Children of Crisis

by Robert Coles

  At times I catch myself saying that she and the man I have quoted are lucky; I have with my own eyes for years seen the misery and harshness and meanness and sadness and bitterness of life in Harlem or Roxbury. Yet I think the truth is that those two individuals know full well how far from unique they are, how much they share with others, and how devious and misinformed and sometimes even deluded some of their so-called advocates are. I believe they are onto something about many of us who consider ourselves sensitive and compassionate and interested in serious, thoroughgoing “structural” changes in America’s social, political, and economic system. Too often we confuse our aims with those of the people whose “condition” we find so “low” or pitiable. Meanwhile, to our embarrassment, if we even care to look around, some of those people, not a handful by any means but a substantial number, say and do things that announce their lives are not as we say they surely must be, or their hopes are not what we say they ought to be.

  To keep our faith in our destiny as the wise ones who know how to distinguish the merely apparent from the real, we ingeniously come up with a series of words: they have all been brainwashed, or they have been co-opted, or they have been duped and bought out by the power structure. Poor souls, they want gadgets, while we know (we’ve had them all our lives!) how irrelevant and even obscene those machines and trinkets and diversions can be. And we will help them — tell them, educate or reeducate them, make them want what we want, make them live the better lives they should have, make them over into people worthy of our dedicated efforts, people whose grim, tragic presence justifies every bit of our rage and despair. Are not we the ones who know how all these things work, know how the poor live and how the rich live off them? Are not we the ones who know about ghettos and about the black bourgeoisie? As for a man like that factory worker or a woman like that nurse, and as for so many other black (or red or brown or white) people whose vision of their lives and their country doesn’t quite fit into ours — we can only shrug our shoulders and remark once again upon the way the oppressed are masked and beaten and fooled. But we will eventually show them, organize them, lead them — until, we always add, they are “ready” to take over for themselves. And if that factory worker has the impression he has been quite “ready” for decades, and indeed has been taking quite good care of himself, as have others like him, then we can only sigh, or these days, grit our teeth and dig in for the long haul.

  White Visitors

  Law and Order: That’s All There Is

  He is Irish and he wants everyone to know it. He isn’t in the least worried that they may already know and that they may feel he is beating a dead horse, saying the obvious, indulging in a lot of silly, trite, ethnic boasting that these days one would not think was done so openly and loudly — especially by a policeman who works in a completely black neighborhood, and a “tough one at that.” For eight years he has worked there, which means for most of his career as a policeman. He is thirty-two and has been on the force for ten years. Edward Herlihy is the name we can appropriately give to him, and with sincerity and conviction he will talk about the Herlihys and Ireland and poverty and the need any society has for a certain degree of conformity, for an ethic of obedience and patriotic loyalty. Eventually he will also make it clear that some of his forceful display of self-confidence, his constant effort to identify himself with a mixture of ironic self-deprecation and fierce pride as “an Irish cop,” reflects the fear he has that, quite literally, the United States of America is “going to pieces” and that he and his family are by no means oppressors or agents of oppressors, but rather victims of whatever it is he fears is coming into being — a new kind of country, a new kind of world.

  One day, four years after I first met Mr. Herlihy, I sat on his back porch with him. While we both looked at his lovely and nicely tended garden, enjoying the late spring sun and the fresh, brisk air and the peace and quiet of the scene, interrupted only by a noisy, bothersome fly or two, and while we had a cup of coffee and everything seemed reasonably relaxed and casual, he proceeded in an almost offhand way to say things that later, as they are read and considered and analyzed, seem almost apocalyptic in nature. I say all this, in a rather long prelude before drawing upon the man’s remarks, because I have had trouble at times reconciling Mr. Herlihy’s actual words with his genial, kindly, open manner and also with the circumstances that have surrounded some of our talks — circumstances, if he will forgive the allusion, something like those supposedly to be found in a small English country garden.

  “What is to be done?” I am asked, as if I were Lenin himself. (But Mr. Herlihy certainly would not like that allusion.) He is tall, thin, blondish, blue-eyed, ruddy. His hands are delicate. His fingers could be those of a pianist. He looks calm always, and I have seen him calm under provocations that would unsettle almost anyone. He never twitches or taps his feet or blinks excessively or stutters or raises his voice too much or gets intense and taut; and only rarely does he become emotional and outraged. He smiles rather often. Occasionally he laughs. He likes to talk, but he does so deliberately, in no rush. He has stories to tell, and he will tell them. At first he can appear to be guarded and tight-lipped, but that is not a fair description. He needs time to know someone, he says; but when he does — well, he does. When he asked, “What is to be done?” he was as concerned and forthright and candid a seeker as one could wish. He was referring to the rising unrest he sees about him every day, and he was asking how we as a nation can solve some of the problems he has no doubt most of us have every wish, if not hope, we can somehow learn to deal with successfully: “I was born here, and so was my dad. But my grandfather came here from Ireland, and he used to tell me that compared to Ireland and England and Europe we don’t have any problems here. I knew he was exaggerating; after all, my father had a terrible time making a living during the depression. He was almost forty when he got married, and my grandfather was over forty when he got married. They both were Irish! I’m the first American in the family. When I got married at thirty, my dad said, ‘You’re only a boy.’ He was only half kidding!

  “I wonder sometimes what my old grandfather would think of this country now. I don’t believe he ever saw a Negro in his life. How could he have seen them? He came here and settled with a brother who came here before him. They lived among their own people, and they never wanted to see anyone else. They hated the English. Those were the people I was taught to hate, not the Negroes. I try to tell some of the black kids that, when they tell me I’m picking on them, but it’s no use. They’re determined to have everyone hate them, everyone be against them. I’ve never seen so many bigots in my life; I mean it. A bigot is a person who misjudges another person. Right? Well, that’s what the Negroes are like. You come to them and try to be of some help, and they’re ready to stab you in the back as their worst enemy. So help me; I mean it. I’ve given up trying to make sense out of it all. There’s no point. You can drive yourself crazy. I take each day by itself, and I try to be a good cop. That’s what I am. I’m an Irish cop. I’ll say this: I used to think I was a policeman, an American citizen who happened to get a job trying to protect other citizens from thieves and crooks and murderers and bullies and liars and all the rest. Lately I hear I’m a pig, and good Lord, a lot of other terrible things. I have to scratch myself and say: is that you, Ed Herlihy? Well, it is me: I’m the same, but some of our people, they’re going wild, and that’s why I say to you: what is to be done?

  “One thing you can do is keep your respect for yourself. I’m not a pig or a fascist and all the other things I hear myself called. I’ve decided I am a cop, not a policeman anymore, but a cop. I mean, I have to be tough. It’s tough where I work, and the people there respect toughness. No, I don’t think they respect me. They just know that I’m not going to be pushed around — absolutely not. I drive my car through the streets and when they see me, they smile, a lot of the kids. A lot of people won’t believe that, especially the loudmouthed white radicals. They want all the Ne
groes to be fighting with the police. They believe that’s all I do, insult people and beat them up. How much more of those lies do we have to hear on television? I am sick and tired of those television programs and those news stories — it’s always some screaming white kook or a way-out black militant who is quoted and gets his speech across. What about the hundreds of black people — they are kids and they are parents and they are old people — who call me Officer Herlihy, that’s right. No one asks those people to speak on television. No one runs stories on them in the papers or the magazines. No one asks to talk with me, either — or with the other police who work near the colored people.

  “Look, there are some mean, vicious hoodlums around, out to tear down our entire society. To those people I’m a dangerous cop. I’ve got to be. If I show them I’m the least bit soft, they’ll kill me. I’ve already been fired at four times this year, and it’s only May. Once they really meant it; I’d have been dead if I hadn’t bent down suddenly. And you know why I bent? All of a sudden I thought I saw a penny. A penny! I figured I might as well pick it up, though it’s worthless these days. They didn’t know what I was debating in my mind, all those snipers who saw me standing there. Just as they fired, I started to bend, and they missed. I ran for cover. I was taken in by a black man; he owns a little market. You should have heard him talk. He called his own people more names than I’d ever dare. I used his phone and we moved in. Did we! We never caught them, though. We arrested a few kids, and we’re trying to track the snipers down. But it’s slow work. You can’t arrest everyone in a building. All you can do is watch people and question them and hope you can trace them to some crazy group.

  “It’s not really any worse now than it was a few years ago. There are these way-out crazy groups, but most of the Negroes are just like they always were. I’ve been with them for a long time, you know. I’m no college professor, but I think I understand them; they’re not bad people, and if they’d be given a chance, they’d be all right. If you ask me, they’re being used by those white radical kids. They are the enemy. They get their hands on a few Negro kids and teach them the tricks of the agitator, and they hope we’ll have a revolution in our cities. But you notice we really don’t have one. Sure, we’ve had riots, but that’s not what these agitators are after. They want the black people, the Negroes in the city, to be their stooges; they want to use them to destroy the country They practically say as much. I have to listen to all that stuff, one hour after another. I stand there and feel like vomiting. They’re a bad, bad lot, I’ll tell you.”

  He does indeed tell me. He drinks his coffee and goes on to say, in one breath, that the country is fine, just fine, and in another, that he wonders how much longer we can stave off an utter and complete disaster, in which violence begets violence, and the nation is no longer a stable and strong democracy. And the more he talks, the less hopeful he sounds: “Look, I’m basically optimistic. I have a nice life. I have a good wife and three good kids. I don’t make enough to keep up with this inflation, but I’m not starving either. I could sit back and say everything is just wonderful. I’ve been saving money, and I could dream of the day we all take a trip back to Ireland. Instead, I watch the news when I’m home, and I feel my muscles tense up. I even get a headache. We’re miles here from a ghetto, but it’s not far enough. The reason is those poor black people, they’re sitting ducks for the anarchists and Communists, the crazy, goddam student agitators. I’ve never felt about Negroes the way I do about these student types. They’re a clever and spiteful bunch. The ordinary colored man isn’t. He’s not so damn brainy, and all filled up with those slogans. He wants a better deal, and I don’t begrudge him one, no sir. But he’s going to end up getting a worse deal, that’s the tragedy. The people of this country, the majority of us, aren’t going to put up with violence and anarchy. Without laws you have nothing; I mean, if people don’t obey the law, it’s not a society any more. We’re back in the jungle. You need law and order. Law and order: that’s all there is. Without law and order there is chaos and revolution. This is a rich country, and we’re strong, and countries all over the world are depending on us. Should we allow a few crazy kids and some kooks in the ghetto to take over our whole nation?

  “Some of those television documentary people ought to stop searching all over the place for the craziest, wildest black militants and go and talk to the ordinary man in the street in the colored sections, and they ought to stop broadcasting one speech after another that the college radicals make. I’m sick of hearing about those kids: they’re all ‘alienated,’ you hear. The mayor’s office or the governor’s office — who knows? — tried to get one of those college people, a sociologist or something, to give us lectures on ‘the ghetto mentality,’ something like that, and ‘the college student and his alienation.’ We thought they were kidding. The guy talked and talked. Jesus Christ! He needed three or four shots of rye and a long chaser of beer. The chief said no to any more of that. He wants to select the speakers, and why in Hell shouldn’t he? They’re freaks, some of those intellectuals! Take one look at them and you can tell. They try to talk plain and simple, but they can’t do it. They talk down to us. Hell, we know more about ‘the society’ than they’ll ever know!

  “But that’s the crowd this country has been listening to — for too long. There’s just so much patience that the ordinary man has, though. You’ll see people expressing themselves more and more. If the Negroes start killing white people, and the college kids dynamite our buildings more and more, you’ll see the government step in. If it doesn’t, we’ll have to vote in a new government. What else can we do? Is this country supposed to turn itself over, lock, stock, and barrel, to its own enemies?”

  I find the contrast between those words and his description of his working day rather striking. When he talks about what he does and how he goes about his tour of duty, he speaks with far less rhetoric and terror. Perhaps he can only later, and in the context of a broader, more philosophical discussion, express what he may well actually feel from minute to minute during the course of his car rides through certain streets, or his walks from block to block. Not that he gets half as excited as his words suggest he does, even those strong words just cited. But the calm, matter-of-fact side of his personality most certainly comes across when he talks about “the job, the job.”

  I have many times, for instance, asked him to tell me what he does; tell me about the small and insignificant things as much as the more dramatic and memorable moments he has experienced — which he naturally enough wants to recount and in a way put to rest within himself. “Well,” he begins with a smile, because he is half amused at the remark that is about to follow, “every moment for me is a big moment. It’s like you see it on the movies, being a policeman.” He knows that I have driven around with him and spent a number of days seeing firsthand what he and others like him do, but he wants to say what I have just quoted for a very shrewd reason: “The public has no idea how hard it is to go down those streets. I think up until very recently a lot of people were inclined to think of us as loafers: we gave people speeding tickets; we were there when there was a parade — that kind of thing. That’s why when I saw a movie that showed how dangerous it can be, I thought: good, maybe we’ll get some gratitude from people. And I do believe a lot of people are at last beginning to wake up. They’re beginning to understand that without the police we’d be back in the Stone Age, and let me tell you, we’d be back there a lot faster than most people would ever believe.

  “Every day I have to show myself on every single street I’m in charge of. It’s important. They all have to see me. They have to see the car, and they have to see me. A lot of people wait for me. They need a ride to the hospital, or they’re afraid of someone, or they have a message: a guy is going to beat another guy up, or there’s no heat in a building and the people are in real trouble, or there’s a hustler or a pimp or a pusher, a dealer who’s bothering people. Look, I can’t go cleaning up a neighborhood like that. All I c
an do is keep things under control. I can try to make sure little kids aren’t being pushed around and scared half out of their minds by the addicts and prostitutes. I can prevent people from killing each other when they’re all drugged up and liquored up. I can push the landlords to obey the law and warn the gangs that they can go so far and no further. And every day I have to help a sick lady out, or rescue a kid whose arm is caught on barbed wire, or something like that. And the poor shopkeepers, they want protection! They would have me around all day if they could. The holdups in that neighborhood, the robbery and stealing and breaking and entering — it’s unbelievable. We don’t report half of it. We couldn’t. People wouldn’t believe it, and there isn’t much we can do about it all, anyway. Like I say, we can try to keep things under control — but only within limits.