But onto race and taking my son to the movies in St. Louis.
Preamble
I think racism can sometimes be hard to identify, and subject to individual perspective, environment and upbringing so let me try to give you clean facts first and then we can wade into more difficult subjective questions.
Facts
My 15 year old son and I went to see a movie at the St. Louis Galleria in Richmond Heights on a Friday night. It started at 8pm.
The Galleria is located next to two of the 'nicest' suburbs in St. Louis---both Clayton and Ladue touch the Galleria--Clayton is home to one of the top 50 best public high schools in the country, Ladue is home to a top 20 private school--both have many many multi million dollar homes. I grew up in Clayton and went to school in Ladue.
About 20 minutes into the movie 9-15 young adult men between the age of 15-25 came into the theater. I can't give you an exact number because I didn't want to stare. 4 sat four rows ahead of us, while the rest sat 4 or 5 rows behind us and maybe 4 seats closer to the wall. They immediately started a ruckus. Speaking loudly, rapping, tossing popcorn and other stuff at each other. My spider sense was tingling. On a scale of 1-10 I would say it was about at a 6. This went on for around 30 minutes with my anxiety growing. All of the other theater goers just ignored the crap behavior. Then one of the young men moved into the seat right behind me---tapped me on my shoulder and said,'my balls itch. Would you scratch them'. At this point my spidey sense is somewhere between and 8-9 (FYI a 10 would be having a gun visible).
I stood up and told my son we were leaving. We got up, left the screening room without making eye contact or saying a word. In the lobby I saw a manager--told him very briefly what was going on and indicated I thought a fight could break out and that their could be weapons, and asked for a refund. A refund was refused and he asked if I saw any weapons and I said no (as I said I didn't really want to take a hard look at them). I didn't want to stay around any longer than necessary, so we left. Outside the movie theater area but still inside the mall we ran into a mall cop. My son suggested we talk to the mall cop. I told him it wasn't worth it--he wasn't armed and wouldn't want to mix it up with those kids.
I didn't know what the theater manager would do, and I was worried that if he acted to stop the behavior the kids might come after us in the parking lot. We hightailed it to the car and fled to Ted Drews.
Additional facts, some of which I knew and some of which I didn't but go to the mosaic.
Although the St. Louis Galleria is located in a 'nice' part of town it has a bit of an ugly reputation which I didn't know. When I talked to some local friends they indicated that they wouldn't go to the movies there. A quick Google search showed 4 incidents of shots fired over the proceeding 18 months, as well as a stabbing and many fights.
There have been a number of movie theater shootings--I obviously remember the Big One in Aurora CO. There have been a number of other shootings at movie theaters which I also remember to some degree.
Missouri has some of the most relaxed gun laws in the country paired with very aggressive stand your ground laws. The result has been in increase in firearm death rates that way outpaces the nation and according to the CDC puts MO 6th in the country in gun death rates.
Questions:
1. If the young adult men has been white instead of black would my spidey sense have been pinging as aggressively?
2. If guns weren't such a clear and present risk factor in this country and in St. Louis in particular would I, other patrons, the theatre manager, or the mall cops be more willing to stand up to bad behavior?
3. Did I react appropriately? Should I have pushed back on the young men? Should I have told others? My assumption was that they were looking for a fight, but maybe they were just acting like stupid kids.
4. Would I have felt better if I was armed? No. I tend to believe in the old testament law regarding guns--one rule is "don't pull it if you ain't gonna use it" and do I really want to start shooting people? No. Do I want to start shooting people and possibly provoke a gun fight with my son next to me? NO NO NO. Would Missouri's stand your ground laws probably have protected me had I shot a bunch of people? Probably. Did I fear for my and my son's safety? Absolutely. Did one of the kids climb over 3 rows of seats to sit right behind me and make contact with me? Yup. Did he direct a nasty comment at me and my son. Ya betcha? Was there a way for me to escape? Yes and I used it but could I have stood my ground? Does horrible behavior in a movie theatre warrant being shot?
For those of you who don't remember or didn't track the final outcome over the shooting over a disagreement in a bar over a dog's weight it's worth reading this link.
man starts bar fight--shoots 2 and kills one and takes plea after hung jury
5. Would I have felt better if we had to go through a metal detector to enter the theater? Yes. However, movie theaters are barely making money and adding a line item to their expenses for that level of security would bankrupt most. And there is both the hassle factor and the low level anxiety created by needing that kind of security to go to a movie.
So was I right or wrong? Did I overreact (or underreact). Would I have reacted the same way if the bad behavior came from white men, or women?
I look forward to your thoughts---and promise the next post will be much lighter fare.
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