Alex Yarde wants to look beyond the next news cycle on the epidemic of unarmed killings of black males.
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I wasn’t going to write this piece. I thought I had said all I had to say about the indiscriminate murder of black boys and men with “America Eats Her Young”. But in light of the alarming frequency of recent police killings I couldn’t leave this issue unaddressed. I have too much of a personal stake. On Wednesday, police in Beavercreek, Ohio, shot 22-year-old John Crawford dead inside a Wal-Mart after a shopper called 911 to report someone inside with a gun. Now, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine says the gun Crawford was carrying was a toy BB gun that they sell in the store he was a customer in. Shopping While Black has become the new Driving or Walking While Black? Conversely, in a time when white males carry out mass shootings overwhelmingly, white males can still walk in public armed with assault-style weapons with little or no consequence. They site that “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. But what happens to a community when the “good guys with guns” who are entrusted to protect and serve, are the ones you must fear?
Groups of white suburban or rural gun enthusiasts in jeans and t shirts routinely stand around heavily armed (AR-15’s are THE must have accessory this season apparently) in parking lots of national chains like Starbucks, Home Depot or Chipotle to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms and garner national attention to their “2nd Amendment” cause. Hurting small franchise operators aside (because no parent in their right mind would choose to enter a store with their kids where a large group of privileged, armed cry babies are having a tantrum) it’s protesting for a right they obviously already posses as they prance around all day consequence free, with loaded rifles. It’s a uniquely American indulgence that no other G-20 nation puts up with. With the only caveat being you have to be Caucasian to do it.
Yet Trayvon Martin can’t walk through his own neighborhood unarmed without being shot to death by an unhinged adult stalker who is exonerated. In these Texas “open carry” demonstrations, there was never a confrontation with the police. No one called the police. Even in spite of a statement from Chipotle citing the unease of their restaurant patrons at the sight of armed men in the establishment. What would happen if a group of Black or (heaven help them) Arab or Muslim appearing men exercised the same right as that of these white men? Can you imagine the public response? How do you think police would respond to that? Well, we already know don’t we? Again, sadly it’s nothing new. Can’t black men be “Good Guys with Guns”?
Bundy ranch “patriots” gave consequence free interviews to the press, full names and addresses then went right back to sniper positions with ATF Agents in their sights on the evening news. Can you recall a stand off between a group of People of Color with Law Enforcement that didn’t end in a fatality, arrest or even a parking ticket in this country?
Michael Ward, was one of just two people — and the only child — to survive the Move bombing, the 1985 Philadelphia debacle in which police officers seeking to rout a black separatist group touched off a fire that killed 11 people, 5 of them children, and destroyed three city blocks. Those families died for far less than the Bundy Ranch “patriots”. Ironically, the modern-day gun-rights debate was born from the civil rights era and inspired by the Black Panthers. Equally surprising is that the National Rifle Association — now an aggressive lobbying arm for gun manufacturers — actually once supported, and helped write, federal gun-control laws. This only happened when blacks started arming themselves of course.
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Guns are more popular than ever. They are recession proof and in times of unrest sales skyrocket. When there is a national tragedy like the shooting of babies in Newton CT, the gunman’s weapon of choice flew off shelves. No other countries citizens are as in love with guns as we are. Americans as 6% of the world’s population own 1/3 of the ENTIRE inventory of guns on the planet. Think about that for a minute. Proportionately every single American man woman and child could own the firepower of most local police departments. Yet somehow incredibly gun fondlers feel a threat to their freedoms. The deaths caused by mass shootings in this country in 2012 alone dwarf the Muslim extremists terror attacks on 911. We remove our shoes at the airports because of a single failed attempt at a shoe bombing but fail to have even the most watered-down legislation on Reagan era gun reform—what explains that?
Just as Latinos face extra scrutiny by self appointed minutemen in the southwestern United States, young black men are harassed by police. Humiliating searches without due cause in New York City’s unconstitutional “Stop and Frisk” policy was nothing new to the NYPD. Thirty years ago I was the only one in my group turning out my pockets on demand. Recently Eric Garner, 43, fell to the ground after an officer put him in a chokehold. The New York City medical examiner ruled that Mr. Garner died from the chokehold and the compression of his chest. Chokeholds have been banned since I was a boy. Only last year Trayvon Martin was found guilty of his own murder being a black man wearing a hoodie—of course the unbalanced vigilante had every right to take a boys life. Wearing hoodies are something white kids do everyday and make it home safely.
In urban areas like the Bronx, New York (when I was growing up) or Chicago’s South Side gun violence is rampant. Those shootings are typically gang related with handguns. Sadly, it’s a legacy of drugs and crime that still plague many low-income manly minority communities. The answer to stopping gun violence isn’t more guns. Thanks to the I-95 the “Iron Corridor” there is no shortage of cheap southern guns sold up north. The answer isn’t “good guys with guns” clearly. Education and greater economic opportunities, supporting family planning and early intervention programs that cost a fraction to taxpayers as incarceration are common sense abattoirs. This American fetish with guns isn’t nearly as pervasive with the victims of police brutality and gun violence as that in communities that are predominantly white, relatively wealthy and low crime where police aren’t an occupying force but members of the community.
Today you have a schism in society. At the risk of painting with too broad a stroke, where people of color living in low income urban areas that suffer from gun violence and police brutality on a regular basis don’t think more guns are an answer and whites that live in more rural or suburban affluent areas with the least to fear from being shot (by strangers) think guns are a panacea. Right now we have protesters, looting, the hacker group Anonymous promising disruption of police servers if legislation isn’t passed in the wake of yet another unarmed 17 year old black teenager Mike Brown being gunned down a week before he was to begin college in Ferguson, MO. How did we get here? Because of the shameful stain of bigotry and racism that still taint all levels of American society? Is it the NRA’s powerful lobbying and campaign of intimidation against any candidate for office that advocates common sense legislation? The lack of community policing or police forces that live within the communities they serve? Whatever the reason, I feel we are reaching a tipping point. The status quo is clearly unsustainable. One solution that police wear cameras may improve behavior but there is no shortage of cameras today. Empathy, courage & compassion are needed—not more cameras.
One example is Miami-Dade Police Officer Vicki Thomas, 55, was dispatched to look into a shoplifting. And instead she purchased $100 worth of groceries & a ride home instead of a ride to the stationhouse. Officer Thomas asked Ms. Robles her why she had taken the food, she responded, “My children were hungry.” She said, “I thought about my Grandchildren, I knew then I was going to buy her groceries.” Though she technically arrested Ms. Robles the woman had no priors for shoplifting and since the amount of goods she tried to steal amounted to just under $300, the cut-off for a misdemeanor, it was up to Thomas’ discretion whether to arrest her or give her the misdemeanor and get a promise to appear in court. She chose the latter. I believe the community policing demonstrated there is an antidote to the toxicity and fear. Having compassion, respect and seeing people as people. That’s what’s needed. More “Good guys”—not more guns.
At http://www.jpfo.org is a booklet called “Gun Control Is Racist”, showing how gun laws through history were designed to keep minorities unarmed and helpless.
And yet, judging by your “gun fondlers” rhetoric, it sounds like you don’t want anyone to feel safe walking around and packing heat. So, in your ideal world, what…cops also shoot the peaceful white guys? Great solution! Or maybe you’re straining this comparison to the breaking point. Police violence against citizens, particularly against black make citizens, is tremendous problem. So given that all laws will be enforced more harshly against black men, implicit campaigning for stricter gun control seems weird. It seems that the rational response is to reduce the things for which a copper can hassle someone. I hate… Read more »
Lets get rid of all those suburban white dude’s AR15s! Those privileged jerks need to be taken down a peg! You know how many young black men this would save? Probably ZERO. According to the FBI- Handguns are used in over 70% of homicides. Rifles account for approx 4%. Assault rifles account for a fraction of that 4%. Young black men are incredibly unlikely to be shot by assault rifle owners. Yet all you guys ever talk about are white suburban men who own AR15s…. It doesnt sound like anyone here wants to save any lives. it sounds like they… Read more »
You are missing the point. Here are the two points being made: 1. That open carry works in White middle class communities. A different dynamic works in poor urban communities. 2. The author’s other point is more of a question: how does one deal with the fact that the police are one of the largest factors negatively affecting your safety, especially in poor Black communities? One cannot just shoot at police the way you can another citizen. How does one handle the fact that the people who are suppose to protect you are the ones hurting you. No one here… Read more »
So you miss the clear disdain from the author about white, middle class men who own guns? People who have NOTHING to do with what happened in St Louis are denigrated and attacked.
It would be like someone attacking “hip hop culture” as a cause of the mortgage crisis. (Just as nonsensical).
The only “gun control” needed is to restrict cops and Federal Agents to six shot revolvers and five round pump shotguns. No full-auto military weapons or body armor.
“One cannot just shoot at police the way you can another citizen.” I take it you don’t know any police officers that work in Chicago … much less fireman?
You know, since no sane black man (or woman) would attempt to replicate the Open-Carry protests, due to the certainty of being murdered, I wonder if it would be effective to get some black store mannequins, some plastic assault rifles, some servo-motors and Arduinos, and a buttload of cameras then set them all up in public and watch the consequences. I suspect it will be “illuminating” to say the least. $20 says the cops open fire on the mannequins, possible before even speaking to them.
Black men are 10 times as likely to be murdered by other black men than they are by white men. When you narrow this down to white middle class 2nd amendment enthusiasts you’re dealing with tiny fractions of a percent. Check out the FBI’s homicide data tables. Secondly, these young men were shot by the police, not by 2nd amendment enthusiasts (who are similarly suspicious of law enforcement.) What do you really care about here? If you want to save young black men from police violence deal with the police. If you want to save young black men from violence… Read more »
“I am a middle class white person. I own firearms. By your “logic” I am more responsible for violence against young black men than the people actually committing the violence even though I have never shot anyone or committed a crime.” That makes at least two of us.
The Deacons For Defense And Justice were a militia group formed to protect blacks from violence because the cops wouldn’t help or were part of the problem. These were not vigilantes or gangbangers, just ordinary citizens. A jury in Texas recently acquitted a homeowner who shot and killed a SWAT cop during a 6am “no knock” raid. Cops need to be reminded that there are limits to what people will put up with, and they are not invincible.
Wes, your example in Texas, you hit the nail on the head!
Chicago has strict gun laws ….
….. 40 in July
Well said. I especially love the part about improving peoples’ well-being as an answer to gun violence (or violence in general, for that matter). Look at the places where violent crime is the lowest, and you’ll routinely find places that are, relatively speaking, economically stable, and generally go out of their way to see that their citizens are taken care of. Of course, these places also tend to have rather strict gun laws as well, but it may be more important that the people don’t live in 3rd world conditions.