People live up to their stereotypes not only make life hell in minority communities but make it that much more difficult to get by in the mainstream of American Society.

They force us to be the exception and not the rule rather than the other way around. And that is damn shameful.