The Myth of Black-on-Black Crime: Remembering Michael Brown

I stopped acknowledging the term “Black-on-Black” crime two years ago when Michael Brown (an unarmed Black teen) was shot six times and killed by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, MO. There were those who were against Officer Wilson being indicted and used the term as an excuse for the injustice that led to the 18-year-old’s death. Among such critics were former New York Mayor, Rudy Giuliani. He took the low road that many covert racists do, by stating that Blacks should be focusing on Black-on-Black crime instead of the murders of young Black men, committed by law enforcement. In his attempt to divert the public’s attention from the victim, Giuliani essentially put his foot in his mouth when it came down to the facts.

The truth is, homicides usually involve people who know each other. “Between 1980 and 2008, 78.1 percent of homicides were committed by people who knew the victim, as a family member, friend, or other acquaintance. Because people's social networks (and, obviously, families) tend to reflect their ethnicity, this should not be a surprise.”[1] According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ November 2011 Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008 Annual Rates for 2009 and 2010 report, 93 percent of Black homicide victims are killed by other Black people, while 84 percent of White homicide victims are killed by other Whites.[2] That’s a 9 percent differential! If the Black community is being challenged to protest Black-on-Black crime, I’d like to see Whites protesting White-on-White crime, seeing as there’s just as much of it that’s being committed.

The indifference of Americans towards the disproportionate amount of Black men killed by police officers is nothing short of disgusting. They wonder why we scream, protest and call for reform, because in their eyes, Black people are shot down in the hood every day. Witnessing the breath leave a man’s body as he’s covered in blood is normal to us, right? “Just another day in the life of a nigger,” is what they really want and should say, instead of hiding behind groundless intellectual debates in defense of police officers who can’t control the trigger. To the inconspicuous and blatant racist: we are up in arms because the ugly history of these “United” States of America is perpetuated every time a Black man is senselessly murdered at the hands of a White police officer. This is about citizens, namely Blacks, not being murdered by the institution established to protect our society. You know, the ones who take the oath to protect and serve.

Michael Brown would’ve turned 20 years old on May 20, 2016. Perhaps he would have already completed his classes at Vatterott College to become a heating and cooling engineer. He could have been working as a service technician, as he had hoped for, maybe in his own neighborhood or even in the commercial environment, until opening his own business, as he dreamed of doing one day. I can imagine Michael celebrating and hanging out with his best friend, Dorian Johnson, like they had on that fateful day-August 9, 2014-when Michael was gunned down by Officer Darren Wilson on Canfield Drive. We’re only left to imagine what was to become of this young man who was murdered on the Saturday before the Monday he was going to start college.

The fact of the matter is that White officers are 21 times as likely to kill Black men as opposed to White men.[3] The assertion that Black-on-Black crime somehow negates this truth is to completely devalue and strip Black people of their humanity. Social justice commentator, Rasheena Fountain said it best in the Huffington Post: “It seems that the term diminishes lives being lost because it focuses more on the race of the person doing the crime than on the human being affected by it.”[4] So no matter which way the parochial-minded try to spin it, Black-on-Black crime rings invalid as an argument for the apparent open season on young Black men.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/11/24/what-rudy-giuliani-gets-wrong-about-the-deaths-of-young-black-men/

[2] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

[3] https://www.propublica.org/article/deadly-force-in-black-and-white

[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rasheena-fountain/black-on-black-crime-the-_b_8228738.html

#injustice #racism #homicide #myth #policebrutality #michaelbrown #ferguson