*Blacks Lives Matter.
While we march and scream to the world that we are sick and tired of White abuse and insult, we have to look internally. Do Black Lives Matter to Blacks, too?
Police killings need to be challenged and protested for sure, without a doubt. The marches need to continue as we examine and open up the cases of young Black males particularly who have been wrongfully killed by the police for what seem to be minor situations like being in the wrong place at the wrong time, with misdemeanor arrests, or for just looking suspicious, meaning the “Black man in the neighborhood.”
We have witnessed in the recent past the white police knee on the Black man’s neck; we have witnessed the Black woman killed in her bed; we have witnessed the white woman in Central Park clash with the Black male bird watcher; we have seen the Black man in Atlanta killed while jogging.
But what do we accuse the Black children killed in Chicago with? What were they doing wrong? Sitting in a car? Sitting on the couch in the house watching TV? WE NEED TO ADD THE NAMES OF THE CHILDREN TO THE KILLING ROSTER.
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Sincere Gatson was one-year-old sitting in the car with his mother as they came from the laundromat. Lina Nunez was sitting in the widow of her home. Mekhi James was 3 years old riding the car with his father. We Black folk have to turn within. We have to look at ourselves and ask what is making our young people kill each other. Black on Black killing matters, too.
Chicago’s violence is out of control and it doesn’t matter who the police chief is. We have selected superintendents from New York, Los Angles and now Dallas.
It doesn’t matter because at best they can tone it down, but they can’t stop it. They can’t stop it and the mayor can’t stop it because it is not theirs to stop. It is ours to stop.
People are shooting and killing babies. How does a three-year-old child get killed? How does a 20-month-old baby get killed riding in the car? Where is the outrage for these crimes, where Blacks were the shooters and the killers? Where is the outrage on Black Lives Matter? Where is the march, or do we excuse it.
Looking internally does not mean to make the overall familiar excuses of poverty, unemployment, uneducated, and the other sociological excuses that we bring to bear. That’s true, but that’s also bullshit.
Face The Facts…
We need to look this beast in the face for what it is. Is it gang warfare? Is it retaliation? Is it gang initiation? Are these babies being killed accidentally or intentionally? There is even honor among thieves, a saying goes. Whatever it is, it needs to stop and the Black Lives Matter people need to march about it. It is killing us from within.
One theory is that the gangs are out of control because there are no controls anymore. The gangs of yesterday had a hierarchy and ran much like an army with marching orders.
Today’s gangs, so they say, don’t run like that anymore. Today’s gangs have no honor, kill-to-kill, shoot-to-shoot, babies and little old ladies included. So, they shoot their very own.
Where are the Black men? Black men of yesteryear stopped it. People in the neighborhoods reported it. I am at the head of the class to suggest white philanthropic money needs to be allocated to Black men, not white organizations with a program or a study? How about give Black men money with a plan, that are usually found in the church.
I have written on this page before that perhaps the National Guard needs to come in and guard these neighborhoods, where these types of murders take place.
Usually, this plays to great criticism of what it would mean to have army people walking our streets. But the policemen are not handing this crime and something needs to be done. We are out of control.
Again, if I had my way, in high school and maybe at the community college level, a mandatory course in parenting would be taught. The gang people and ex-felons need to be sent to school to be trained for something. The average cost for a prison inmate in Illinois is $47,622, near the same for college tuition.
We cannot continue to see this crime in Black neighborhoods and streets, conducted by Black people, and act like the cause is some sociological phenomena. Poverty does not make you kill.
Whites are contributing money now in enormous amounts. I hope some of this money goes to the grassroots level, where this random crime can be weeded out and cured.
Black men have to stand up for Black boys and teach and mentor and protect them. Black on Black crime is greater than police crime.
The police crime becomes more noticed because of its cruelty too often on minutia, but Blacks killing babies is outrageous. The three-year-old and the 20-month-old baby have done absolutely nothing riding in the car with your dad, sitting in the window at home, riding in the car with your mother, and sitting on the couch as a child should not get you killed.
Black Babies Matter, TOO
Hermene Hartman is one of the most significant and influential Black women in American publishing. She serves as President and CEO of the Chicago-based Hartman Publishing Group, Inc. Her weekly column, Publisher’s Page found at Ndigo.com, provides social commentary on hot topics of the day.
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