|
|
What
About Black on Black Crime? |
Over the past year or so high-profile police killings have rocked New York City, and the world, and sparked a lot of outrage. Yes, when those who are sworn to "protect and serve" us end up blowing away our children heads, anger and outrage is the inevitable fall out. That is because one more attack on the Black community, already under a constant state of siege, one more atrocity naturally just adds fuel to an already burning fire. And so the cops, in the case the New York Police Department (NYPD) become the target of anger and outrage as the representation of a system that by its behavior continues to promulgate two standards of justice and fair-play in the City one white and right, the other Black and wrong.
There are some who believe that the Black community is in a constant state of low-level warfare, a kind of silent, protracted program of hostilities that is designed to keep "Blacks in their places." Thus, any time that a white cop fires his gun at a Black man the circumstances have to go out the door. Suspicion is immediate; conspiracy is absolute, and anger and hate axiomatic. So the war continues and the streets become the battlefields and the home of recycled hate. The drama is played out by both sides led by well-meaning reformers and decent people, sprinkled with some low down dirty ones. The sleaze who have other agendas and massage these real problems for personal gain.
But cop killings, like the Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond ones, are nasty things. They suggest police use of excessive force and willingness to bump off Black people. They imply a certain attitude of trigger-happiness when dealing with Black folks. They are wrong and should be condemned. And whoever tries to defend the unwarranted assassination of an unarmed Black man is a candidate for the nut house.
Still, there can be no order and respect for people or property in a society such as ours without the police. They have an admittedly tough job. And the vast majority of the cops Black, white, Hispanic or other are decent people. All they want to do is protect the community and maintain peace. Each day they risk their lives on the mean streets of New York where, contrary to the politically correct purists, more than one kind of low-level of warfare is being fought.
Cops have to deal with the constant violence of the crime and drug wars, usually fought in depressed neighborhoods where they come as peace officers, but are seen by both drug dealer and victim as the enemy. So that if a drug dealer mows down six people with his Tech-9 all Black hardly ever is there any hullabaloo or indignation from the community. In this scenario a Black drug dealer guns down six Black people and it's classified as a "drug-related crime."
But heavens help us all if in the line of duty a white cop fires at and kills this Black drug dealer. Out trot the labels. Police brutality. Senseless killing. Too quick to shoot. Opens season on Blacks, ad infinitum. Now this is not to defend cop killings, especially those that are unjustified, like Dorismond, Diallo, Bumpers, Watson and so on. When cops act in a way that is unlawful and when their unlawful actions cause the death of anyone drug dealer, Black, white, Chinese or other they should be made to face the full brunt of the law and made to pay for their actions.
Like any other Joe Blow. Here is where I get to talk about Black-on-Black crime, no correct that, Black-on-Black genocide. Blacks kill off each other many, many more times each year then the entire 40,000 members of the NYPD. No, I'm not doing PR for the NYPD, just stating the facts. For example, in 1999, 667 people were murdered in New York City. Guess what? Of that number 356 were Black. I'm no Albert Einstein but that meant that of more than half of all the murders that took place in New York City THE VICTIMS were Black. These are not people killed by white cops of the NYPD but by Blacks themselves.
Does indifference to this statistic mean that it's all right when Blacks kill Blacks, but not so when a white cop kills a Black person, right or wrong? Is there a difference between Black-on-Black murder and white cop-on-Black murder? Should we not be more outraged when a Black man kills a Black man or woman for a $5 bag of crack or a Black youth stabs another Black youth to death for a Nike $120 pair of sneakers? Or "dissing" his girlfriend?
Walk the streets of Brooklyn, Harlem or the Bronx and you hear Black youths planning to "f*** up that nigger," "I'm gonna git that nigger, ya'll" or "I hate that nigger bitch." This is real street hate lingo, and I always get a sick chill when I hear it, which is all the time. Do you wonder that Blacks kills Blacks with such frequency? Too often any disagreement must be settled with gunfire and with finite and final results. There are too many broken Black families that have lost loved ones to senseless gun violence that makes the life expectancy in some Black communities as low as a Third World dictatorship.
But the sad thing is that the Black community is becoming the very thing that it despises. There's now hate on both sides of the divide Blacks hate whites, and hate themselves, and other Blacks in the process. What has happened here is that because of the stultifying climate of racism, oppression and barely concealed prejudices Blacks run the serious risk of becoming like their oppressors and acting out their oppressors' behavior on their own people, in their own communities. Thus, since whites have historically disrespected Blacks they [Blacks] now feel that nothing is wrong with disrespecting other Blacks.
That is why there is now wide acceptance of the word "nigger" and the ease with which even some educated Blacks refer to Black women as "bitches." We are fast becoming like our historical oppressors. We cry foul when white Americans call us the "N word" but feel we're in the latest lingo fad when we call each other the same name. Black youths have accepted and embraced a word that is synonymous with race hate; prejudice and inferiority as no big deal to describe each other. We now perpetuate the same kind of double-standards that is used to divide us.
In essence they are saying that they are: cowardly, dishonest, sniveling, lying and lazy that what the term "nigger" means. Does anybody wonder why Blacks feel compelled to settle any problem with each other with deadly force?
Black-on-Black crime is a problem that Black leaders do not want to tackle. That's because it's very complex, difficult and risky business. I submit that its easy to become outraged, make the right noises and shed the usual crocodile tears when a white cop shoots and kills a Black person. But it is very difficult to work towards motivating Black ghetto youths, with a ghetto mentality, to love themselves enough to love others. That's a task and does not get to make the 6 o'clock TV news. They're no flash-bulbs here. Only hard work. But what other choice do we have?