Another report from the Justice Department confirms once again that “we” are our own worst enemy. The report deals with the latest increases in crime and basically tells us what we already know...that black people kill black people and white people kill white people.
What is so disheartening about this report is that it claims that most black murder victims..93% in fact, are between the ages of 17 and 29 and male. Conversely, white victims tend to be older, only 37% are between the ages of 17 and 29.
Blacks make up 13% of this country’s population yet account for 49% of all murders and 15% of rapes, assaults and other non fatal violent crimes. The only people who die younger and faster than black youth are native americans.
The experts blame easy access to illegal drugs and guns and generations of young black men locked out of economic opportunity.
As I look at these statistics, I guess my own outlook has changed. Usually I am outraged at this senseless loss. My anger usually pores out on the page. But today is different. I’m, well, maybe I’m tired. Maybe I’m resigned. Maybe I’ve given up trying to reach anyone through my words. Outrage doesn’t work. Nobody listens...not the kids, not the parents, not the community, not the politicians, not the police.
I drive through my neighborhood, a once and future vibrant corner of city life and see the hopelessness on every street corner. Young men in white t-shirts and baggy jeans blatantly displaying their designer boxers shorts above their sagging waistbands disrespecting all who bother to glance their way. They’re out there at all hours, no matter what time I pass by. Girls, young women, standing in the shadows admiring the young men, visibly pregnant, with maybe a baby or two in tow. Anytime of the day, this drama unfolds itself for anyone watching.
While the young men pose on the corner, Avondale, one of the oldest of Cincinnati neighborhoods is being taken away from them. It is being revitalized by whites moving back into the neighborhoods in answer to the gasoline crisis. Real estate is cheap. Older black homeowners who bought from the Jews when Avondale was a Jewish ghetto, are dying out being replaced by younger white speculators with cash to burn and money to invest, spawning a new generation of absentee landlords. Avondale is going green and getting a new coat of paint. It is getting set to sparkle once again like when I was kid, some 50 years ago.
The young men and their absent families are being pushed out. I don’t know where the young men on the corner go when and if they go home. Their neighborhood, the very thing that could save them, is being taken. The sidewalks are being pulled out from under their feet as they claw for existence and survival. Home is the foundation for economic well being. They have none. Their families have none. Even if they have a home, they don’t have the skills to take part in the buildup. No one makes them go to school.
They propagate and perpetuate the cycle, making babies, and baby mommas, with no support or way to get a leg up in society, chewed up almost before they’re spit out.
Soon they will be gone from the corners in Avondale. Police crackdowns and enforcement cameras will push them away from the newly revitalized areas. Out of sight, out of mind. The cycle will resume again somewhere else, if they live.
And maybe that is the answer....dying rather than living...their only way out of a bleak and seemingly endless waking nightmare.
1 comment:
The only way to get them out of this cycle is to educate them and Cincinnati has a slave owner's mentality when it comes to the education of black people.
We refuse to fund the schools to the level it requires to really help. We refuse to address the social issues including racism that keep black folks under- and unemployed. And while we can never find money for new schools, we can always find funds for a new jail.
And unable to find jobs, decent housing and maintain families, we criminalize and deride those who turn to the last bastion of survival - the drug trade - which is fully sanctioned and supported by the same whites who claim to fear black men and put them on the evening news regardless of continuing white dysfunction.
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