Fast forward to present day and the inner cities are still plagued with the same violence, but now it’s been relabeled and repackaged as “Black on Black Crime”. Now instead of the responsibility of its resolution being the job of law enforcement, the African American community has been left with the hot potato. Many will say that because we are doing the dirt we should be the ones to clean it, but we aren’t talking about spilled milk, we are talking about organized crime. When the mafia painted the city of Chicago red no one told the Italian or Irish American community they are responsible with resolving it. No one told them they need to police their own communities. Legally and socially it’s a very bad idea to allow communities to take the law and its enforcement into their own hands because people take things personal, even more so if you live right up the street from the last shooting.
Things will get out of hand very quickly as personal vendettas and family feuds would turn the communities into a modern day Tombstone. And even though some of us believe the inner cities has already turned to Tombstone, statistically that’s inaccurate. Tombstone still holds the trophy of being one of the most violent cities in U.S. history. So when you combine the problems of a self-policed community with gang violence you will most certainly have genocide on a much larger scale than even Rwanda. Don’t believe me, see the case between self-proclaimed neighborhood watchmen Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. There are millions of Zimmermans out there just waiting to “police” their own communities.
So why would they suggest the black community do it? Because they know we are not licensed, trained or equipped to do so and as long as we are held responsible, law enforcement can sit back and watch the fireworks and not be held responsible for things getting worse. It also gives them an excuse to gun down unarmed black people like rabid dogs in the streets because once we allowed gang violence to be associated with our skin color, it made every African American a potential violent “thug”. And who isn’t afraid of a thug? Crime has labels such as domestic violence, gang violence, crimes of passion, serial crimes, gun violence, drug crimes, sex crimes, corporate crimes, etc. Only violent crime in the inner cities have been labeled a crime directly associated with a group of people, black people; and regardless of social and financial status this country now sees us all as threats.
But there is no such thing as black on black crime because if there is such a thing then that would mean people of African descent are inherently violent and our skin color is the trigger. Just think about that for a second…your melanin content determines your threshold for violent behavior. Yeah...doesn’t make any sense spiritually or scientifically. Crime is a result of circumstance, not heritage and it’s time for African Americans to change the narrative and hold law enforcement responsible for solving gang violence and stop treating it like a hereditary diseasethat can only be solved with a bullet and an excuse
Navi Robbins.