Zimmerman.

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.