t’s been some weeks now since the “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts and slickly produced matching signs were first revealed in Ferguson, MO. My immediate thought was: Then why don’t they take better care of them?
Why do the custodians of these black lives resist arrest even when surrounded by police officers? Surely, that’s an dangerous proposition.
If his life mattered, why would a black man attack and attempt to disarm a police officer? Surely, there are foreseeable risks. Did he not care if he lived or died?
But above all, why do black people kill off other black people at the rate of 16 a day, on average, in the USA? Don’t those black lives matter? I ask because I don’t see nation-wide protests every time a black is gunned down by a black in Chicago. Admittedly, that would be a lot of protests. But when was the last time there was a nation-wide protest over a black-on-black killing? There are about 6,000 such each year in the USA.
Could it be that black lives only matter when killed by non-blacks or by cops?
Take a look at the chart below from the “Economist”, September 2014 edition and bear in mind, that most of the homicides committed against black males are by other blacks, usually male (and not cops — of any color).
Apparently, black males have not gotten the word that Black Lives Matter. This would explain why black males treat others’ black lives so casually.
There is a cultural problem (not a “gun” problem) in America’s black inner cities. People are killed over a pair of sneakers, or for showing “disrespect”, for trying to peddle drugs on someone else’s turf, or for simply being in the wrong part of town. Most of the dead are black people killed by other blacks. Except for the occasional innocent caught in a crossfire, most victims are part of a gangsta culture that seemingly has no respect for human lives, black or any other color. Black-on-black murder is so common that most of it never even makes the local evening news, much less national news. As for nation-wide outpouring of anger over the death of a black man, well, that’s reserved for when one such is killed in the line of duty by a police officer.
Absent the roughly 6,000 homicides committed by and against black males, the U.S. murder rate per 100,000 population drops from 4.7 to 2.8. That’s despite being armed to the teeth, and compares favorably to many countries with strict gun prohibitions.
For the most part, Americans are a peaceable lot. But not black males. This will not be solved by “universal background checks”, “large capacity magazine” bans or sensitivity training for police. It’s a cultural problem. Instead of addressing the issue, blacks continue to pretend this is something being done to them instead of by them.