And sometimes it’s about class, or gender, or age, or any other classification that causes us to be identified as one of “the others.” President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have been profiled by people all their lives, just as Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis were. That doesn’t mean that there are not also other reasons for the disrespectful behavior directed toward them. It is important, however, to face this profile thing.

 So Trayvon Martin was suspended from school at the time that George Zimmerman shot and killed him. Young Trayvon was wearing a hoodie–a symbol to some people of troublemaking. Furthermore, he was guilty of the unpardonable crime of being a young Black male on the street at night. Jordan was sitting in a van with his buds listening to some music, too loud, like most teens.  He also had the audacity to give an old white guy some lip or the wrong kind of look.

We don’t know what specific issues made the one young man, walking down the street, talking on his cellphone to his friend, a suspicious character to Mr. Zimmerman. We don’t know exactly what made Jordan Davis seem a threat to Michael Dunn, if that’s what really happened.  We don’t know exactly, but we have a pretty good idea.

This reminds me a little of my own misadventures as a teenager on the streets of Cleveland in the 1960’s. Like so many of my friends, I spent my nights walking the streets and hanging on corners for entertainment. Each evening, as I buffed my shoes and combed my hair on the way out the door, as I hit the sidewalk with the baaaadest walk on the block, clicking out a tune with my cleats, I thought about how cool I was, and I thought about meeting up with my boys, and about hooking up with some local “chicks.”  I tried very hard not to think about the police.

Unfortunately, from the first time they stopped to check me out, the local patrol boys decided that I was a troublemaker. I wasn’t sure why. Was it because they didn’t like my hair?  My spit shined shoes? My so cool walk? Or maybe it was the way I smiled when they jabbed me with their night sticks. It certainly could have been the smile. A judge later told me from the bench that he was locking me up just to wipe that smile off my face. It also could have been that hair. I was suspended at least twenty times by high school administrators who didn’t like it.

To so many people in authority I was seen as a “punk,” “a smart–a– troublemaker,” up to no good. I was somehow considered a dangerous person who was suspected as a cause of any problems that might be happening in the neighborhood.  I had to be watched. I had to be hassled. I had to be controlled. The bruises to my ribs, the pain in my stomach, the scratches on my face as I was slammed repeatedly against the police cars, were a message from those in authority. The term wasn’t in use back then, but I was being profiled.

I was in a crazy relationship that, as a teenager, I was too self-absorbed and innocent to know how to change. I was told over and over again that I had a problem with authority, when really it was the other way around. My friends and I didn’t wear the same clothes, didn’t listen to the same music, didn’t talk the way the adults did, and we didn’t respect the same norms of behavior.  We were too loud, too reckless; we were different; we were “the other,” and that made us dangerous to the people in authority. That perceived reality gave some police, some school administrators, some judges the justification to treat us without respect, without compassion, without understanding, and without justice. I didn’t know yet how the Black kids from the neighborhood next to ours were judged or treated by the authorities. I just knew they wouldn’t be safe on our streets. The authorities and our gangs would make sure of that.  Why? Because they were “the other.”  They were stereotyped. They were profiled.

So here we are now, nearly a half century later. The civil rights movement has given us decades to look at discrimination. And I wonder, can we get past our prejudices, our fears, our stereotypes to demand the same respect, same justice for the many young Black men on our streets today, that we would for any of our children. Michael Dunn evidently couldn’t. Neither, it seems, can many conservative commentators or republican lawmakers.

 River Smith is a psychologist, eco-feminist community activist, author of A Conspiracy to Love: Living A Life of Joy, Generosity, and Power, and co-author, with Victor L. Lewis and Hugh Vasquez, of Lessons from The Color of Fear: A Teachers Manual.