This blog is the first in a series on an in depth look at the lives of characters on The Wire, where I’ll be digging deeper into “why” they do things instead of “what” they do, in hopes that we can see root causes and help young Black men from becoming the “monsters” people view them as. I received a lot of heat on social media when the Surviving R Kelly documentary dropped because I made a statement saying “Now we need a Becoming R Kelly documentary.” In no way was I justifying his actions, it just seems that a level of empathy is given to people because we know “hurt people, hurt people” unless the hurt person doing the hurting is a Black male; then what he’s been through means nothing, we just want throw the book at him.

The people’s response to my request to want to know what happened to R Kelly brought up an all too familiar feeling that as a Black male growing up, no one protects you. In fact your abuse is so normal that if identical things that are understood as problematic if it happened to a young girl happened to a Black boy, even when it is brought up, people (Black men included) are hesitant to say it was wrong. In this series my purpose is NOT to point fingers or find someone to blame. My purpose is to expose what hurts Black males, so we can stop the hurt and begin to heal.

So let’s begin. By the time you finish watching The Wire, Michael Lee would be considered a homicidal maniac. A person who was so void of a conscious he could literally kill anyone then go home, feed his little brother cereal and help him with his homework. He’d be thought of as the most dangerous type of killer because he was extremely smart and knew how to perfectly plan out his executions. But what happened that turned this 8^th grader into a killer?

While it is never said plainly what happened to him but before Chris Partlow attacks his step father for him he ask him if he likes touching boys. Since we see how much Mike hates his stepfather from the moment he comes home from prison and that hatred is deep enough to want him dead, it only makes sense that this question was asked because Mike told Chris that he was raped. As a total aside, the way Chris ferociously beats this man to death and throughout the series has an affinity and loyalty to Mike, would suggest that Chris too may have been raped as a child. So we have two killers born out of their trauma.

Now Mike wasn’t always friends with Chris and the Stanfield gang. In fact, when they gave money to the youth for back to school clothes, he refused to take it. The trauma he received at the hands of his step father and the fact that no adult (including his mother) protected him caused him to develop mistrust for adults. He felt that every adult was out to harm him so he stayed away from them at all cost. His entire demeanor would be different when he was around adults as opposed to his peers. With his friends he’d have a huge smile but around adults he would be sad and typically keeps his head down.

But we see a totally different Mike when he encounters his step father. We don’t see sad and stand offish, we see disappointment towards his mother and a whole lot of anger and rage towards his step father. When counseling Black men I always talk to them about anger being the easiest and most comfortable emotion to express because it cancels out any shame, embarrassment or vulnerability; if you can get angry enough, you can avoid any feeling that doesn’t feel good. So what do you think happens when a young Black male, full of testosterone is trying to avoid pain daily?

Michael’s pain drove him to one conclusion, that the only way he would feel safe was if the man that caused his trauma were dead. This is the point where the relationship with the Marlo Stanfield gang is born. If you ever heard about young Black men committing murder and thought “why do they act like this,” well right here is the “WHY” for Michael Lee. No adult in his life was willing to protect him, so he turned to the streets to find protection in his unprotected world.

“A sense of powerlessness and interpersonal violence are inextricably intertwined. Absolute powerlessness as well as absolute power corrupts….. Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.”

• Dr Amos Wilson, Black on Black Violence

Now let’s see if I can make this unprotection plain. I have a teenager daughter and I have friends with teenager daughters as well. All of our daughters are beautiful. At no time would it ever be ok or even funny if one of us were to say to the other, “when your daughter turns 18 I’m gonna be all over her.” That would start a fight instantly and everyone who hears those words would consider that man a pedophile. Yet women make this statement about underage boys all the time?

Why is this ok? Why are they not considered pedophiles for the same statement? Is it that we view the women as harmless or is it we don’t think about protecting boys so this is just a non starter? We definitely can’t say women are harmless because there are too many boys who have had sex with baby sitters or mother’s or aunt’s friends. Let me rephrase that; too many boys who were molested by baby sitters or mother’s or aunt’s friends.

The language is even typically different. If a woman is caught sleeping with a minor, the headline will be “woman sleeps with underage boy.” If a man does it, the headline will be “man molested underage girl.” Female pedophiles don’t even get half the time a male would for the same crime. So if we are systematically allowing boys to be raped, who is protecting them?

If we know that molestation can damage the psyche of a young girl but somehow we feel it does absolutely nothing to a young boy, what are we saying about our boys? Are we saying rape doesn’t affect boys or does it only affect them if it was by a man? Either way, if a Black boy receives either of these traumas, will we have any empathy for them for how their trauma makes them behave? Fact is, our boys are unprotected by the adults in their lives and then criticized without context by the same adults who failed them.

Let’s go further. Remember the “bring back our girls” campaign in 2014? It was reported that Boko Haram kidnapped 276 young girls and as we should, we came together to get those girls back. But have you ever heard about the boys kidnapped? It was reported that Boko Haram kidnapped over TEN THOUSAND boys. Where is the bring back our boys campaign? Do these boys matter to anybody?

Not only do these boys not matter to anybody on a collective level, they will be considered terrorist for the things they do under duress. If they blow something up, kill someone or kidnap more girls, NOBODY will attempt to empathize with the fact that their actions are a result of them not being protected from being kidnapped themselves. However the story will be different for a female.

Cyntoia Brown was kidnapped and sex trafficked. She somehow got the strength to kill the man who was holding her hostage. When the masses were made aware of the case, everyone was in outrage and demanded she be released because the murder she committed was due to the circumstance she was in. (JUST TO BE CLEAR I was and still am on her side in this.) We understood that she wasn’t protected and ended up committing murder because she wasn’t. Could we ever look at a murder committed by a Black boy and think the same way?

Now in no way am I suggesting that we turn a blind eye to the senseless killings in our communities. What I am proposing is that we start investigating what is driving our young men to the street life and then protect them from it. Even though Michael Lee is a fictitious character, there are millions of Black boys whom his story is their real life. Earlier in this blog I pinpointed the moment everything switched for Mike. The moment he went from and extremely smart kid who loved his little brother and playing with his friends, to a “homicidal maniac.”

Can we take the time to protect our boys reaching this moment and can we be empathetic enough to help young Black men who have already encountered it instead of looking at them as a lost cause?

In doing the work I do, I’ve encountered many people who told me to give up on young men over 17 but I can’t. And I pray that this blog series will keep you from giving up as well.