Posted on 08/21/2014 1:45:39 PM PDT by Kaslin
The shooting of Michael Brown and its turbulent aftermath have renewed an old question: Why does the black community raise a ruckus when a white person kills a black person, which is rare, but not when a black person kills a black person, which is far less rare?
It's a complaint perennially lodged by conservative commentators. Jason Riley, an African-American editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, criticized the Rev. Al Sharpton's appearance in Ferguson, Missouri. "The problem is not cops shooting blacks but blacks shooting each other," he asserted. Yet "so-called black leaders are much more interested in making excuses for this behavior than they are in denouncing it unequivocally."
"What about black-on-black violence?" demanded Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum, who is white. "Where is Al Sharpton on that? Where is the president on that?"
Funny you should ask. Sharpton made a publicized trip to Chicago in November to focus attention on the city's chronic violence. Last year, Michelle Obama attended the funeral of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old black honor student who was shot, allegedly by a black gang member.
The first lady later returned to Chicago to converse with students at a school that is nearly 100 percent African-American. "In choosing Harper High School for the visit, the White House noted that 29 current or former students there had been shot in the last year, eight of them fatally," reported the Chicago Tribune.
The president also traveled to Chicago, meeting with kids involved in a mentoring program for at-risk adolescent boys, bemoaning gun violence and telling a crowd on the South Side, "Our streets will only be as safe as our schools are strong and our families are sound."
Doesn't sound like they've been ignoring or excusing this sort of violence. Plenty of black leaders and organizations in Chicago and elsewhere spend a lot of time and energy trying to prevent crime in their communities. There are rallies, conferences, prayer vigils and gun turn-in days. Last year, thousands of volunteers manned "Safe Passage" routes to get children to school unharmed.
Have Riley and MacCallum and other critics publicized those events and programs? If not, why not? If so, why do they now act as though they don't exist?
Their charges have more than a whiff of condescension -- implying that most blacks are unable to discern the greatest ills afflicting them. But black leaders can walk and chew gum at the same time. They can work to curb violence by blacks against blacks and also work to prevent the killing of unarmed African-Americans by police and vigilantes. Both are deeply undesirable.
It's no secret that rates of violent crime are far higher among blacks than among whites. What is generally overlooked is that these rates have dropped sharply over the past two decades. The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice reports that violent crime by young blacks has plunged 60 percent.
In 1995, the FBI reports, 9,074 blacks were arrested for homicide. In 2012, the number was 4,203 -- a decline of 54 percent. But conservatives don't labor endlessly to publicize that trend.
Nor do they often mention what USA Today reports: "Nearly two times a week in the United States, a white police officer killed a black person during a seven-year period ending in 2012, according to the most recent accounts of justifiable homicide reported to the FBI."
There's another, bigger problem with the preoccupation with "black-on-black crime." The term suggests race is the only important factor. Most crimes are committed by males, but we don't refer to "male-on-male crime." Whites in the South are substantially more prone to homicide than those in New England, but no one laments "Southerner-on-Southerner crime." Why does crime involving people of African descent deserve its own special category?
The phrase stems from a desire to excuse whites from any role in changing the conditions that breed disorder and delinquency in poor black areas. It carries the message that blacks are to blame for the crime that afflicts them -- and that only they can eliminate it. Whites are spared any responsibility in the cause or the cure.
Excluding them from complicity is harder to do when the killer is white and the killed is black, as in the shooting in Ferguson. Raising "black-on-black crime" right now is not a sincere attempt to improve the lot of African-Americans. It's a way to change the subject and a way to blame them.
Black-on-black crimes is yesterday’s news. It’s time to talk about black-on-white crime.
Whitey’s fault!
Its not exclusively his fault but LBJ had a big hand in these slaughters with his “War on Poverty” that destroyed the black family infrastructure but got ,”them niggers voting democratic” and kept them on the plantation, this time not even chopping cotton, just lying there waiting for the next check from the Massa’.
black on black violence?
NObody gives a damn.
No political points to be gained there. No ginning up White Guilt with that.
There’s no money in it.
Once again, Al's not a "Rev.". He never attended divinity school, never had a church, never had a congregation, and has never been on the right side of a case from Tawana Brawley to the Duke Five. His entire career has been made by carrying a big pot stirrer and sticking his face on TV every time he can. He was "ordained" by a CD preacher at age 10 and has perpetuated the lie ever since. He's a fraud and the MSM needs to quit using a title he doesn't deserve.
Blah, blah, blah....
Get back to me when blacks riot and loot over a black killing another black, instead of a white cop justifiably shooting a dangerous criminal.
Get back to me when white people riot and burn down the suburbs when a black person kills a white person.
Unless and until the race bating bastids like Holder, Crump, Sharpton, Obama and the MSM step up and correctly identify their core problems, count me as not GAF.
Interesting idea. My guess is that if you compare these categories, you'll find black-on-black crime far outstrips those other measures. As to media attention, news is, by definition, what's different. A white killing a black is news, whereas a black killing a black isn't. For black leaders, that should be a problem that needs attention. I think the black leadership in this country needs to address cleaning up its own house before they start casting stones at some other house.
Black on black crime is white people’s fault, of course.
So, almost 104 white cops justifiably shoot a black man each year. And that's supposed to look bad compared to the number of black men murdered by other black people each year? Why not give us that number? My guess is it's at least a couple of thousand.
Oh, it doesn't? Stupid schmuck really doesn't understand that the phrase "schools are strong and families are sound" actually means "take money from rich white folk and hand it over, no matter what crappy choices black people make"???
About 3,300 future Americans went into the trash cans today; never to see the light of day.
How many unborn BLACK babies were murdered today by choosy ‘mothers’ and white serial killers?
Elsie, I’ve seen the number of black babies aborted in this country daily reported as 1452 on average. While blacks are about 12 percent of the U.S. population, black babies represent about a quarter to a third of the babies aborted in our nation daily.
Someone on here years ago basically said, We ask for shopping centers and the like in African-American neighborhoods but we get abortion clinics.
Quit 'asking' and start DEMANDING!!!
See how THAT works out!
In my European-American neighborhood...
I couldn’t care less about B on B crimes, thin the heard....
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