The moment we are introduced to Namond, what do we see? A typical corner boy? Well that’s what the untrained eye would see. Seeing a young Black man on a corner dressed like everyone else, talking like everyone else and actually selling drugs means he’s a typical corner boy right? NO! Hold on B.F. how can you paint this picture of him and say he’s not? Let me take you a little deeper.

Being from the streets myself gives me a keen eye when looking at young Black men. Being from a corner that started with 20-30 young guys and having intimate relationships with them from under the age of ten, I know that not everyone who engages in particular devious behaviors wants to. Sometimes they just do it because they’ve come to believe that “This is what we do around here.”

Some years ago my friends and I started something called “Men on the move.” We would go to the “worst areas” in a city or to where the scene of a murder was and engage the young men. What we found was, if we have a group of 10 young men, at tops we have 2 who are really with the shits 5 who were scared of the 2 and would just do what they said and 3 who were there but really wishing they had someone to come to them with another option so that they could escape the corner they hung on every day. Namond is one of those last 3.

Without the proper experience and understanding, most people lump all 10 in the same category and just want to discard them all. Personally I don’t want to discard any of them but right now I just want to focus on the 3s that are on each corner. How do you spot them? How do you help them? And most importantly, how do you engage them? Let’s use Namond to find out.

Namond gives off the typical tough guy vibes if you don’t look close. The first time we see him he’s a part of a notorious vicious gang in the city of Baltimore that was killing people without flinching. Not only was he part of the gang, his father (who was now serving consecutive life sentences for around 12 murders) was the most notorious killer in the gang. If you have that blood in your veins then in the hood, you are expected to become a killer like your father. This looms over your head every day.

What do you think that does to the psyche of a child? Better yet, have you ever looked at a corner boy and even considered what has gone into his psyche? The next scene we see Namond in, he’s bullying a kid they called Dukie. (A blog on him will come in the future) He’s putting his hands on and calling him names, projecting a bravado fitting of being Weebay’s son because he has to be tough right?

The next time we see him it’s the first day of school. The school has a dress code but he comes in with a Raiders jersey over his uniform shirt and the principal says “Namond Brice, are we starting this already?” You may think a kid breaking the dress code isn’t a big thing but when we’re talking psychological makeup, everything is big. Later in the show we’re introduced to his mother, who is a piece of work. She holds on to the glory days when Weebay was running the streets and her life’s mission is to make Namond, Weebay 2.0. She does her best to instill in her son’s mind that he’s Weebay’s son so he has to stand out from everyone else. So even the clothes he wears to school is a constant reminder of who he is supposed to be.

He literally has no safe place. His closet not only contains what he should put on physically, it is also an allegory of what he’s supposed to put on mentally and how he’s supposed to behave physically. Now every day he gets dressed and walks out the door, no matter where he is going, he is reminded that he’s supposed to be a certain way.

In school he’s loud and obnoxious; he’s cursing at teachers and trying to intimidate other students. His behavior is so bad, he’s taken out of his normal class and put in a class for “bad children.” In this class, he and his classmates are experimented on (not physically) as some white guy from another neighborhood thinks he can fix these Black children. Normally this leads to deeper seated trauma but luckily for these children, a Black man who is a part of and cares about the neighborhood is a part of the program and his love for them prevents them from enduring what other Black children suffer through in these “special” classes.

So I’ve shown you his behavior which fits the criteria for “Black boy to discard” but I’ve also given you some background that may make you feel a little empathy for him but without knowing someone’s life story, how do we indentify these 3s?

We identify them by recognizing when they are showing us something different. When we first see Namond, yes he’s on the corner and yes he is selling drugs but while everyone else is on the corner on their P’s and Q’s, he’s not paying attention to anything going on around him, he’s READING. He’s so engulfed in what he’s reading that they have to scream his name for him to make a sell. He sucks at being a drug dealer.

The next scene where he is bullying Dukie, right afterwards some other boys beat him up. He them tells all his friends that they need to retaliate in Dukie’s defense. This shows that he has love for him and really doesn’t want to see him bothered and the only reason he does is because he has to portray the tough guy image. Hell he’ll disappoint his mother if he doesn’t.

The next scene he’s in the school. Yes he’s loud and obnoxious, yes he’s cursing out teachers and trying to intimidate students, but if you really pay attention, he doesn’t do anything until he scopes the room to make sure people are watching. Everything he does is for show; nothing is just because it is who he is.

Now the challenge for all of us is to start intently looking for the differences the young men in our communities are trying to show us. They may be involved in all sorts of maliciousness but is that who they really are and do they really want to be a part of it? It is our job as adults to guide our youth, not abandon them because they’re on the wrong path.

Whose life are you intentional about saving? Do you complain about these young guys but never take the time to actually see them? And when I say see them, I don’t mean physically, I’m asking have you ever took the time to see them crying out to you? To see them pleading for help? To see them searching for the way out that we’re supposed to create for them? WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU SAW A YOUNG MAN?

After we “See” them, how do we help them? We help them by creating safe spaces for them. Earlier I said Namond had no safe space. Ideally our parents are supposed to create them but in his case, as with many of our youth, the parents are a part of the problem. We say it takes a village to raise a child but nowadays nobody care about creating village; we just want to mind our business until something affects us then we want everybody be in our business by helping somehow. Don’t mind your business when my son is dead but then want me to attend a fish fry for yours. We have to be proactive about ALL of our children.

Namond lucked up and had Calvin in his program. Calvin was an ex cop who would literally do anything to see the community flourish. He gave these children everything he had and they responded to it well. What programs have you created or are a part of? Do the youth on your block know that they can come and talk to you about what is ailing them? If you are time stricken, are you financially supporting the people who are doing this work?

During this whole Covid 19 pandemic there has been a lot of talk of children being hungry because school was the only place they would get fed. I propose to you that many of our youth have been living in a pandemic and there has been no place to feed their spirit, their genius, their ingenuity, their quirkiness, their abnormalities and especially their individuality. We help by creating safe spaces for them to express who they are instead of them being forced to be what the “Hood” tells them they should.

“He know he a genius he just can’t claim it. Cause they left him no platform to explain it.”

-Nipsey Hussle

Lastly, how do we engage them? My Uncle Johnny always says, “Sometimes you just gotta love people through what they’re going through.” When I said the youth responded to Calvin well, that was the end result. It took a little time and a lot of patience from him. He understood what they’d been through so he just kept loving on them. He had no ulterior motives, he just wanted to see them do good in life. One thing about children is their discernment is unmatched. They can tell when someone isn’t genuine and they will not respond well to you. But if they can feel you really care. If they can really feel that you love them, you can lead them to becoming their best selves.

So before you try to engage the youth by telling them what they’re doing wrong and what they shouldn’t be doing stop and just love them. Now I know it appears that I had 3 classes of corner boys and I only wanted to help one but that isn’t true. They’re all the same young men. They all started as 3s but were socialized to become 2s. Nobody is born wanting to be a killer. You have to go through things that bring you closer and closer to that point and if we don’t keep these young men from experiencing the things that draw them closer to becoming a killer then we may have help socialize our own killer.