A young white girl’s realization that her punishment would have been different if she were black

by Chelsea Hoag

Chelsea Hoag

I grew up south of Nashville, Tenn. obsessively playing every sport I could persuade my parents to pay for. That changed one night during middle school.

Just finishing softball tryouts and throwing my gear in the trunk of my mother’s pearl Cadillac, I registered sadness in her face. She could no longer afford for me to play basketball and softball.

Until that moment, I always got what I wanted. When I wanted to play percussion in band, a complete drum set arrived in our garage a week later. When I wanted to paint, a full art kit with every color of the spectrum soon lay on my bed. Little did I know my parents were selling their belongings to fund my whims and desires.

My mom soon sold her Cadillac; my step-dad, Greg, started mowing grass on the side and sold his pressure washer to pay for my basketball gear.

The author smiling at the camera. As a kid, I was obsessed with baseball, BMX, golf and basketball.

They sacrificed so I could have the opportunities to learn and grow. I thought we were miserably poor until going to college. I’ve learned I’m not poor – not even close. Many American children and their families, especially non-white American families, struggle and suffer a poverty I cannot fathom.

It is well-known fact that poverty correlates strongly with darker melatonin. Though many white Americans believe that anyone can “pull themselves up by the bootstraps,” or what’s called the meritocracy myth, a person of color doesn’t always reap what he sows.

“If you hear the police, drop everything and run.” – Billy Moore

There is usually an event or circumstance that acts as a catalyst with a definite rippling effect. I didn’t understand this until hearing the story of Billy Moore, a survivor of Georgia’s death row. Moore returned from Germany as a 22-year-old Army Private in 1974, only to learn that his wife had become addicted to drugs, he said.

He removed their 3-year-old from what he said he believed to be a dangerous situation. Then, in financially dire straits, Moore said he broke into a home thinking the owner was away. Only the owner wasn’t away. The robbery went horribly awry, ending after Moore had shot and killed the homeowner, the uncle of a friend.

A white jury, a white sheriff and a white judge ensured that Moore received the death penalty.

During an academic discussion I attended, Moore said that if he had killed a black man instead, his punishment would have been lesser. Even in the media, black-on-black violence gets less attention compared to black-on-white. We rarely even discuss white-on-white crime.

According to the FBI’s most recent homicide data in 2011, 83% of white murder victims were killed by fellow whites.

Getting an 8-year-old to confess

Moore said he believes that today police are often removed from the communities that they serve. He remembers when two officers used to walk along the streets of his hometown in the 1960s. They didn’t hide in cars, instead getting to know residents of the communities to which they were assigned.

However, Moore said as a young black male he knew his place. Friends and family around him often advised, “If you hear the police, drop everything and run,” he remembered.

Moore didn’t quite understand this advice until walking home from a friend’s house as an 8-year-old. Police arrested him for throwing rocks through the windows of a nearby school. They held him in an interrogation room until he pleaded guilty.

Moore said his mother was afraid the police would act violently towards her if she defended him, leaving Moore feeling confused and betrayed, he said. As a result, he was suspended from school and discovered that the window was that of his music teacher’s classroom. Following his “confession,” she did everything she could to make his life hell, he said.

Moore said from then on, he listened to his friends and family’s advice.

I vividly remember trying to steal a refrigerator magnet from a dollar store as a 6- or 7-year-old. The magnet was of a man swinging a golf club beside a draft beer overflowing with foam. I put in my pocket knowing that my mother couldn’t afford it.

As we stood at the checkout line, she caught me fiddling with the magnet and told me to give it to her. She jerked my arm, scolded me and apologized to the cashier. We walked across the street to the convenience store my grandparents owned, and I went to the back to sulk.

My mother called me to the front of the store.

A large police officer stood outside the store next to his squad car. Mom bent down to let me know he had arrived to arrest me. Tears rolling down my cheeks, I begged the officer to forgive me.

Years later, Mom said it was she who called the police hoping to scare some sense into me.

The department store at 1018 Mercury Blvd., Murfreesboro, Tenn.

Today, in 2015, I can only imagine what would have happened were I an 8-year-old black boy. My mother didn’t have to worry about rough treatment by the police if she defended me, and I didn’t receive any punishment other than a few lectures on stealing.