I passed the downtown courthouse in Baltimore the other day, on a routine walk to the post office, to pay my bills.  It is a sordid scene.  Cage-lined vans with the Division of Pre-Trial Services emblem. Translation, the P-E-N-I-T-E-N-T-I-A-R-Y.  Dubious characters in police transport from the seeming freedom of the sidewalk "on the outside" to the controlled sanctum of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, "on the inside."

More frightening than the CRIMINALS (or are they the ACCUSED?) are the burly jail keepers and uniformed police who loiter outside the building.

There is no intellectualism here.

Just brute force.

I am always on high alert as an African-American man walking down this particular street.  I have no police record.  Nor do I want to go to jail at any time during the rest of my life here in America.

However, yesterday, like many people who talk on mobile phones, this white man was not paying attention and ran right into me.  I was wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and sneakers, headed to the gym after a stop at the post office, black sports bag slung over my shoulder.

Members of the Baltimore City Police, Maryland Transit Police, and Baltimore City Sheriff's Office were all in full sight as I collected myself after the collision.  I could see the nearest of the Baltimore police officers, hand resting on his gun, eyes widening.  I was frozen, but my heart was racing.

What of the wad of cash in my pocket?

What if they thought I robbed this guy?

Was I going to be shot right then and there?

The other officers were also turning to get a look at the action and position themselves. Time stood still.  I was surely headed for the ground!  The color of my skin defined my fate: 

1).  I would be ACCUSED based on stereotype.

2).  Had I run, a bunch of officers would have gained chase.  I would then become a CRIMINAL.

"I'm so sorry I bumped into you," the man said as he continued to walk and talk.  I nervously smiled and said, "No problem."  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  The police went back to their business as I walked on to the post office, making sure not to make eye contact with any of them.  When I finally got to the security desk at the side entrance of the Calvert Street Post Office, I was still shaken up.

The security guard, who usually checks people entering the main building entrance and not the side post office, stared at me and asked about my bag.   I just escaped with my life and this guard with a gun wants to know what's in my gym bag?  He did not ask anyone else.  He singled me out.  Could it have been because I looked frazzled, with  images still racing through my head?

The security guard scanned my bag, then looked straight into my eyes and said, "O.K.  You can go."  Had I sped by him paying no attention, which is a normal thing to do, the consequences could  have been...disastrous.

It took me 35 minutes in the sauna at the gym to sweat all the anxiety out of my system.  I was shaken up because of the real issue:  my mortality.  While in the sauna, I tried to remember who taught me not to run, let alone MOVE in these "situations".

Everyday.  EVERYDAY African-American men face these "situations" in America and it all takes a toll on their body, mind, spirit.  Surely the white man who bumped into me did not sense any life-threatening consequences.  And so I alone, as an African-American, carried with me to the post office the burden of psychological effects from such a frightening encounter with the law and my mortality.

I am a man of faith.  I believe in God and I know He was, and is protecting me.  And He will protect me.  So I bounce back.  But how would someone else deal with this "situation"?  I truly fear for the man who runs.

Let's look more closely at what makes this courthouse scene such a dangerous and tense "situation".  Many young, black, male offenders  go to this courthouse, because they are ACCUSED of murder.  These young men never had a chance to become anything but CRIMINALS.  Their parents, schools, even their communities never provided good examples.

Enter Paul Harris, Sr., a conservative Catholic attorney in Washington D.C.  Harris, who grew up without a father, is a potential positive example for these young, black, male offenders that, YES, they can indeed make it!  However, the Bush Administration is not committed to seeing Harris and other legitimate black leaders rise to the national level.  Harris recently decided against running for the 2009 Attorney General of Virginia race.

Harris could win.  Harris would win.  But the lack of GOP support would surely sink his otherwise smooth-sailing ship, or at least take the wind out of its sails, and stop it, dead calm.   The GOP associates instead with greedy black Republican hustlers like Armstrong Williams, who was paid $241,000 for advertising the administration's policy of "No Child Left Behind."  It was a pathetic story about Williams, a man who was and is far from a true conservative mold, prostituting his services for some quick cash.

Harris would never do this.

The Republican National Committee (RNC), however, under the leadership of   2003-2005 Chairman and now White House adviser Ed Gillespie, did a cross-country tour with convicted felon Don King, who appeared at the 2004 Republican Convention.

Gillespie orchestrated a collective knock-out punch for bonafide black leaders in the RNC, who would become strong and enduring positive role models for the troubled young, black, male offenders for whom I was mistaken on that Baltimore street.  While claiming that minority inclusion is a "top, top priority with the GOP", Gillespie oversaw the losses of black Republicans Lynn Swann, Ken Blackwell, and former Lt. Governor of Maryland and current GOPAC Chairman Michael Steele.

Steele, ironically, is the Chairman at GOPAC, which recruits candidates for the GOP.  The GOP failed to make Steele's election a top, top priority, as Gillespie suggested.  By placing candidates into races that they could never win, Gillespie and other Republican leaders made certain that black candidates lost nationwide.  This thus guarantees:  no new black Republican leaders!  In Congress, quite simply, THERE ARE NO BLACK REPUBLICANS.

The illusion of Steele winning faded fast as GOP leaders deserted him.  The Washington Post columnist Colbert King wrote a poignant piece about this very subject regarding Gillespie, the GOP, and minority inclusion.  You can read it here. 

Gillespie is full of it.  And there is a big price to pay for his nefarious agenda.  Do we build more prisons?  Or do we instead rehabilitate, and bring these young, black, male offenders into society, from the controlled sanctum of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City "on the inside", back to the sidewalk "on the outside"?  Unfortunately, the GOP trend is to build more prisons, as I pointed out in this past piece, and thus the trend will also be to relive the scene that I faced at the courthouse.

A longtime mentor of mine, Capuchin Friar "Father Jim" Menkhus, once told me about something called paradigm paralysis.  According to the World Congress on Fluency Disorders, paradigm paralysis is "a shared set of assumptions that have to do with how we perceive the world.  Paradigms are very helpful because they allow us to develop expectations about what will probably occur based on these assumptions.   But when data falls outside our paradigm, we find it hard to see and accept.  This is called the PARADIGM EFFECT.  And when the paradigm effect is so strong that we are prevented from actually seeing what is under our very noses, we are said to be suffering from paradigm paralysis."

Paradigm effect is stereotyping in action.  By my presence alone on that Baltimore street, I became one of the black masses, automatically and at once all of these:  ACCUSED...CRIMINAL...and ACCUSED CRIMINAL.

A decade ago, Father Jim, a white priest, unknowingly fully prepared me for my "situation" at the courthouse.  A mentor and friend, he saved my life.  Father Jim and I are still in touch.

Where are the mentors for these young, black, male offenders who enter the courthouse?  There are none.  Instead, the black community is flooded with the images and the voices of rap stars like J.C. or Puff Daddy.

Someone should ask Ed Gillespie:  "Where are the mentors for these young, black, male offenders who enter the courthouse?"  At least Gillespie knows exactly where they are not:  in meaningful senior leadership positions.

I hope someday, on my walk to the post office, on that same Baltimore street, I will not bump into a white man talking on a mobile phone, but instead into one of those young, black, male offenders...who is on his way out of the courthouse.