“Hell, yeah, I’d give you up!”
I laugh even though I know he’s serious. Maybe it’s because Pa’s answer to my question doesn’t surprise me. The average person would be horrified to learn that if she committed murder, her father would turn her into the police in a heartbeat. Me, I’m just heartened by the fact that we’re so close, the man rarely stumps me and only in good ways.
In my house, boob tube often serves as an unusual bonding tool. Even the most inane show can lead to a rich discussion about morality and politics and the like between my parents and me, especially my father. (Court shows are particularly provocative.) That is, once we negotiate control over the remote.
On Sunday night, Pa and I quickly come to an accord. We agree to watch in the following order: In Plain Sight (the season finale of a show that only he follows), Law and Order: Criminal Intent (the last episode with Chris Noth of a show we both watch religiously), and Mad Men (a show that my father gave up on several episodes ago, hence, the need for this negotiation. Thank AMC for encore presentations.)
For the most part, I’m ignoring In Plain Sight. (Another blog for another day reflecting on why, strident feminist that I am, I couldn’t care less for shows like The Closer, Saving Grace and In Plain Sight which my father watches faithfully. I mean, I’m very pleased that these show exists. I’d just much rather pour out some Corona for The Wire than watch them.)
But at one point, the storyline catches my attention. Shero Mary Shannon plays a federal marshal (I think) who’s intent on giving up her drug addict sister to the authorities for a range of criminal offenses. This makes her mom (played by Lesley Anne Warren who I still can’t decide if I like or not) go batshit. You’d give up your sister ?!? she shrieks to which Mary calmly replies, Yes… Yes, I would.
“Hey, Pa,” I say, prodding him in the elbow. “If one of us committed a crime, would you give us up?”
“Hell, yeah, I’d give you up!” I think he believes I’m laughing because I think he’s playing. I know he isn’t. That’s what’s funny.
Pa rushes to qualify. “I mean, if I know you out there doing things I didn’t raise you to be doing…” I just laugh harder, prompting him to qualify even more. “If you kill somebody, and, you know, it’s in self-defense, I’ll do whatever I can to help you. I’ll get you a lawyer or whatever. But if you out there doing stupid things…”
“You’d give me up, huh?”
“If you had a drug problem, I’m going to try to get you help, but…”
“Just like that,” I laugh, snapping my fingers. “You’d snitch like a bitch.” Now I double over, in part because I know my mother would actually beat him to the phone.
Pa finally lightens up. “You’d be hiding under the bed, and the police would come, and I’d go She’s right there…
“… Now gimme my reward!”
“Snitches get stitches,” he says, quoting my Uncle Nelson – a former correction officer and his younger brother.
I shake my fist at him and put on my gangsta chick mug. “Talkers get walkers.”
Lots of folks would be hurt even furious to know – never mind be told to their faces – by a loved one that they would readily turn them over to law enforcement. I can hear Hoochinetta McHood now. Uh uh, he wrong for that. Family’s family!
That’s right, Hoochie, family’s family, and that’s why I find my father’s response immensely heartwarming. Not only do I expect it, I understand and respect it. But that’s because I’m truly my parents’ daughter. As different as I am from them in fundamental ways, I have a moral structure of which they are the primary architects, and the Quintero code doesn’t define loyalty as I got your back no matter what dirt you do. In our clan, loyalty demands that we tell you the truth about yourself no matter what and struggle mightily to get you to fly right when you get off track.
So if I did do something irredeemably stupid and got the law on my ass, I wouldn’t see my family turning me over to the authorities as an act of betrayal. If anything, I first betrayed them by acting the fool. Facing the music would be the first step towards making amends to them as well as society.
That’s just the way I was raised.
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Comments
A serious crime? I'd get them a lawyer and then turn them in.
Thank you.
My son, by the way, is starting his sophomore year at Columbia in a couple of weeks. He loves it.
Black Bart-
Yes, yes I can be. Your point?
On a more serious point, our inmate population is mostly comprised of people who might not be incarcerated if not for a drug addiction and resulting trouble it leads them to. Yet drugs are trafficked through jails and prisons with as much ease as they are on the streets. That's the catch-22 of our prison system. On the one hand, you don't won't folks on the street who are harmful to themselves or others. On the other hand, there's not a thing "correctional" about our correctional facilities.
Blessedly, no one in my family has ever been incarcerated. So I wonder if -- beyond the obvious loss of freedom -- people who would not surrender loved ones actually have experience with the prison system and know them to make people worse and not better. Hence, their idea of what's just becomes disturbingly fluid.
My father had an ongoing battle with a young man who would position himself across the (narrow, one-way street) from our house to sell drugs. He would approach him and say, "Look, I know what you're doing out here, and I don't care, just do it in front of my house." But the kid would keep coming back time and again, and I was so worried and angry about the possibility of this situation turning violent. Ironically, the kid lived on our block so my father would yell, "Why doesn't he sell that shit in front of his house." Because he lives in the middle of the block and would never make any money, I explained. Selling drugs are like operating a restaurant -- location, location, location, and corners in residential neighborhoods surrounded by major highways are prime real estate. I think the only reason why we haven't seen the kid in so long is because he was finally incarcerated, but it wasn't because my father dropped a dime on him.
All that is to say that I do think you have to distinguish between possessing/using for personal use and selling, especially when it is being done in front of someone else's property and not in the privacy of your own home. And there also has to be distinction between the kind of drugs being sold. Marijuana is one thing, but cocaine is another. Then again, I don't want to come home and find strangers double-parked in front of my house smoking an L. The harder the drug and the easier it is to consume on the spot, the more difficult it is to take a live and let live position as some else's lifestyel choices increasingly interferes with yours.
My father was a cop, so we didn't get away with much. He would always tell us that if we got busted for anything, we were on our own. In fact, when my younger brother got brought in because he was with some friends who happened to decide to steal back the car stereo that was stolen from them, my father insisted he give up his buddies (my brother was the one who got caught - his friends were faster runners). My mother told my brother to just keep his mouth shut. Me? I just told him he was stupid for hanging out with the guys he did, and this was a wake-up call for him.
My advice to my own kids was pretty much the same as your dad's - actions have consequences so you'd better be ready to own up to your deeds. Family is family, but that doesn't mean you can do what you like.
On a different note, although I would have had trouble turning him in, I am glad for the moment that he is in prison because I am afraid he would be dead if he were still out on the streets. If we want to win the "war on drugs," we need to devote resources to helping people get treatment and then return them to communities where they have options other than the drug/thug life.
I struggle very, very hard to not adopt an "us vs. them" mentality, demonize people in the underground economy or downplay the complex political and economic factors that shape their choices. And I know that there's a complex relationship between the "thug" and the "revolutionary," with many of our best political leaders having once been engaged in criminal lifestyles. But these folks have no interest in the structural, political change that would shut down their criminal enterprises, and it's a big fuck you to liken themselves to people who sacrificed their lives for the uplift of their communities.
Has anyone read "Gang Leader for a Day" by Sudhir Vankatesh. He followed a Chicago street gang for several years as he worked on his doctorate in sociology. Gang leaders and members often described themselves as a community organization that did good in the community, from mediating disputes to employing young men. Yet much of the "good" they did wouldn't have been necessary had they not been trafficking drugs in the housing projects in the first place. Vankatesh couldn't determine if they bought into their own political rhetoric and were oblivious to the contradictions or if they were quite aware that they were engaging in spin. What was clear that any political activities (including voter registration) was not altruistic but about tightening their grip on the community and furthering their illegal profiteering.
I certainly agree with this. And indeed I have. I used to work for the Vera Institute of Justice heading up two alternative-in-carceration programs, one a drug treatment program focused on drug offenders (e.g. if they weren't using drugs, they wouldn't be selling them. No kingpins here, just people attempting to feed their own habits and getting caught in the quagmire that is our CJ system.
Then Giuliani came along, and it was a wrap.
In the meantime, while we try to make the world what we'd like it to be, we have to survive it in the way that it is. This is why my father wouldn't call the police on that young man but didn't just ignore his behavior either. As a man, he felt better about taking the risk inherent in his approach. Me not so much. I grimace and bear it.
So while we do have a choice, one is exponentially easier to implement than the other. Therefore, it's no wonder that so many choose to clamor for more cops and prisons when that doesn't survive a damn thing other than to reenslave poor people, especially of color. But hasn't that always been the point?
True indeed! This is one of only two things I appreciate the Nation of Islam with whom I have 101 problems. They are willing to engage this segment of the community and steer them in a direction that is less destructive to themselves and others. I don’t have what it takes to do that, and most people are even interested.
I empathize with your mixed feelings about the youth peace meeting. I don’t question anyone’s intentions around such initiatives, but it can feel like you’re setting up kids who themselves have nothing but great intentions. Given how in some places it’s de facto illegal to be under the age of 18, I do wonder from time to time if not a few adults behind youth initiatives actually harbor a “Youth are the problem” mentality even though they preach, “Children are the future.” Hence, they feel kids should to correct themselves (under their guidance, of course.) Not that they’re aware of this feeling, but still…
Actually, I’m not at all interested in legalizing the underground economy. I do support the legalization of medical marijuana and sex work because, like I said, some times you have to live in the world as it is in order to survive long nough to make it what it should be. That said, I’m interested in something more radical and substantive and admittedly infinitely more difficult to achieve: the structural changes that render the so-called “victimless” crime “unnecessary” (for lack of a better term in my haste to get offline for a while.) In my experience, those who can engage in psychoactive drug use and evade addiction are far from the norm and the primary reason for gravitating towards them is the desire to self-medicate in response to the relentless poverty, violence and other seemingly inescapable despair. Self-medication – for both physiological, psychological and, yes, political reasons – quickly deteriorates into self-abuse and gradual suicide as the addict convinces himself that she created that life of despair and/or deserves it. Call me idealistic, naïve and impractical, but I truly believe that free , quality through college or trade school (for jobs that actually exist, mind you) and health care would eliminate much of the impulse to pick up a pipe in the first place.
Would some people still choose to indulge in buying and selling? Absolutely! But maybe there would be too few for any possible consequences to have such a pervasively negative impact on society.