About

Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

Monthly Archives

Join Og's Mailing List

OgBlog.net

ANOTHER CANDIDATE FOR THE “STAND LIKE A MAN” AWARD…..

DEWAYNE WICKHAM writes editorials for USA Today, and he’s mad…..two young men were killed in Baltimore recently, and

Bell’s death drew the scorn of civil rights leaders and black activists, many of whom took part in the march. West’s killing has generated no such attention.

And that makes me made as hell.

Why?

As troubling as it is that Bell’s life might have been cut short by the unlawful actions of some rogue cops, it bothers me more that most of this nation’s black murder victims are killed by other blacks. And despite this chilling fact, nowhere have tens of thousands of people taken to the streets recently to protest this carnage. Not in New York, or Baltimore, or Atlanta, or Detroit, or Chicago. Nowhere.

Of the country’s 14,860 homicide victims in 2005, 7,125 were black, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. And of the 3,289 cases that year in which a single black was killed by a single assailant, the FBI says, 91% of the killers were black.

Let me put this another way: The number of blacks killed in 2005 in this one homicide category alone approaches the total of all the blacks lynched in this country from 1882 to 1968, according to records maintained by Tuskegee University.

So why aren’t black leaders taking up this fight? Why do so many turn out to decry the death of one black man at the hands of some cops, but no mass rallies take on the deaths of thousands of blacks who are slaughtered by other blacks?

“I think it’s because we know it’s our fault, and we’re constantly looking for someone else to blame,” says Baltimore City Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm, who, like me, grew up in Cherry Hill, a poor black neighborhood on the city’s south side.

Hamm says most black leaders are afraid to address this issue, afraid to confront the apathy, fear and indifference that allow many poor black neighborhoods to become killing fields.

He could be right.

Mr. Wickham has surely seen what happened to Bill Cosby, to Juan Williams, to Shelby Steele, to Ward Connerly, and to others who have “stepped off the reservation”, but he’s seen something that needs fixing, he’s got a recommendation, and he’s willing to say it out loud:

...whatever the reason, it’s time for black leaders — activists, preachers, educators, politicians, business and community leaders — to say enough is enough.

It’s time for them to be as aggressive, and as demanding, in combating the black murder rate as they are in fighting for an increase in minimum wage or an expansion in health care.

The ripple effects of black-on-black killings have turned many inner city neighborhoods into urban wastelands, chased businesses from those communities, fueled a growth in other crimes and sapped the resources of local governments.

As mad as black folks have a right to be over the killing of Sean Bell, we ought to be angry over the failure of black leaders to be equally outraged over the murder of Kevin West — and the thousands of blacks who are killed each year by other blacks.

Our country will be a better place when it doesn’t require a rare kind of courage to state something so obvious in public.

In the meantime, God bless DeWayne Wickham. READ HIS WHOLE OP-ED

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/02 at 12:21 PM

Comments and reactions