Black America’s Fight for Yusuf Hawkins Is Far From Over
I dare you to examine the 1989 murder of Yusuf Hawkins and tell me America has changed. Yusuf Hawkins was a 16-year-old Black teenager who, along with three friends, went to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, one summer night to look at a used car his buddy Troy had found for sale in the newspaper. Yusuf didn’t know anyone in Bensonhurst, but he and his friends found themselves surrounded by a mob of 30 young white men swinging baseball bats, wielding handguns, and accusing them of not belonging in their all-white neighborhood. The mostly Italian men forced themselves between Yusuf and his friends, pinned Yusuf up against a dark doorway, and shot him to the ground. Yusuf stood up quickly as his attackers fled. He even managed to take a step toward his friends, not knowing, of course, that two of the shooter’s bullets had blown his heart wide open.
“We’re not racist. We just don’t like Black people,” a young man from Bensonhurst proclaimed on camera just days after Yusuf’s murder—and moments after a young Reverend Al Sharpton led a march of hundreds of Black people directly through the neighborhood. This particular young man stood with the white counter-protesters, some of whom threw watermelons and soda at Yusuf’s grieving family members and shouted, “N—ers, go home!”
Today, one could cite racial sensitivity in white communities as a sign of change and progress. But there were white people—Italians too—supporting Yusuf’s family, and marching through Bensonhurst in ‘89. Today, one could call out the increased diversity of races in Bensonhurst as evidence of progress. But de facto segregation in New York City is as prevalent today as it was the day Yusuf was killed. Many white Bensonhurst residents simply migrated to all-white neighborhoods in Staten Island, as the Asian population in Bensonhurst increased before their eyes. My ancestors say, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I say there is an equal and opposite arc of immorality. It bends toward injustice by way of denial at any cost and it is incumbent upon us willing to tear that arc to pieces.