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On Being Black, ‘Woke,’ And Dating White People

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No Snitching is Unspoken Rule on City Streets

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CHERYL CORLEY, host:

And now we turn to Tio Hardiman. He is with a program in Chicago called Ceasefire, which works with community members to stop violence on the streets. He has seen firsthand why people are afraid of being labeled a snitch. And he joins us from NPR's Chicago bureau.

Mr. Hardiman, welcome.

Mr. TIO HARDIMAN (Director, Gang Mediation, Ceasefire): Yeah, I'm glad to be here.

CORLEY: Well, tell us what's going on. Are people scared, and is this kind of a street cred thing?

Mr. HARDIMAN: Yes, it's the code of the streets out here, and I can best sum it up to what Tupac once said. He said a lot of times, people in America look at the communities like the, you know, impoverished communities or a so-called ghetto areas from a distance and say it's kind of dangerous there. But the people that live in the communities are also scared, because they live next door to the perpetrators of the violence.

CORLEY: You heard, though, what Paula Dow said, the prosecutor from New Jersey. Sounds like she's in a pretty tough spot trying to prosecute people and protect people. What's the alternative?

Mr. HARDIMAN: You see, first of all, a lot of the young brothers and sisters on the streets, they don't trust the prosecutors. They don't trust law enforcement. So what happens is it's just hard, because the kids or the young people have to go right back to the neighborhood. And there's been many stories here in Chicago where people have told. Don't get me wrong, people are telling every day, but there's - it's like an unwritten rule here in the Midwest. On the East Coast, they pretty much glamorize it and they - like they had the T-shirts they were wearing.

CORLEY: Yes.

Mr. HARDIMAN: And they were putting flyers out. In the Midwest, you can in the paper all the time, you arrest 40 people, 38 other people turn on him, okay? And that's happening in Chicago for some reason. It's happened time and time again. And there was a guy in Chicago off the west side who turned on like 27 people by wearing a wire, and he's still walking the streets today. So it's happening in some situations, I guess it's just - it depends on who you are, okay, and where you come from what you believe in.

CORLEY: So you're saying that people are, quote, "snitching," or taking responsibility to protect their community?

Mr. HARDIMAN: Some people are doing it, but, you know, the thing is the majority people will not do it. I remember one time, I was at a court proceeding and I noticed a guy had to testify for another guy that he killed his brother.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HARDIMAN: You know, strangely to say. You know, this guy testified for -and he loved his brother.

CORLEY: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mr. HARDIMAN: All right, so it's just difficult because the people don't have the resources to move out of the community. And far as the witness protection programs, the people are frightened in the community because a lot of times, they may not get you, but they might get your mother, your brother or your sister.

And the guy that I mentioned, you know, he did it because he just didn't really care because his mentality is like, look, I'm in the streets, too, so if you guys approach me, I'm going to do what I have to do. So he wasn't really worried about it in that particular case. All right?

CORLEY: Well, what do you think would make people feel safe to come forward? Paula Dow talked a lot about the witness protection and things like that. Are there are other things that have to happen, though?

Mr. HARDIMAN: Well, you know, at Ceasefire, what we're doing is trying to preventive violence on the front end. And we - over the last three years, we've mediated about 900 conflicts, some of them were fights we broke up, some of them were retaliations that we prevented and shootings on the front end. If we can get the violence down, then the people will have a newfound feeling of, you know, like safety and security. And that's what the people need.

And you need to really rally the community and mobilize - for example, you got 10,000 people coming out whenever an act of violence is committed, and if they keep coming out on a consistent basis, then people will get the message because you have to kind of support the people. And the people on the communities don't feel they have the support if they were to step forward.

CORLEY: Mr. Hardiman, one last question. You talked about it a little bit about the t-shirts...

Mr. HARDIMAN: Yeah.

CORLEY: ...that people are distributing or have distributed in some areas. Some hip-hop performers have publicly encouraged people to stop snitching. Do you think they're doing the right thing?

Mr. HARDIMAN: Well, not necessarily, because what happens - they're speaking from a standpoint of just trying to sell records and trying to keep their names afloat in what is like negative in a community. Five hip-hop rappers, most of them guys, if they made a lot of money, they live in gated communities. And if you look at their track record, some of them guys might have told on somebody themselves, okay?

CORLEY: Mm-hmm.

Mr. HARDIMAN: And that's just being real with you, but at the same time, we have to understand the element in which we're dealing with, and the brothers and sisters in the - deeply rooted in the communities, they can't come forward. They've just - it's a code of the streets, and then they feel they're going to be pretty much retaliated on.

CORLEY: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And you were saying that the way to, perhaps, stop this is for there to be more communities rallying around the idea of coming forward.

Mr. HARDIMAN: Well, there's a major disconnect with the youth and some of the older people in this communities. So yeah, the older people are going to have to try to reconnect with the youth so they can begin to trust them and feel that they have their backs.

CORLEY: So how do you do that? How do you get that trust going? How does that happen?

Mr. HARDIMAN: Well, it's going to take a lot of dialogue. For example, I have about 10 ministers on the west side here in Chicago, and they've opened their doors up to the young brothers on the streets. And we have dialogue sessions every Friday like from nine to 11 p.m., or from seven to nine p.m. And so we're gaining trust and we're gaining - we're building relationships and we open up for dialogue. You know, it's like universal communication.

CORLEY: Tio Hardiman is director of Crisis Mediation at Ceasefire, an anti-violence program in Chicago. Thank you so much for joining us.

Mr. HARDIMAN: Thank you.

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'No Snitching' Is Unspoken Rule on City Streets

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CHERYL CORLEY, host: And now we turn to Tio Hardiman. He is with a program in Chicago called Ceasefire, which works with community members to stop violence on the streets. He has seen firsthand why people are afraid of being labeled a snitch. And he joins us from NPR's Chicago bureau.

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A Message from David Kessler

I was privileged to co-author two books with the legendary, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, as well as adapt her well-respected stages of dying for those in grief. As expected, the stages would present themselves differently in grief. In our book, On Grief and Grieving we present the adapted stages in the much needed area of grief. The stages have evolved since their introduction and have been very misunderstood over the past four decades. They were never meant to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages. They are responses to loss that many people have, but there is not a typical response to loss as there is no typical loss.

The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through all of them or in a prescribed order. Our hope is that with these stages comes the knowledge of grief 's terrain, making us better equipped to cope with life and loss. At times, people in grief will often report more stages. Just remember your grief is an unique as you are.

NEW BOOK

Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

In this groundbreaking new work, David Kessler-an expert on grief and the coauthor with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross of the iconic On Grief and Grieving-journeys beyond the classic five stages to discover a sixth stage: meaning.

In this book, Kessler gives readers a roadmap to remembering those who have died with more love than pain; he shows us how to move forward in a way that honors our loved ones. Kessler's insight is both professional and intensely personal. His journey with grief began when, as a child, he witnessed a mass shooting at the same time his mother was dying. For most of his life, Kessler taught physicians, nurses, counselors, police, and first responders about end of life, trauma, and grief, as well as leading talks and retreats for those experiencing grief. Despite his knowledge, his life was upended by the sudden death of his twenty-one-year-old son.

How does the grief expert handle such a tragic loss? He knew he had to find a way through this unexpected, devastating loss, a way that would honor his son. That, ultimately, was the sixth state of grief-meaning. In Finding Meaning, Kessler shares the insights, collective wisdom, and powerful tools that will help those experiencing loss. Read More

Denial is the first of the five stages of grief™️. It helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We are in a state of shock and denial. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle. As you accept the reality of the loss and start to ask yourself questions, you are unknowingly beginning the healing process. You are becoming stronger, and the denial is beginning to fade. But as you proceed, all the feelings you were denying begin to surface.

Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger and you will get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing. The truth is that anger has no limits. It can extend not only to your friends, the doctors, your family, yourself and your loved one who died, but also to God. You may ask, "Where is God in this? Underneath anger is pain, your pain. It is natural to feel deserted and abandoned, but we live in a society that fears anger. Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving temporary structure to the nothingness of loss. At first grief feels like being lost at sea: no connection to anything. Then you get angry at someone, maybe a person who didn't attend the funeral, maybe a person who isn't around, maybe a person who is different now that your loved one has died. Suddenly you have a structure - - your anger toward them. The anger becomes a bridge over the open sea, a connection from you to them. It is something to hold onto; and a connection made from the strength of anger feels better than nothing.We usually know more about suppressing anger than feeling it. The anger is just another indication of the intensity of your love.

BARGAINING Before a loss, it seems like you will do anything if only your loved one would be spared. "Please God, " you bargain, "I will never be angry at my wife again if you'll just let her live." After a loss, bargaining may take the form of a temporary truce. "What if I devote the rest of my life to helping others. Then can I wake up and realize this has all been a bad dream?" We become lost in a maze of "If only..." or "What if..." statements. We want life returned to what is was; we want our loved one restored. We want to go back in time: find the tumor sooner, recognize the illness more quickly, stop the accident from happening...if only, if only, if only. Guilt is often bargaining's companion. The "if onlys" cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we "think" we could have done differently. We may even bargain with the pain. We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt. People often think of the stages as lasting weeks or months. They forget that the stages are responses to feelings that can last for minutes or hours as we flip in and out of one and then another. We do not enter and leave each individual stage in a linear fashion. We may feel one, then another and back again to the first one.

DEPRESSION After bargaining, our attention moves squarely into the present. Empty feelings present themselves, and grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever. It's important to understand that this depression is not a sign of mental illness. It is the appropriate response to a great loss. We withdraw from life, left in a fog of intense sadness, wondering, perhaps, if there is any point in going on alone? Why go on at all? Depression after a loss is too often seen as unnatural: a state to be fixed, something to snap out of. The first question to ask yourself is whether or not the situation you're in is actually depressing. The loss of a loved one is a very depressing situation, and depression is a normal and appropriate response. To not experience depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. When a loss fully settles in your soul, the realization that your loved one didn't get better this time and is not coming back is understandably depressing. If grief is a process of healing, then depression is one of the many necessary steps along the way.

ACCEPTANCE Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being "all right" or "OK" with what has happened. This is not the case. Most people don't ever feel OK or all right about the loss of a loved one. This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually we accept it. We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live. We must try to live now in a world where our loved one is missing. In resisting this new norm, at first many people want to maintain life as it was before a loved one died. In time, through bits and pieces of acceptance, however, we see that we cannot maintain the past intact. It has been forever changed and we must readjust. We must learn to reorganize roles, re-assign them to others or take them on ourselves. Finding acceptance may be just having more good days than bad ones. As we begin to live again and enjoy our life, we often feel that in doing so, we are betraying our loved one. We can never replace what has been lost, but we can make new connections, new meaningful relationships, new inter-dependencies. Instead of denying our feelings, we listen to our needs; we move, we change, we grow, we evolve. We may start to reach out to others and become involved in their lives. We invest in our friendships and in our relationship with ourselves. We begin to live again, but we cannot do so until we have given grief its time.

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Five Stages of Grief by Elisabeth Kubler Ross & David Kessler

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I was privileged to co-author two books with the legendary, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, as well as adapt her well-respected stages of dying for those in grief. As expected, the stages would present themselves differently in grief. In our book, On Grief and Grieving we present the adapted stages in the much needed area of grief.

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Yes i feel that she should still question her even if there was racial bias becouse they need to know the right thing to do still

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Well i think no matter your her race if she feel like it would be best for her to stat true to her self and what she believes is right or wrong

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Well i think no matter your her race if she feel like it would be best for her to stat true to her self and what she believes is right or wrong

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i think you should question it still but try to make them understand why you're questioning it.

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I feel that if your friends with someone that is doing or saying that is racial or even putting someone down there is point being friends with them because they don't people as equals and they will think less of you no matter what eventual that friend will start being mean to you because you don't agree or have a different opinion

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I think Starr should still be questioning her friendship with Hailey if she was white. If a friend is saying racist things and it doesn't apply to your race, it doesn't mean it's not ok to not do anything. You have to let that person know what they're saying is not right.

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yes she should still question it. as a nonblack person i don't want to be friends with someone who is racist or ignorant, especially in high school when you should already know better. this goes for anyone with a prejudice against any minority. ending the friendship with someone like that shouldn't even be questioned, it should just be ended the moment you see what kind of person they are.

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Yes because Starr shouldn't have to worry about a friend making stereotypes about a race that's not theirs and it's not about race of the person it's about how the person actually is.

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She should question the friendship. She should also help her have a better understanding

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I feel like no matter her race what really matters is her personal ethics 

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I feel like no matter her race what really matters is her personal ethics 

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Trevion

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Dai
Yes, because she knows that we all bleed the same blood. She would not continue to be friends with her because she is against them instead being apartof the fight.

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Trey-Her intense grieving like when she broke down at the DA

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i think shes angry. On the interview she was mad at everyone for not listening to her before.

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bargaining i think that she try to talk to her self into using Khalil, that she doing it for him because his dead "If I can’t stand up to my dad about Chris, how can I stand up for
Khalil?"

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she is angry about people saying it was justified that he was killed. right now it seems shes letting anger controller her actions, like softly snitching on king.

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I feel that she is in that state of bravery now that she is standing up fir what she belives

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she is angry because she doesn't care if king gets mad at her telling the truth.

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Denial, feels like its over, no reason to go on without the ones she grew up with.

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I think this article really touches on how Mavericks feels about star being with chris and how he felt like he didn't show how to be a good black man. But star said no you showed me how to be a good man and that kinda connected to the end of the article were it touches on it doesn't matter if your spouse is a different race if you feel like something is wrong your skin color doesn't change your personal ethics. So i dont think being white or black its doesnt make you any less "woke" if you are aware of what is going on when it comes to other racial concerns  or issues you just as woke as anybody .

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The article talks about leaving a gang is very dangerous and to most it seems impossible to truly leave a gang I think this relates to Deviant and how he feels or when Maverick left and what he had to go through, that king wants Devante but maverick is helping him escape that life like he did, Yes agree with article is saying because you can't have a loyal gang if everyone comes and go once your in they want you stay in, and those you left will always be watching there backs.

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When starr goes on the news, she talks about why khalil actually sold drugs. she doesn't mention him by name, but everyone in garden heights knows she's talking about King. Starr knows better than to actually say his name. I can understand why some communities have a no snitching rule, im not sure if i agree with it though.

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I feel that this can connect with the book becouse star dates a white guy in the book and mavrik the dad gets really mad and i dont know why he gets mad but maybe it was couse it messed with him in the head becouse hes a black man and he assumes that she should stick with the black culture and in this article it shows that Obama didnt date a white girl becouse it messed with his stance in politics. I dont aggre with this article as i found it kinda dissapointing in todays culture or in general i feel that people should think or feel a certain way just to make outhers happy or get to somehwere in life

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The article is about how leaving a gang is very hard thing to do.  The article relates to DeVante's situation about running away from his gang. He can't just leave unless he runs and even then, people are going after him. I agree with what the article is saying because you can't just leave a gang without consequences. The person will either return or the gang will come to them.

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You don't, your basically in it for life or you die. The gang assumes you're talking to the feds, police, about the activities that go on in the gang. The only way you leave is when you die.

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It is not about race, it is about your personality, how you are. Are you positive or negative?

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If you snitch on someone, you are bound to be killed, that is just how the system works, there is no way to get around it.

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She definitely should, but I'm not sure if she would. If she were part of the majority, she wouldn't have the kinds of experiences the minority has, and she wouldn't be able to relate as much and understand the actual impact that Hailey's words have on people of other races. But she should at least recognize them, though, and know that what Hailey's saying is wrong. And if she can't change Hailey, she should at least keep Hailey from changing her, considering how much Starr follows Hailey even as a black girl.

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I believe that Starr is swaying back and forth between anger and bargaining. She's angry at King for sullying Khalil's reputation, she's angry at her friends (mainly Hailey) for refusing to recognize that she actually cares about the death of this "teenage drug dealer" as well as other black people, and she's angry at herself for believing something about Khalil that wasn't true. But she's also bargaining, asking herself the 'what if's and 'if only's, thinking about what she could have done differently for Khalil and the relationship she and Khalil could have had.

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At one point in The Hate U Give, Starr questions her relationship with Chris. He's white, she's black... she even asks herself at one point if dating Chris means that she is betraying other black people. This article negates that, saying that the person you date does not influence your stances on racial issues- only you can do that. After that part in the book, Starr's dad eventually finds out that she's dating a white boy and essentially questions his daughter's woke-ness and whether or not he's set a good example of a black man. Starr answers this by saying that he set a good example of a man, period.

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She should still question the friendship. As a friend you should try to help them understand it better and give them some more knowledge so they wouldn't be as ignorant.

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I think she is in the anger stage because she is mad at what the media is saying about Khalil.

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I think she should still question her friendship with Hailey because regardless if Starr is white or black, Hailey is still making those ignorant comments which isn't okay.

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I think Starr is sad deep down because of how everyone is portraying Khalil and the situation but is masking it in anger towards everyone.

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This article talks about the difficulty and struggle of leaving a gang. It relates to the book because there are several characters who are involved with gang activity and who really cant leave or part ways with that type of lifestyle. Khalil was trying to protect his mom and DeVante's only family was members of his gang. I agree with this article because people don't understand how truly difficult it is to get out of that way of living.

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I think that it doesnt matter if she were to be white, she would still be skeptical about their friendship. And the reason for that is because since she is informed with everything going on, she would either educate and inform her or just feel some sort of way when she is around her.
Kathia Ochoa

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I think that this article really relates to Devantes situation with hiding from the gang. Once you join a gang, you really can't leave. Its either death if you really want to leave. but no matter what the gang will stick with you internally. You can take all the tattoos you want, but you'll still have that trauma, the brotherhood of the gang, and all the memories that you had to go through in the end. Also the emotional trauma that probably caused them, as well as the way your mentality is on the streets.

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if starr was white she could been raised differently or been through different stuff because she was white being white or black changes alot about how youre treated and how people look at you and who influences you and the things that happen around you.

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shes dealing with how they are portraying kahlil and curving around the fact that they aren't opening up the light on the officer and she feels alittle helpless on the situation