Whenever there are protests and riots sparked from police kill unarmed black men, women and children, different recurrent discourses come up. One rebuttal against the movement for black lives is “black on black crime.”
The logic goes something along the lines of “black people protest and riot when a police officer kills a black person, but don’t protest or riot when they kill their own.” Folks who offer this retort bring up how black people (though essentially, black men) commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime. This call even frequently comes from prominent folks within the black community.
There have been plenty of articles written that critique this idea as a form of anti-black racism. It is a fact that there are black people who commit intracommunity violence. But people tend to commit crime in proximity to where they live, regardless of race. Perpetrators of crime commit most of the crime between those of the same race. This is aside from the historical, institutional, cultural, social psychology factors that cause anyone to commit crime are well-studied (urbanization, unemployment and the clustering of poverty, lack of adequate healthcare and educational opportunities; specifically for black people, remnants of slavery and Jim Crow, residential segregation and mass incarceration). And in most black communities, the politicians, clergy, organizers, activists, etc. invested in reducing violent are black. The reality is black people in black communities are often the only people who care about black intra-communal violence beyond pulling the “black on black crime” card.
“Black on black crime” has long be a cudgel against African Americans—a rationale defunding public resources, increasing funding in police departments, and justification for why the black body is an adequate pretext for why officers “fearing for their lives” can shoot black people. Rightwing sites like Breitbart actually have a tag committed to “black on black crime” (full disclosure: I haven’t checked to see if it is still up because I don’t want to give Breitbart any traffic). But aside from its racist effect, it doesn’t make logical sense to bring up “black on black crime,” especially in the context of protests against police brutality.
Bringing up “black on black” crime or “but we kill our own!” in the context of police brutality not only conflates two separate issues (violence between citizens and violence from the state), but collectivizes the black community into an undifferentiated mass of criminals and hypocrites—protesting by day and committing violent crime by night. Yet it would be safe to surmise that the folks outside yelling “Black Lives Matter!” aren’t the ones committing the violent crime in their community.
The implication of the “what about black on black violence?” rhetoric places stalwart personal responsibility of solving longstanding systemic issues social problems at the feet of communities inflicted by it. It asks everyday citizens to do things that should be addressed with policy. It assumes that the solution is to having a majority of black people police their communities instead putting officers in jail when they commit murder.
When black criminals commit crime, who does the community call? The police. If police commit brutality against black people with impunity, who can they call? The police? Even if you believed in a kind of bootstrapping racial meritocracy, how can black people effectively diminish crime in their communities if they have no trust in those who are supposed to protect and serve?
In his book “Chokehold: Policing Black Men,” lawyer and professor Paul Butler talked about how the black experience is like being in a chokehold. He wrote “A chokehold justifies additional pressure on the body because the body does not come into compliance, but the body cannot come into compliance because of the vise grip on it.” It’s a perpetual cycle of white fear and black oppression — a minority within the black community commit violent crime, which justifies the militarized over-policing of the whole, which adds to factors that perpetuate both the causes and effects.
Black people’s rationale frustration towards state violence is understood as erratic and thuggish. There has never been a time in American history where black people where the masses of black people haven’t clearly and articulated what exactly they need. And yet too often, what they are handed is more police.
Think about why numerous instances of high profile police killings of unarmed black men, women and children (whether they sleeping, jogging, driving, walking, committing a crime or minding their business as a law-abiding citizen) is defended with “these are just bad apples!” but the black victims are met with “what were they doing?”, “the officer was scared!” and an array of other caveats. If we buy the logic behind “black on black crime,” why doesn’t the term “male on male crime” exist?
Think about why so many Americans are quick to say “don’t make generalizations” when it comes to police, but become social Darwinists and racial realists whenever they are talking about black people. Think of the solutions offered to stop police brutality versus ending violence in poor black communities. Many of us think “love your neighbor as yourself” means love is a function of proximity, not universal companionship.
People often have an emotive defense when racism or anti-blackness comes up. It’s hard for most to identify and understand the distinction between systemic or cultural racism and interpersonal prejudice. Historical attitudes that devalue and criminalize blackness are more central and held by more people than outright racist bigotry. But even if you don’t agree with the personal versus systemic distinction, you won’t find a context where the “what about black on black violence” argument is logical.
It isn’t.
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Previously Published on Medium
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