blackmattersus.com
Ivan, I guess all Black people have their own story when it comes to racism. Could you tell us yours?
Ivan Richiez
I basically am 1st generation Dominican. I was born in Boston, Massachusetts. My parents are from the Dominican Republic, they met here. My experiences with racism started very young although I was not aware of it. Just learning through a lot of my social justice, studying in and being involved with different organizations, I’ve learnt what redlining is and how that impacts housing and housing accessibility for people of color. I grew up in the projects so I’ve always been aware that my neighborhood didn’t have enough resources as other neighborhoods did.
I was constantly dealing with power outages, police coming into the neighborhood and racially profiling us, neighbors constantly calling the cops because they sensed that criminal activity was going on, dealing with the Boston Housing Authority, facing a number of eviction cases for failure to pay rent even though my mum, being an undocumented person could barely make ends meet and just dealing with a myriad of things from micro-aggressions to blatant racism. So a lot of different things were happening but I wasn’t really aware or had the language to call it institutional or interpersonal racism. It’s just through my journey doing all this social justice work that I’ve been able to name it for what it is. My experiences with racial profiling in my neighborhood pretty much started off when I was like 13 years old. I remember just hanging outside just being a kid and then being approached by a cop. This was something that happened very often, like once a month. Cops will come in and just stop us, ask us what we’re doing, do we live there, are we gang affiliated even though the neighborhood that I was in had no gang activity. So it was almost as if they were always criminalizing us like we were already in gangs.
blackmattersus.com
Why do you think they had such a great interest in you? Is it the way you dress, look, behave or does it have something to do with your skin color?
Ivan Richiez
Not necessarily my skin color, although the majority of people that lived in my neighborhood were black. So that gave them the pass to racially profile anyone that lived there. People perceive me as a brown person, and I think cops do too because even nowadays when I’m stopped, they write black male on the police report. So it could be the color of my skin. However, I do feel like I benefit from white privilege sometimes because lighter skin has an effect in communities of color.
blackmattersus.com
What’s the population of white people in your community?
Ivan Richiez
There are 3 white people and they aren’t even fully white. They are mixed.
blackmattersus.com
What do Black guys of your age do in the neighborhood. Do you know a lot of people who use drugs?
Ivan Richiez
I think in my neighborhood specifically, there was drug use. I saw it particularly more among the Latinos. At that time, I wasn’t fully aware of drugs but I did know that police were in communities of color targeting them for drug crimes although white people were doing as much drugs as people of color. But at that time I wasn’t even aware of that. The reason I would justify why there was such huge police presence was because of domestic violence cases so I thought that they needed to be there to keep us safe. In terms of drugs in my neighborhood, I think there were only a couple of people and most people knew who they were.
blackmattersus.com
Have you ever tried to talk to the police to find out exactly why they are so interested in you and your friends?
Ivan Richiez
I’ve been stopped for smoking in a car, and that’s a justifiable reason if you want to look at it that way. Because they are already in the community targeting us for drugs, so I guess if one were to believe in the power of police and that they are here to protect us then maybe it’s justifiable. But I feel like any reason they stop people of color is unjustifiable because the inception of police since slavery has been to capture and to kill slaves. If you think about that and see how all the time the police have just been there to terrorize, to manipulate and to create the narrative for black people and people of color, then it’s not justifiable. I don’t believe that the police should exist.
blackmattersus.com
Have you ever found yourself in a situation when you had to go to the police? Did you go to them?
Ivan Richiez
Yeah, I can think of this one time. I was walking home probably 3 blocks away from the local police around 1 A.M and I was confronted with about 4 guys who were looking to rob me and which they did successfully. They had a gun to my head, took money out of my wallet, took my phone and almost took my sneakers. At that point they just left and I started walking. I came to the police station and immediately stood outside for about 4 seconds contemplating whether or not I should go inside and file a police report. I told myself that I didn’t even want to deal with it because at that moment all the questions that they would ask me were running through my mind. It instantly reminded me that I was going to be questioned as if it had been my fault and it was something that I deserved because I was a person of color. And because they already had these preconceived notions about people of color, they would have hurt my narrative because the people that robbed me asked if I was part of a gang, so I just pictured myself telling that story to them, how they would think they had been right about me being gang affiliated and stuff like that. On top of that I had had many experiences before with the police, so that just led me to make the decision that it wasn’t even worth it.
blackmattersus.com
So can one say that you have absolutely no confidence in the police?
Ivan Richiez
None at all.
blackmattersus.com
What about your friends? Do they feel the same way?
Ivan Richiez
I think that they definitely have the same sentiments but when it comes to situations where police will normally technically be called, they would do so and in situations where they’re being confronted by the police and they use unlawful force, for example, if I’m in the car with all my friends and I’m not consenting to a search, some of my friends would look at me and ask me to let them search me since I didn’t have anything to hide. But normally I’d want us all to be in solidarity and not let them search us at all. So I think all of my friends are anti-police but when it comes to the actual practical things when they’re in situations with police, they’re more likely to not resist and I think I’ll resist irrespective of the situation I’m in.
blackmattersus.com
Would you say they won’t resist out of fear of what the cops might do to them?
Ivan Richiez
I think that’s a huge reason why. People don’t want to lose their lives, people don’t want to be brutalized and stuff like that. And I think that’s very valid, although I think that when you know something, and you know that the truth can protect you, it’s better to speak on that than hold back.
blackmattersus.com
Your activism is sort of a protest. What is your idea? Do you want to address the police, to show people the problems we have in this country or is it just a search for compassion?
Ivan Richiez
I believe in compassion and love. I want to start off by saying we can’t get anywhere with antagonizing one another and not seeing each other for the loving beings that we are. And my philosophy is that, if we all start to know ourselves in a very deep and spiritual way, and that includes knowing our history, our gender identities, our racial identities, just being true to ourselves and recognizing our purposes and our struggles, then we can start to acknowledge and honor other people’s identities and their struggles from a place of love.
blackmattersus.com
Do you or the people in your community feel stressed because of this unwanted police attention?
Ivan Richiez
Personally, I don’t feel the stress as much although I sense that in other people. And just because there’s so much stuff on social media, you see people putting their opinions out there in a very strong way. This creates a lot of tension between friend groups because people in politics aren’t really aligned. So I think that causes a lot of stress particularly in the activism community here in Boston. But with people who aren’t doing the work, I can’t necessarily say whether I feel their stress.
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