Held to answer

The summer of Trayvon Martin is morphing into the summer of Oscar Grant.

Two young black males shot and killed by two non-black males who felt threatened. (Had the shooters been black, we wouldn’t have heard about Martin or Grant. They would have been reduced to news briefs.)

Grant, 21, was killed in 2009 during an altercation with a transit officer at a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station in Oakland in a shooting captured on video. The just-released movie, “Fruitvale Station,” is based on Grant’s killing.

It has been receiving effusive reviews from many in the media, and even reduced Robin Young of NPR’s “Here and Now” to tears when she interviewed the father of one of Grant’s friends.

For all the coverage this movie is receiving, the American news media are afraid to dig too deeply into Grant’s life. With video it’s easier to hit replay, and evoke the emotion of seeing a real gun go off and someone dying, than it is to explore Grant’s criminal history and behavior, which contributed to his death.

From what sketchy information is available, Grant dropped out of high school and was arrested at least five times between age 18 and his death, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. (His juvenile arrest record is not public.)

Grant spent almost two years behind bars. In February 2006, he admitted in a sworn statement to Hayward police that he was dealing the party drug ecstasy to “five to six regular customers” and making “$1,000 to $1,500 a week.”

That same year, Grant was stopped by police officers in San Leandro who saw him sitting in a car with a gun. He tossed the firearm and tried to run away but was eventually Tasered and taken into custody.

Later, during the trial of the BART officer who killed Grant, the judge allowed evidence about Grant’s resistance in that altercation – but no mention of the loaded gun he had been carrying. The attorney representing Grant’s family wanted no evidence about his resistance to arrest for fear it would be too prejudicial.

Unfortunately, Grant’s criminal records don’t provide information about his victims – who they were and how he had affected their lives. It makes me wonder if his victims were black.

That is the kind of uncomfortable truths these stories often lack, and readers sense it. The Robin Youngs, who are paid to question, would never dare ask.

They quickly settle for, “Well, he wasn’t a saint.”

Grant was “prone to trouble,” said the San Francisco Chronicle. “Family members have theories about why, but admit they are just guesses: his inability to separate himself from troubled friends.”

At the time of Grant’s death, his father was serving a life sentence for murder and only saw his son during occasional visits.

The younger Grant put his own incarceration to good use, acquiring some discipline that he couldn’t find at home or on the streets. At Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, he earned his high school equivalency diploma and cut inmates’ hair, which encouraged his career goal to become a barber.

It does appear that his life was at a crucial turn: He could become a responsible adult with a realistic career in his reach; or, he could continue to be a surly punk with a chip on his shoulder looking for a reason to fight.

On New Year’s Eve, the night he died, witnesses on the BART train said Grant had a run-in, described in the Chronicle as a fight “over little more than pride,” with a man he knew in jail. Grant and his friends were detained at the station.

One BART officer who struggled with Grant, turned him on his stomach and ordered another BART officer to arrest him for resisting arrest. The second officer shot Grant, saying it was an accident, that he had intended to reach for his Taser and instead pulled out his gun.

Not surprisingly, Grant’s family and supporters found this absurd. I find it plausible because I’ve seen cops in situations where they are outnumbered by young black males. Cops don’t like to own up to being scared, but they have good reason to be afraid in certain environments.

When I was a reporter in San Bernardino, Calif., I would go into neighborhoods by myself that I would not have wanted to visit without backup had I been a cop. A white woman in conservative dress in some neighborhoods may be presumed to be a social worker and of some use. A man or woman (of any race) in a police officer’s uniform could feel like a target.

The BART officer who killed Grant was accused of having previous encounters with other young blacks as evidence of racism. Most law enforcement officers in areas with a black population have prior encounters with blacks, because young black males are involved in a disproportionate number of police calls. (According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, young males of all races are more likely to be crime victims and suspects.)

The American news media give guys like Oscar Grant a free pass on violence because of “historic racism” or what some like to call “the new Jim Crow.”

Who perpetuates a “new Jim Crow?”

Civil Rights elders like Al Sharpton (an adjudicated liar) and Jesse Jackson (who once admitted he would feel safer being followed by a white person than a black) and upper middle-class academicians like Michelle Alexander for whom crime is not a fearful reality outside her office and home.

They need Jim Crow – old and new – to embellish their own careers. They don’t know, or care, that they are encouraging young black males like Grant to feel a sense of entitlement they don’t deserve.

Grant was no Emmett Till.

Young black men like Grant would be better served with a more sophisticated view of the world. Life is a struggle for a lot of people – of all races, ethnicities, nationalities. Read the news, especially BBC World News. Read world history – not just black history.

The Oscar Grants are allowed to blame their criminal behavior on their ancestors’ long-ago historical misfortunes, while non-black officers (whose ancestors never owned slaves) are expected to forgive and forget recent criminal history of black suspects – or risk being accused of racial profiling.

Did Grant racially profile the BART officer? Did he look at the officer’s light skin tone, feel reassurance at the presence of his dark-skinned brothers who matched his skin tone and decide he had a right to resist arrest?

In 2009, the same year Grant died, a 26-year-old black parolee, pimp and suspected rapist named Lovelle Mixon shot and killed four Oakland police officers. Almost 500 blacks turned out for his memorial service.

Think what Hollywood could do with Lovelle Mixon’s story. Grab your hankie, Robin Young.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons