I
know that a lot of you are not going to like what it is that I’m about to say,
but I’m going to say it anyway because I speak from my heart more often than
not. Whether you’re aware of this or not, you’ve taken part in creating George
Zimmerman the celebrity (unfortunately, once I hit post, I’m aiding in it as
well). As I’m writing this, I’m almost certain that a young black man in America has had his
life brutally taken away from him at the hands of another young black man.
However, that story rarely makes the nightly news, because-sadly-we seem to be
numb to the violence which occurs daily throughout our community, and is committed by people who look like you and I.
Are
any of you paying attention to what’s transpiring on the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles, or NYC,
among many others? We’re slaughtering one another in record numbers everyday,
but that goes unsaid. It appears that it only becomes newsworthy, on a national
scale, when a white man kills one of us, and that’s very disconcerting to me.
The
media has a field day with such stories, which assist in strengthening the
ethnic divide, and many of us continue to consume such garbage as if it holds
some sort of twisted nutritional property that’ll help us live longer, more
productive lives. Yes, racism is still alive and well in America and
throughout the rest of the world for that matter; the violence which occurs as
a result of this insidious institution is detrimental to us all. However, we
appear to be more outraged when a white sociopath like Zimmerman kills one of
our children, and less so when the culprit is one of our own.
About
a year ago, a little dude that I used to kick it with sometimes on Fulton and Washington (in Brooklyn) was
murdered; his lifeless body was found dumped on a sidewalk in Canarsie. I don’t
know what shorty did to meet such a heinous ending, but what I do know is that
he was a member of a gang; a gang whose enemies looked a lot like him. And so,
he was likely killed by another black man, yet there were no marches in the
streets. Neither Al Sharpton nor Jesse Jackson made it to his wake.
The
hood was there though. I remember watching as his friends cried in the upper
pews of the church where the wake was being held, and beneath their tears were
faces filled with anger, hell-bent on getting some get back. These little
soldiers were ready to go to war against their brothers. A few dudes probably
got killed over that, but we’ll never know because intra-racial violence rarely
makes the news. It’s just not sensational enough.
The
press wasn’t there to record the echoes of remorse that permeated the building.
So-called black leaders were conveniently absent (they were probably too busy
pontificating on some cable news program, about what Zimmerman’s fate should
be). But the hood was there, and yet the hood did nothing to prevent shorty’s
murder from happening either.
The
hood will show up for you in death but where is the community when we need it
to foster the lives of our young men and women? It’s not the police, or this
racist system, or the George Zimmerman’s of the world who are killing us, it is
us, whether we’re the ones who are shooting the guns or simply remaining idle
while our children use them on one another.
