DUMBshit

This falls under the category of dumb shit. It should be one word because it sums a mentality. I read this story once. I don't need to read more or dig deep into it because all across the United States dumb shit expresses itself in the projects, and the culture of Black America time and time again in the same way with the same voice.

Ohio has an uncanny record of producing high achievers in every field of endeavor. Check it out. It is outstanding a history. Before slavery ended it was a safe haven for runaway African slaves. Today many don't know how to conduct their lives with their ancestors, or hear the stories of the land they live upon. They have become the Fat Takers. Tony Farmer is no different. Only 18 years old this boy had a promising college ride playing basketball in front of him until dumb shit assumed its customary place in his thinking and committed him to do dumb shit.

Tony Farmer pleaded guilty in July 2012 to kidnapping, felonious assault, robbery and intimidating a victim stemming from his altercation in April 2012 with his former girlfriend, Andrea Lane, in the lobby and parking lot of her apartment complex. His girlfriend? Why would a man, a boy in this case, commit these crimes upon his ex-girlfriend who I assume he courted once? That don't make sense to me because its dumb shit. Dumb shit tells a nigger to fight for his woman in a way a man never would. This 18 year old boy exercised the gift of the tutelage he received growing up to resolve conflict and attacked his ex after she refused to reconcile their relationship.

His former girlfriend told the court, "I know he was a good person. I hope he still is." His mother said he had been a young man in love and 'made a bad decision'. His high school coach said, "If you give him a chance, he's in good hands." His English teacher said, "Instead of his massive height I see his massive heart."

The boy spoke to the court after facing his Andrea, and her family with his apologies, and said, "I'm really not a bad kid." and asked the court for permission to finish his senior year and get a basketball scholarship. The judge apparently unmoved reminded him of the apartment video that showed him kicking her head and the look of fear on Andrea Lane's face!

Interwoven throughout this boy's story are voices we will all recognize and have insights into. I saw the video of the boy's reaction to the judge's sentencing. It broke my heart. It tore at me leaving part of me in pieces. He is a child standing six feet and seven inches in the air who will have to grow up in a cruel institution with men who have violated innocence, and crushed many a spirit worse than their spirits have been crushed. This hurts me to say it, but I watched that boy lose his life, and become a slave. Let that settle in your spirit, reader. Listen to that and what it sounds like in a society that boasts its claims of freedom, and is not outraged that slavery was never completely abolished!

Tony Farmer is dead in his spirit. His story is the sad state of the thinking of millions of Black Americans. The allegiance to the ghetto, and the attendant mentality is composed of the crude materials the Earth herself cannot use to restore life and agility. This young man had the incredible notion that he would get a pass in the white man's court for felonies against his own kind! It pains me witnessing these contradictions as many times as I have, but there is a solution. This boy will learn the solutions hopefully. But to learn them in prison? I hate that outcome, but the nigger mentality has to pay its costs until he learns the first lessons of power: to unlearn all he knows. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 8.22.12

Tony Farmer crumples to the ground while being sentenced to prison by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Pamela Barker. photo: Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer