[Editor's Note: The following article is part of BlackOut: A Five-Year Retrospective on Portland’s Racial Justice Movement, a joint publication from Donovan Scribes and the Portland Mercury. Written exclusively by Black Portlanders, the purpose of BlackOut is to remember and reflect on the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, and the 100+ days of protests in Portland that same year. You can find BlackOut in print at more than 500 locales citywide, inserted inside the Mercury's Food Issue. You can read all the BlackOut articles here.]
I watched a Black boy pick a bouquet of flowers for his mother at the expensive white folks supermarket in the cradle of Ramadan.
We’re pushing up Burnside in my Honda that has an odometer number that would make for a cozy bank account. Flower Boy is riding passenger in his usual matching sweats and hoodie set. His homie, whom I just met, is in the back seat holding up his phone, which is blaring a rap song he recorded.
In the song, he’s boasting about catching a case and taking the charges without telling. About what he will do if he catches his nemesis. Flower Boy nods a cool endorsement.
I’ve heard the lyrics before, a recycled flow all the youths are using, from SoundCloud rappers to students in my classroom. I listen without judgment, letting Backseat Homie tell his story on his own terms. I overstand, nonchalantly checking out the window for pedestrians on our way to pick out an apology.
When the song finishes, I give him props like he was Kendrick Lamar coming off the stage at the Super Bowl. I pick his brain and the content of his verses, casually inquiring about how he landed on the topics.
“These aren’t really my lyrics. It’s just for entertainment,” he offers with his best assurance and a bashful smile. Eyes still innocent behind glazed self-medication.
Backseat Homie is 17 and isn't currently in school. I don’t know what bus he took to get here today. I don’t know who his people are. But I know he’s got dreams, and I can see in his posture and demeanor that they're sitting in a vase with no water.
Black boys never get to tell their stories.
Black boys never get to tell their stories.
Black boys never get to tell their stories.
Zupan's Market has some of the best flowers in the city. When there’s an occasion for flowers, this is where I come. It sits in the center of a quaint strip mall in front of a parking lot of BMWs and Teslas and a steady flow of affluent white folk going about their days.
When I ask Flower Boy about why his mother called me today, he paints a picture in the air of needing his father and friends who died. Flower Boy is thin like a crescent moon. Misunderstood by most. Only the closest of kin can relate to his story.
As I listen to him, an idea comes to mind. I tell him to get Backseat Homie. We were going on a mission to pick something fruitful.
Flower Boy is the son of a mother who is acutely aware of his Blackness. Her back is bent with the weight of capitalism. Her life is a punch clock to put food on the table and clothes on his back, but there is no currency to afford the way white supremacy looks on her most prized possession. She wears her hijab and her fear with equal piety. Last year, she called to tell me about the scratches and bruises on his back from when the police snatched him up from the passenger seat of a crashed car.
“You want to die today?”
The flowers are lined up against the wall just outside the automatic sliding doors. I give my fledgling botanists a quick and dirty rundown of the flowers and tell Flower Boy to pick a bouquet that speaks to him.
“I never picked out flowers before.”
Before I came to Portland, I had never looked twice at a flower. I shared with him what I had learned; the way to look at the petals, preference in color, and how some of the flowers were still buds that would eventually bloom when placed in water. I always make sure my arrangements have a couple of those. Flower Boy finally settles on an arrangement.
“I hear too many sirens.”
Before we hit the register, I take my fledging botanists on a jaunt through the upscale white folks supermarket. We walk through rows of vibrantly colored organic produce. I introduce them to kombucha and they gawk at the price of fresh squeezed orange juice. We stroll past the seafood counter and peep the fresh fish options before rounding the counter to the meat case where I point out different cuts of steak. We stop through the cheese and cured meats section, and then past the bakery to pick out a card to go with the flowers.
The fact that Zupan’s is a different world for Black youths is the same reason why there are no longer any department stores in Lloyd Center Mall. This is a city where the highest-paid employee in 2024 was a police officer, and in 2025, the school district is set to cut 90 teaching positions. In Flower Boy’s zip code, it's easier to get a pistol or a felony, than it is to get a diploma or an internship. Which is why I don't gotta ask Backseat Homie how he got expelled from school.
Stop putting youth in handcuffs.
Stop putting youth in handcuffs.
Stop putting youth in handcuffs.
Stop putting youth in handcuffs.
After 9 minutes and 29 seconds, white folk poured out of every corner of the Rose City. They laid down on bridges in solidarity of dismay at the public execution. They shouted down unmoved strangers and family members alike, online and in person, smashed business windows, some white, some Black, tagged walls with graffiti, and waded through clouds of tear gas, all in the self-proclaimed name of us.
Black youth were never asked what they needed. I watched them set themselves on fire and billow dark clouds of hope that smelled like burnt liberation. The schools named after slave masters and colonizers opened back up and swallowed the oxygen. The lives of Black boys, of Black youth, did not change.
Black boys grow from concrete
We don't have the luxury of fertile soil and careful pruning
We sprout between cracks and crevices against all odds
Resilient wonders pulled from our roots like weeds
Imagine what we would bloom into if we were allowed to taste water
Imagine if we planted a forest of Black teachers
Imagine if we built schools in the spirit of raised garden beds and watered Black children like seedlings
Imagine if we tilled neighborhoods like community gardens
and let folks pluck the sustenance and resources they need ripe off the vine
Unless justice is redefined, Backseat Homie and Flower Boy are headed down paths synonymous with jail cells and caskets. Because of the circumstances they were born into. That they didn't choose. They are headed down a path before they even have the agency to pick their own lanes. Yet another statistic of a system that is working as designed, methodically disposing of Black bodies through a variety of exits. The only handout they will be given is blame for fait accompli.
A beat-up Honda peels out of the upscale white folks supermarket on a quiet Wednesday afternoon. Inside, two Black boys are for the moment, free. Flower Boy rides home, nose to pistil. Smelling new dreams.
Let Black boys pick their own flowers.
Let Black boys pick their own flowers.
Let Black boys pick their own flowers.
Lakayana Yotama Drury is an entrepreneur, educator, community advocate, writer, poet, and filmmaker. He is the founder and executive director of Word is Bond, a nonprofit leadership incubator for young Black men based out of Portland, Oregon, which he formed in 2017. He currently serves as Vice Chair of the Oregon Commission on Black Affairs.
