The black on black crime wave
Whitlock is a courageous black columnist who also wrote a powerful column about the Jena six. He is one of the few people in the black community to speak out about the black on black crime problem and those responsible for it. Your "down with the struggle" civil rights leaders are more likely to talk about what a shame it is that so many black men are in prison rather than why they are there. Wallowing in victimhood is not going to solve this problem. Colbert King at the Washington Post and Bill Cosby are also speaking out on this problem, Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have been trying to stir up a lynching of white lacrosse players at Duke. Until these young black men start listening to intelligent men like the three named instead of profane rappers there will continue to be more funerals.EDITOR'S NOTE: This column originally appeared Wednesday, two days before Friday's arrests of four men in the shooting death of Sean Taylor.There's a reason I call them the Black KKK. The pain, the fear and the destruction are all the same.Someone who loved Sean Taylor is crying right now. The life they knew has been destroyed, an 18-month-old baby lost her father, and, if you're a black man living in America, you've been reminded once again that your life is in constant jeopardy of violent death.
The Black KKK claimed another victim, a high-profile professional football player with a checkered past this time.
No, we don't know for certain the circumstances surrounding Taylor's death. I could very well be proven wrong for engaging in this sort of aggressive speculation. But it's no different than if you saw a fat man fall to the ground clutching his chest. You'd assume a heart attack, and you'd know, no matter the cause, the man needed to lose weight.
Well, when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there's every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger. That's not some negative, unfair stereotype. It's a reality we've been living with, tolerating and rationalizing for far too long.
When the traditional, white KKK lynched, terrorized and intimidated black folks at a slower rate than its modern-day dark-skinned replacement, at least we had the good sense to be outraged and in no mood to contemplate rationalizations or be fooled by distractions.
Our new millennium strategy is to pray the Black KKK goes away or ignores us. How's that working?
About as well as the attempt to shift attention away from this uniquely African-American crisis by focusing on an "injustice" the white media allegedly perpetrated against Sean Taylor.
Within hours of his death, there was a story circulating that members of the black press were complaining that news outlets were disrespecting Taylor's victimhood by reporting on his troubled past
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Let's cut through the bull(manure) and deal with reality. Black men are targets of black men. Period. Go check the coroner's office and talk with a police detective. These bullets aren't checking W-2s.
Rather than whine about white folks' insensitivity or reserve a special place of sorrow for rich athletes, we'd be better served mustering the kind of outrage and courage it took in the 1950s and 1960s to stop the white KKK from hanging black men from trees.
But we don't want to deal with ourselves. We take great joy in prescribing medicine to cure the hate in other people's hearts. Meanwhile, our self-hatred, on full display for the world to see, remains untreated, undiagnosed and unrepentant.
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The Black KKK is enforcing the same crippling standards as its parent organization. It wants to keep black men in their place — uneducated, outside the mainstream and six feet deep.
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BTW, the AP story on the four arrested for the murder does not mention race, but you can guess. The photos reveal the truth.
Hat tip to Larwyn.
Dear Sir,
ReplyDeleteAs a young black male, i feel somewhat qualified to respond to your post. I hope to give you a bit of background about myself in hopes that it may shed light on my views, as your background sheds light on yours. I was raised in a predominately white, upper class community, but never lost my connection with the black communities of the suburbs, urban areas, and blighted inner city. I will submit, that generally, we all make choices, and those are of our own free will. However, the SET of choices one is given firmly influences the sum total of their actions. It is a fact that black men hunt each other down, kill each other, fire bullets into each other after they are dead. Socially, it is also a fact that black men, in higher numbers, do not support each others' ideas, and we infight, and bicker, and run to outside sources for our salvation. However, i feel one must take a sensitive look at the historical and everyday factors that contribute to our myriad conditions in this great experiment called America.