Growing Up Minority White And Why The White Protesters Calling Out White Silence Are Hypocrites

Written by the owner of the company, Alexander Portelli

This week I have seen a lot of white people on facebook make posts or comments about people’s outrages over the riots across America. The posts always go as followed:

“To all you white people who are vocal about the protests but silent about George Floyd, we see you” or something to that effect.

I am definitely one of those people. At 30, I am a business owner and employer. For the past 3 months, I have had these same people, white elitest liberals mainly, tell me I’m selfish for wanting to remain open, or peacefully but vocally opposing the lockdown. The lockdown has devastated me, caused depression and suicide to multiple people I know, and is the most oppressing move America has taken on it’s own in my lifetime at least.

So while spending day after day trying to ensure my business can remain afloat, and my employees can keep a steady paycheck, suddenly now riots happen. All over America. My own urban hometown of Albany, with the downtown being a mix of italian, irish, german, african american, hispanic, chinese etc. ethnic groups, was decimated by some black, but what appears to be mainly white, surburban liberal kids who smashed windows, destroyed businesses already suffering from months of oppressive shutdowns, and burned cars. People were violently assaulted.

And now when a white person or any person speaks out against it, they are challenged by these white people for doing so. I didn’t post about George Floyd ever because quite frankly, I don’t care too much. It happens every day, and between school and New York prison as a teen and young man, I saw it constantly to all colors. Over the past few weeks, I, and most Americans, are more worried about surviving and paying bills.

For the first 25 years of my life, I saw the good, the bad and the ugly of racial relations or inner cities in general, and every suburban white liberal was silent for every dirty part of it.

My school district of Albany, New York was over 75% black, though the city of Albany itself was around 30% black. Most of the white families sent their kids to catholic or public schools, these same families speaking out now so hypocritically. But for the blue collar whites of Albany who couldn’t afford that, like ours, public school was the only option.

I grew up as a minority in a sense. A minority in my neighborhood, and in my school. Being a minority white student was harder than being black; you were targeted more as a white kid, and picked on or challenged. I had more than 1 fight as a kid for being called a honky or cracker. But mainly the black on black violence was the most prominent. By middle school, I was accustomed to stabbings in my school on a weekly basis. My Middle School, Phillip Livingston in Albany, was so bad with so many student stabbings, it would eventually go on to be shut down. Black students would break out in riots over gang beefs, mainly between two gangs called OGK and Jungle Junkies, which would sometimes lead to entire takeovers of the school where riot police would have to come in. At the high school in my school district I was supposed to attend, a vice principal was beaten with crutches by gang members. White kids would be jumped after school simply for the color of their skin.

I would drop out a few weeks into 9th grade. I was the only white student in my classes by the time I reached high school. I would get targeted and threatened with extortion for being white. When one black student tried to rob me, I pulled a knife on him and told him to back the F off. I walked out of the school right then and never went back again. I have an 8th grade education to this day.

Due to the lack of education I feel it gave me a big head start. Unburdened from the violence of my city’s school district, I went to work full time as a teen and gained business acumen and work ethic that helped me to be the successful businessman I am today. But in 2008 the recession struck. And it struck New York hard.

With a lack of options for jobs, and surrounded by a city already with a high drug and crime rate, I ended up getting into drugs. And a year into the recession, I was arrested at 19 for felony drug possession.

I would sit in jail without bail for 13 months after my arrest. During my time in jail, I saw every abuse by correctional officers imaginable. I saw inmates, both black and white, bludgeoned, beaten, slapped, kicked, tased while subdued, billyclubbed, and choked. I saw one inmate so physically and psychologically tortured for 3 weeks straight, he took a chicken bone and jammed it into his wrist in a suicide attempt to “be free of this living hell” as he put it in a bloody scream.

I would write about it, and even organized other inmates to write about it. This even made me a target by COs, and one CO paid 3 inmates to jump me. I ended up just getting in a fight and holding them off ok, but it got me thrown in the box for 90 days. All for the good of inmates’ rights.

My case was riddled with police misconduct. The police were part of a county task force that had no jurisdiction in Albany. They never mentioned that they came for weeks to buy drugs from me in the city, or that the informant they used to buy from me also sold the drugs and split the money with them. Or that they would lure drug dealers or susceptible poor kids from the cities to their jurisdiction with the promise of big cash, so that they could arrest them and get more federal DEA funding. They did not discriminate. Blacks, hispanics, whites. They did every dirty trick in the book to make an arrest.

While in jail, I began spending as much time as possible in the law library. My nickname ended up becoming that by other inmates. I helped inmates of all races with their cases, and even started filing a lawsuit against the county for the fun of it to see what would happen, and it caused such a fear in them that they hired the best law firm in the county to answer it. I even got a black inmate out of prison time right before he was about to be sentenced because I found something his own public defender overlooked. He was instead given time served and walked out that day.

Shortly into my own case, one of the police officers who lied in my case by claiming to see me with my seatbelt off and conducting the routine traffic stop that pulled me over (he wasn’t even at the scene until after I was arrested) was himself arrested. Officer John Mullen would be charged with of all things, fabricating police evidence and vandalism for destroying a public statue in a drunken stupor. The seatbelt ticket in my case was dismissed.

But this or other things wasn’t enough to get me out. Even though it was my first offense, and it was non violent, my lawyer even told me that the judge would go hard on me because I am white and he doesn’t like seeing some white boy selling drugs. So I am going to get extra time because of the color of my skin? I would end up pleading guilty in exchange for 6 years prison time. The judge had said if I didn’t take the deal and was found guilty at trial, he’d give me 25 years.

Of the 6 years, I would do 4 in prison. The remaining 2 years were on parole. In prison in New York State, being white was even more of a minority position than in Albany public schools. I had now spent my entire child, teen, and young adult life in systems dominated by african americans.

Even in prison, I would try advocating for inmate rights. The COs in prison also did not see race, for the most part. To them, you were either blue or green (the color inmates wore.) There are whites, asians, hispanics, and native americans who all suffered the same abuses that black inmates did.

Before I was fully disillusioned with the system and still had some fight left in me, I still tried advocating for inmates. When we were watching a movie on tv, a rude CO changed it to nascar. Everyone got upset but bit their lip. Everyone except me. I went up too the CO and asked if he could turn it back, as nobody wanted to watch nascar and the tv was for the inmates. We paid for the channels through the inmate liason committees. The CO told me to go fuck off. I replied to him that I’d write the prison commissioner’s office over it, and he got up and pulled his pin.

Before long, the unit was swarmed with officers who handcuffed me, dragged me to the box, and beat me senseless. Each CO took turns pummeling me like a punching bag. Then they gave me 90 days in the box.

it was enough for me to never bother challenging them again.

When I got out of prison, with my 8th grade education and my felony, and lifetime of being a minority in institutions, I found myself with two paths. While in prison ironically, it was a black inmate I was friends with (he would also go out and become very successful) who told me not to get unmotivated or think I can’t do anything because of my education or felony. He even compared it to the attitude lots of african americans have, and that they use excuses like their skin color as crutches to keep from overcoming. White liberals also play a large part in this by telling them so, he’d say.

I got out and went straight to work, saving every paycheck I made. In 3 months, I gotten my license back, completely swore of drugs, cigarettes, eating out, or alcohol in order to save money and stay disciplined, and rented a beatup storefront in a minority neighborhood to open an overnight diner. I worked there 80 hours a week to pay rent for the diner, and after a year of making barely any money, it finally started to take off.

I even would give out free ice cream every easter to the neighborhood, which would end up being almost all african american kids.

The diner would be covered famously by the Times Union food critic Steve Barnes, an article I love to this day.

I would eventually leave Albany, the diner, and New York State altogether when I turned 25. I was tired ironically of a lot of things, and among them police harrassment over my teenage criminal past (I was once grabbed from my diner in full few of customers and pulled outside, and the police never even cared to apologize. Another time I was pulled over by state police without any given reason, handcuffed, and had my money and pocket contents placed on my car hood before it blew all over the highway. The state trooper unhandcuffed me, told me to go get my money strawn across the highway, and then drove off).

So now in this crazy year of 2020, living in the west where I went from being around african americans regularly to being around whites mainly, who would never have near the experiences of police brutality or the struggles of urban city living, I find myself trying to survive and deal with rioters over an incident that I am completely numb to, in a city thousands of miles away, and white people who have never had nearly the experiences I have in my life, are telling me that I am racist because I am condemning the rioters but was silent for the killing of George Floyd. I would doubt these people could ever actually walk in my shoes.

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