Yesterday I lost a young son. He was not my biological son, he was not my step son or adopted son, he was America's son.
His name was Tommy Brandon Mcguire. He was 21 years old. He has sat at my table and ate my food. He has taken a nap on my sofa and laughed with friends on my front porch. He has wrestled with my son and shot hoops on courts while I watched. He has teased my daughter and hugged my grand daughter.
And he was a thug. A menace. A criminal.
He has been institutionalized and victimized and demonized until he became everything that we hate, that we jump up out of our sleep at night in fear of when we hear a shudder banging in the wind or a loose screen door slam with the breeze.
He was that boy you pass by at the mall on the street in the convenience store and pull your purse a little tighter or look over your shoulder to watch him walk away.
He was father less and had a mother less than equipped to raise a half breed son in the south where white people still call black folks niggers openly and white women with black children nigger lovers.
His family was the streets and he learned that love does not pay bills or buy clothes or all of the material possessions that were shoved in his face in television commercials and music videos and block buster movies.
He felt alone and abused and neglected and un cared about and grew angry and bitter until he thought there was no hope for a future for a man child like him.
He sought comfort in the arms of hoochie girls and wanna be vidoe ho's and families who gave him just a little of their time and a smile and a hug and a word of encouragement but not enough conversation to penetrate his troubled mind. Families like mine who thought we were doing good feeding him a slab of ribs at a barbeque, telling him that a God he could not see or hear or feel loves him. Singing songs of a better way but not showing him how to get there.
And now he is gone. Lost in a spray of gun fire. The victim of his victim.
Another black, latino, asian gang banger, trap boy, burglerer, petty thief, felon thug. Son, brother, nephew, cousin, friend, father.
Bout to make a change, filled out his application for trade school and learned to love by the smile of his baby girl saying daddy.
Menace.
Lost American Boy.
Tommy Brandon McGuire October 8, 1988 - February 27, 2009
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