Why Black Men Resist Arrest
It’s not about defiance. It’s about survival.
Fourteen years ago, I was brutally attacked in my apartment in Buenos Aires.
The attack happened on a sunny Sunday, roughly six months after I moved to Argentina from New York City. It was the type of morning where you’d wake up happy to be alive and expect the day only to get better. Unfortunately for me, it got a lot worse.
I arrived home from picking up breakfast to find the door of my third-floor apartment open and three men inside. My survival instinct to fight or fly chose flight, so I ran toward the elevator. The burglars grabbed me before I could make it through the still-open elevator doors and dragged me into the bathroom of my apartment. I immediately switched from flight to fight.
I fought like hell; I wasn’t thinking rationally. I’d been taught that when you’re staring down the barrel of a gun or any potentially deadly weapon, you don’t fight back. You give the guy cocking the Glock, brandishing the knife, or, in my case, wielding the screwdriver, what he wants. But in life-and-death situations, the mind works in mysterious ways. You don’t know what it will tell your body to do until the moment you think your life might soon be over.
