And I’m from the murder capital where they murder for capital
Heard about at least three killings this afternoon
Looking at the news like “damn! I was just with him after school”
No shop class but half the school got a tool
And a “I could die any day”-type attitude
Plus his little brother got shot repping his avenue
It’s time for us to stop and redefine black power
41 souls murdered in fifty hours

Is it genocide?
Cause I can still hear his mama cry
Know the family traumatized
Shots left holes in his face about piranha-sized
The old pastor closed the cold casket
And said the church ain’t got enough room for all the tombs
It’s a war going on outside we ain’t safe from
I feel the pain in my city wherever I go
314 soldiers died in Iraq, 509 died in Chicago

The actual word Chiraq came about shortly after this and the rise of drill music.  Think Chief Keef.  The frenetic bass line coupled with a relatively high bpm became the track to which the ultimately nihilistic lyrics of the gritty and grimy life existing in a city that’s marching ever onward and indicative of an African American culture that is still deciding whether it wants to be modern or postmodern.  For some old heads, drill music is what gangsta rap was coming out of the late 80s and early 90s; a stark lyrical translation of life as they saw it and as they lived it.  It was from this musical genre that Chiraq became synonymous with Chicago.

Drill music, if at all possible, capitalizes on the existential dregs that gangsta rap left behind in Compton when it began to ask are we there yet.  While many middle class blacks lift up NWA’s “Fuck Tha Police” as emblematic of a counter-culture’s revolutionary power and mindset, we do so in a historical vacuum.  Let’s not forget that that was one track out of the dozens of other songs that were a reflection of the abject nihilism of what it meant to live in those neighborhoods and those cities.  Not much has changed for the musicians that created drill music such as Lil Durk, Lil Reese, Fredo Santana and King Louie.

This is the backdrop to which Spike Lee filmed the movie entitled “Chi-raq.”

Cinematically, the movie was everything that we’ve come to expect from Lee in his major production films, especially those in which he is attempting to satirize and therefore critique some facet of African American culture.  Lee diverged from this line with movies like “Summer of Sam” and more recently “Miracle at St. Anna” and “Inside Man,” but still the vast majority of his directorial credits would align with the production of “Chi-raq.”

What cannot be overemphasized is that this movie was an adaptation from Aristophenes’ “Lysistrata.”  The play was written in 411 BCE and the titular character, Lysistrata, rallied women to withhold having sex with their male counterparts in order to end the Peloponnesian war.   The play was a complete satire even featuring men wearing erect phalluses over their garments.  And Lee, while not having men wear phallus items over their clothes, he did not disappoint with the over-the-top hyperbolic scenes nor the fact that the entire movie was written in verse that more often than not, actually rhymed.

In this urban and 21st century retelling, Lysistrata, played by the thoroughly capable Teyonah Parris, was the central character rallying women on the South Side of Chicago, old and young, to withhold having sex with their husbands and boyfriends for the sake of ending the killing.  She was spurred by the death of a young girl who’s mother was played by Jennifer Hudson.  Lysistrata was the girlfriend of the leader of the Spartans gang, who was named Chiraq fortuitously so, and played by Nick Cannon.  The rival gang, the Trojans, were orange-clad men led by Cyclops (no real reference to the ancient play “Lysistrata”), played by Wesley Snipes.  The movie’s plot was carried forward by familiar faces to Spike Lee joints as well as utterly comedic moments such as Dave Chappelle as a strip club owner or the banter between Harry Lennix’s character as the police commissioner with other players.   None of these scenes were to be topped by the one in which Lysistrata took over the armory and her interaction with General King Kong.

The movie concludes with the satirical loose-ends being pulled together by magical farce resulting in everyone, the chorus of men, the chorus of women, the mayor, the white priest with an entirely black congregation, both gangs, standing in white and Fortune 500 companies pledging that everyone in the ‘hood will have a job (a nod to an earlier demand made in the movie by characters).  Basically, it was a tragic dystopian kumbayah moment.  The mothers, specifically the mothers of real life slain Chicago children, emerged from the crowd functioning as a last-minute tear-jerker before the credits rolled, but also as a real life reminder that this is more than just a movie for the sake of entertainment.

However, I knew something was amidst when the first trailer for the movie dropped.

The vast majority of comments, via social media, were that the movie was going to be trash and people were trying to figure out why Samuel L. Jackson’s character, aptly named Dolemedes (no doubt a nod to the blaxploitation era character Dolemite) complete with loud pimp-esque suits and carrying a cane and wearing a hat, was speaking in rhyme and staring dead into the camera.  Not to mention it was clear that sex and sexuality was going to be front and center given the clothing that Lysistrata was wearing.  As the first screening was held, Black Twitter along with other websites catering to African American culture began firing out think-pieces that absolutely debased the movie, meanwhile white movie critics were generally praising the movie both for its cinematography as well as its social commentary.  By the time the movie was released nationwide, it was apparent that the vast majority of the black social media demographic simply did not like the movie.

One of the primary concerns I heard was that the movie did not address the structural issues that led to gun violence in black in brown neighborhoods.  While I can recite until I’m blue in the face the structural problems that have led us to where we are in poor communities across the country, there comes a certain point where one becomes numb to the statistics and deadened to the perpetual critique.  Social activist Umi Selah, formerly known as Philip Agnew of the Dream Defenders famously challenged Lee.  Selah, was born and raised in Chicago and in a question and answer panel exchange with Lee, Selah made the claim that

“You’re creating a film here that places the entirety of the blame and the situation and the plight that’s going on in Chicago on the people of Chicago.  How many lives you gon’ save without creating jobs for those people in Chicago? You not telling nobody the truth about what’s going on in Chicago and around this country…there is an experiment that if you put mice on top of each other, they’re going to steal, kill and destroy each other, brother. So if you put a bunch of people in projects all over this country, what you think they gon’ do?”

As Selah is being escorted out, Spike tells him that he didn’t see the movie and Selah yells back, “I saw enough.”

I took that exchange into the movie theatre when I finally went to see it.  I kept waiting for the absence of structural concerns being raised, but I heard Miss Helen, played by Angela Bassett, talk about the lack of jobs and say that the same things were happening in places like Body B-more and Killa-delphia.  I kept waiting for the movie to not connect the appearance of guns on the streets of Chicago, but Fr. Corrigan, played by John Cusak and supposed to be a direct stand-in for real life priest and pastor Fr. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina, spoke of the real life Chicago issue of guns being bought across the border in the state of Indiana that make their ways back to the streets of Chicago.  I kept waiting for the movie to not indict government, but then it was clear that the mayor was to be seen as a buffoon and worthy only of a cheap laugh, and the way that the American military was portrayed through General King Kong was such a level of acerbic criticism, perhaps it was too much and no one understood it.

Perhaps, if anywhere in the film that I felt that “Chi-raq” simply got it wrong was over the issue of gangs, and especially gangs in Chicago.  Jason Harrington wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times saying that

I hear when it comes to portrayals of black Chicago gangs is the way they are shoehorned into this outdated, color-coded, Crips versus Bloods narrative — exactly the misconception that Lee’s film helps perpetuate.

Growing up in Chicago, much like the exalted Bloods versus Crips, there was a daily concern about what colors you wore, what team hat you wore and even which direction you hat was turned.  Harrington goes on to say that that doesn’t hold water nearly as much as it once did, if at all.  A quick drive through Englewood or Auburn-Gresham and you’ll see these same young people wearing fitted pants and Aeropostale and Abercrombie and Fitch shirts.  Long gone are the days of baggy oversized jackets and pants.  The days that Lee portrayed are but a distant memory.  Nevertheless, in a film that used subtlety with the force of freight train roaring down the tracks, to have addressed the sets that populate urban neighborhoods in Chicago, it would have imaginably made the story line needlessly complicated.

Admittedly, I was nervous watching a Spike Lee movie where it focused on black women and, well, sex and sexuality.  Spike has never been a shrinking violet in these cinematic portrayals of sex on screen.  Almost to the point of black female bodily exploitation.  As the sex strike commenced in the movie, there were two tense scenes in which I wondered if the issue of rape was going to be an issue.  Salamisha Tillmet wrote also wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in which she interview Lee and he said that “There is no rape in the film.  It is satire.”  Tillmet also took the time to address the role of black women and sex and sexuality portrayals in cinema.  I wish she had taken the time to describe some of the troubling ways that Lee has historically done this and the ways in which, to some extent, he rectified that in this movie.

“Lysistrata” has always been left to the eye of the beholder where to see the women as agents or objects.  Whether one wants to see the women as having enough agency over their lives and their bodies to reclaim power or to see that their bodies and their sex is the only power that they have left in a patriarchal world.  For me, especially given the conclusion, I believe Spike chose the former whether he would admit it or not.  Aside from the central male character, Chiraq, the chorus of men were painted as complete jackasses; dunderheads who were willing to break into the armory with keys to the chastity belts that the chorus of women were wearing rounding out the sheer absurdity of the film’s satirical premise.

Yet, after the immediate dust had settled, there was yet another chorus of criticism that overwhelmingly sided with the likes of Umi Selah.  The timing of the movie’s release was nothing less than serendipitous.  While it would be safe to say that Spike would have probably filmed this movie whether or not Black Lives Matters protests and demonstrations dominated the media for 2015 or not, the movies release coinciding with renewed local protests in Chicago surrounding the death of Laquon McDonald and the makings of a cover-up in the Chicago Police Department that goes all the way to the mayor’s office could not have been predicted.  It was yet more fuel to the fire of criticism that said that Lee fundamentally did not do the city of Chicago justice by telling their story.  Even famous Chicago hip-hop artist Chance the Rapper weighed in on Twitter laying into Lee, who clapped back in a way that only he could.   Young people from Donda’s House being interviewed by WGN’s Dean Richards sum up just how much angst there is against the movie.

It was hard to ignore that much of the on-the-ground criticism of “Chi-raq” included an outright rejection of seeing the movie as satire.  That troubled me.  It left me wondering on what grounds did people decide to suspend entertainment and critique when it came to this movie.  The title itself is jarring and because of it, it was met with opposition.  Fourth ward alderman Will Burns unsuccessfully lobbied to deny Lee tax credit for filming here because of the name.  But it’s more than the name.  There was and still is this strong undercurrent of sentiment about what a collective black-ness needs to do about the current situation surrounding black lives and questioning do they really matter to America.

What seems to primarily evident is that many black people, especially in Chicago, expected a very different movie from Lee.  Perhaps many were expecting a film that engaged in some distant notion of ontological communal uplift.  Maybe the expectation was to see a film that engaged in old tropes of having a charismatic leader, embodied through Lee, to “speak some truth to power” in the spirit of Martin Luther King 2.0 couched in the ideological narrative of Black Lives Matters.  None of this happened, and people were not just disappointed but disgusted.  The film did not offer any real solutions partly because there aren’t any real solutions to the Brobdingnagian problem of the deaths of black and brown folks in urban areas.  No more than there are real solutions to addressing the deaths of human lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The movie weaved together the complexities of sex and sexuality between black women and black men, shadowed by the powers-that-be of the local government and the federal government imaged through the military.  Aside from Lysistrata, Chiraq’s character easily functioned as a metaphor for any American city that’s fraught with urban violence.  Much like our own American cities, Chiraq only walked the road to redemption, still wearing his gang colors, when the community forced him to do so.  Even looking for a last minute escape, the mothers, the other chorus of women, stood in his way and forced him to face justice.  At what point will communities rise up and require our country to simply do better and be better?

Rather than lambasting Spike Lee for holding up a mirror to the black community, perhaps we should take heed to the message.  This wasn’t so much a “personal responsibility” message that we have heard before in the realm of respectability politics, but rather a personal responsibility message saying that we, as a community, have the responsibility to require better of our own communities and of the cities we dwell.  Perhaps even leaving room to extrapolate it to a larger level with regards to a national movement.

As Spike Lee usually says, it’s time to wake up.

The post The Miseducation of “Chi-Raq” appeared first on Madness & Reality.

There’s no doubt that in a violence obsessed, gun crazy nation such as the United States, black people do commit crimes against each other. (I don’t want to get into debate about rates and frequencies.) But so do all other groups. Yet, we get the distinction of being the worst…as usual.

So, here we go again, trending all over the news on latest kick called the knockout games. According to reports, most of the youth involved are black. Also, most of the victims are black. Not too many white victims. Although, in this society, one or a few white victims of black crimes constitute as black-on-white racism. And then, there’s a push to punish us negroes to make sure the nonexistent tables are turned.

Black crime in general, particularly of the violent varieties, seem to become threatening and epidemic in the mainstream. When watching local or national news, one would think that it’s reached record highs. However, recent data suggests the opposite. Violent crime, including in black communities, is going down. Black youth crime is dropping, and crime overall is intraracial.

And yet, black crime is somehow worse. People associate blackness with criminality. Even the most liberal of people make the connection without even knowing it (or admitting it).

Black-on-black crime is a racist misnomer used in three distinct ways: The first is mentioned by well-meaning people, including blacks themselves, who see it as a continuous and widespread crisis. Many of them honestly see it as a tragedy that not only is it happening, but that America allows it to happen. And they go out and try to do what they can to prevent more crime and violence.

Then, there’s the other usage, by the uppity, uninformed and unwilling to do any heavy lifting. To make matters worse, they use it to taper any prominent instance where racism was a factor in affecting the lives of blacks significantly and tragically.

When Trayvon Martin was killed, masses of people were upset, and rightfully so for numerous reasons. His killer George Zimmerman didn’t get arrested for a while. He killed him because of what he chose to see in him, a thug. And media outlets tried their damnest to paint Martin as the very thing Zimmerman thought he was, just another young black male thug up to no good.

Yet, those on the right felt the need to tell the masses to quit crying and get mad where it really counts. The number one issue they wanted people to truly focused on was – you guessed it – black-on-black crime. Funny. Black-on-black crime was never too much of their concern to begin with.

The third and most insidious use of ‘black-on-black crime’ is to justify further oppression. It’s to apply another trait of failure that comes with black skin in the minds of white racists. It’s processed and distributed from the mainstream to society prompting excuses for more prisons, more cops, more surveillance in black communities and more policies like stop-and-frisk.

At the same time, it diverts much needed attention to real structural factors that play important roles to the suffering such as systematic economic and political neglect and inadequacy originated outside struggling black neighborhoods. Emotional and psychological causes are hardly up for discussion. Avoiding such considerations will not only limit or censor urgent conversations and actions, but will strengthen the myth of black pathology as being a natural defect.

The myth of black criminals is nothing new. When the war on drugs began, there was a myth of the violent, drug dealing, young black male lurking in inner city streets, largely responsible for the nation’s illegal drug problem during the 1980’s. There was the superpredator scare of the early 1990’s proposed by Princeton professor John Dilulio. Two years ago, there were reports of flash mob violence in a few cities across the nation. Most of the perpetrators were young blacks, some of the victims were nonblack. And now in 2013, the name of the game is all about a few incidents of youth knocking people out.

Look people, nowhere has there ever been denial that there are black criminals who target black people, or people in general. It would be stupid to say so, because crime is a part of every society and everyone is capable of being a criminal, even a violent one. Yet, while so many people are obsessed with blacks and crime as if we had some kind of gangster gene, they fail to understand that – again – most crime is intraracial.

So, for the racist white separatists out there preaching to the choir of the black apocalypse coming to destroy white civilizations, keep worrying while your white male buddy is out there beating his wife, while a 45 year-old white woman is hitting on a high school junior who bares a striking resemblance to Brad Pitt, and while a white youth plots another mass murder.

The post Why We Need to Drop the Term “Black-on-Black Crime” appeared first on Madness & Reality.

The issue is largely dedicated to Trayvon, but its pages feature larger conversations considering the notion of race in contemporary America, with an article about racial profiling, interviews with the cover subjects detailing how they approach the topic of race with their sons (who will likely be profiled.) The issue even features a poem dedicated to Trayvon, written by spoken work artist Jill Scott.

As woefully expected the covers did not sit well with those who still blame Trayvon’s death on Trayvon himself as seen on Twitchy, a right-wing news site owned by Michelle Malkin. This is what they said about this issue’s covers:

It’s much easier to slap on a hoodie and pretend to fight for social justice than to recognize a black American is more likely to be murdered by another black American than some “White Hispanic” man.

That comment alone was enough to spark a rumor throughout social media that the Tea Party plans to boycott Ebony. It was big enough to prompt Ebony’s editor-and-chief Amy Barnett to respond accordingly:

“We simply cannot allow the conversations on this issue to come to a standstill. As the leading source for an authoritative perspective on the African-American community, at Ebony we are committed to serving as a hub for Black America to explore solutions, and to giving readers the information and tools they need to help ensure a bright future for all of our children.”

Even though the rumor was shown to be a colossal farce, it’s still a punch in the gut in the conversation we need to have. Since day one, the response from numerous people over this tragedy is that the black community should stop obsessing over Trayvon’s murder, and that we all should collectively focus on black-on-black crime which – in their inarguable opinion – a much more important problem.

Here’s how it is when it comes to the usual narrative from the right: Interracial crime where blacks are victims are incredibly rare. However, intra-racial crime is major. Sometime they will take a step further, interracial crime does happen, but the biggest criminals are black while their victims are white. The usual lesson to the black community is to take care of its rampant crime problem, and those who give that good talking-to are always white people and middle-class blacks who’ve likely never visited black neighborhoods.

But the lesson is deceitful and fallacious. Most of the people who feel it is their “duty” to tell blacks how to think and what to think believe that in some way we are a childlike people who need the guidance of “good” people who are usually and utterly clueless about what it means to be black in America.

The histories and current state of the black community in a nation that has yet to admit its own pathology is always omitted from the conversation. It’s a crooked way to avoid the reality of racism, personal and systematic, that is significant not only in the murder of Trayvon Martin, but all murders of black life no matter who the killers are.

Intra-racial crime in the black community is just as big an issue as interracial crime. It always has been on our radar for a few decades, and it has not gone out of range, not for even one second, since Trayvon’s murder or the murders of Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Rekia Boyd, Aiyana Jones, Remarley Graham, Kenneth Chamberlain and anyone else. The common denominator is that black lives are being snuffed out, and this nation – as we’ve seen with George Zimmerman’s verdict – doesn’t give a damn about it.

Sure, one can argue that it’s not white people who are putting guns into the hands of trigger-happy, pistol packing individuals. No one is saying such a thing. However, those who sit by and do nothing but scold us are just as much at fault as the ones behind the violence whether it happens in black or white communities trying to act concern while scapegoating all of their precious nation’s problems onto the negro population.

Many of us scoff at such false compassion done to derail and demean. If you really want to help, why not first address the problem of violence in its entirety – from front to back, inside and out, and not just pin this as a “black” problem only black people need to fix? Why not recognize the problem within your own neck of the woods committed by “good” white folks, particularly the gun enthusiasts? Why not study and learn all the causes of violence and not just blame it on hip-hop and unwed single mothers as if it makes you sound profound and caring? More importantly, why not actively support and invest in programs that will help remedy violence?

The murder of Trayvon Martin further serves to have a serious reflection as to the state of race relations and the violence  – physical and institutional – that comes with it from those still trapped in pre-1960 America. And how this country treats or mistreats black life it is a testament to how far this society needs to go in order to truly call itself “post-racial”. It’s useless to argue that intra-racial crime in black communities deserves more outrage and attention, especially when it already has for years. It holds no weight due to the fact that no matter how the life of a black person is viciously taken, this country still sees it as expendable, no matter who takes it.

The post Ebony’s “Trayvon” Covers and the Black-on-Black Crime Argument appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Remember when those things were new? Thankfully we don’t hear people being killed for iPods anymore. I suppose that says something about their popularity. But then again, I don’t hear about young black teens being killed for Starter jackets like they used to either. Remember those days?

This from The New York Times from back then:

Two Brooklyn teenagers were arrested early yesterday on charges that they robbed and killed a 15-year-old boy in the Farragut neighborhood when they stole his friend’s iPod, the police said.

The victim, Christopher Rose, was walking with three other boys late Saturday afternoon when a large group of teenagers approached them and demanded that they turn over the iPod that one of the boys was carrying, according to the police and witnesses. When the boys refused, one of the suspects began hitting them, said Kenneth, 15, who was with Christopher at the time of the attack. Then someone stabbed Christopher twice in the chest.

Law enforcement officials have warned in recent months that iPods have prompted an increase in thefts on the subways, and that teenagers are particularly vulnerable targets of iPod thefts by other teenagers.

The police said yesterday that they had charged Darran Samuel, 16, and Daryl Stephen, 17, with murder, robbery and criminal possession of a weapon in connection with Christopher’s death. Relatives of both boys, reached at their homes in Brooklyn, said the youths had no history of violence.

[…] Christopher attended school in Bushkill, Pa., where his parents said they had sent him with the hope that he might be safer and receive a better education.

“We sent him out there to get away from this horrible life,” Christopher’s father, Errol Rose, said yesterday. “All these years – seven and a half years – I’ve been back and forth from Pennsylvania with this boy. He didn’t last too long before they rubbed him out.”

Christopher and his friends were on their way to the Port Authority Bus Terminal to catch a bus back to Pennsylvania on Saturday when they were attacked. Usually, someone would drive him to the subway or take him to the bus terminal, Mr. Rose said. But since he and his wife were attending a wedding, Mr. Rose said he gave Christopher permission to head back on his own. It was one of the few times the Roses had allowed Christopher to walk around the neighborhood alone.

Nostalgia aside, it’s good to see that at least one community has turned a tragedy into something positive. Not only has a street been renamed for Christopher, his family is now committed to putting and end to youth violence across Brooklyn, NY.

So yeah, run tell that to Bill O’Reilly and the many others who say black folks do not care about black-0n-black crime. Christopher Rose’s name may never be mentioned in the same breath as Trayvon Martin or Emitt Till; but nonetheless, it’s good to see it’s permanence by way of a Brooklyn street.

This from Brooklyn News 12:

BROOKLYN – A street in East Flatbush has been renamed for a teen who was killed there during a robbery several years ago.

Friends, family and public officials gathered for the unveiling of Christopher Rose Way at East 40th Street and Avenue D. The 15-year-old was stabbed to death just blocks from his home back in 2005 during a robbery.

Rose’s death garnered the unfortunate distinction of being the first time a person was murdered for an iPod in the U.S.

Read More: Brooklyn Top Stories

At today’s ceremony, attendees sang, danced and spoke of a renewed effort to reduce crime in Brooklyn communities.

Definitely watch the video below:

The post Brooklyn Street Renamed for First Person Killed for an iPod in U.S. appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Is that not the way with black pathology?

Forget about the Middle Passage and the petty theft that was slavery and what some call the raping of a continent. Yes, never mind that minor infraction as a contributing factor. What’s important to promote, for some, is that black people killing black people — because their aren’t any other crimes beside murder — is a much deeper contributing factor to our collective demise. And, if we black people could just simply get it together and solve that major problem, racism — whether systemic or otherwise — will all fade away like the sound of old Negro spirituals in cotton fields.

Sounds silly? Considering that some have identified the root of the black-on-black crime problem to be out-of-wedlock births in the black community, yes. Okay, so maybe it’s a contributing factor to poverty in already impoverished communities. But let’s not kid ourselves: said impoverished communities exist as a product of a system enforced by public policy that renders economically disadvantaged people somewhat hopeless. Just ask anyone from the hood if given a chance would they love to live in a much nicer neighborhood. I’m willing to bet that in most cases they would say yes. Why? Because the sad truth is that to live in poverty is a very expensive existence.

But no, if black women would just listen to white men like Bill O’Reilly and stopped f*cking, all would be well in black America. It’s as though out-of-wedlock births do not exist in dominant culture, hence their civility and our lack of humanity. The irony of this is that at one point in time, black women were raped encouraged to have children so as to provide that cheap… oops, I meant free labor, to drive the engine of America’s economy. But I guess with the prison industrial complex booming, nothing has changed.

In the aftermath of the acquittal of George Zimmerman, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton and Ben Jealous of the NAACP are calling on the black community to rise up in national protest.

Yet they know nothing is going to happen.

“Stand-Your-Ground” laws in Florida and other states are not going to be repealed. George Zimmerman is not going to be prosecuted for a federal “hate crime” in the death of Trayvon Martin.

The result of all this ginned-up rage that has produced vandalism and violence is simply going to be an ever-deepening racial divide.

Consider the matter of crime and fear of crime.

From listening to cable channels and hearing Holder, Sharpton, Jealous and others, one would think the great threat to black children today emanates from white vigilantes and white cops.

Hence, every black father must have a “conversation” with his son, warning him not to resist or run if pulled over or hassled by a cop.

Make the wrong move, son, and you may be dead is the implication.

But is this the reality in Black America?

When Holder delivered his 2009 “nation-of-cowards” speech blaming racism for racial separation, Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald suggested that our attorney general study his crime statistics.

In New York, from January to June 2008, 83 percent of all gun assailants were black, according to witnesses and victims, though blacks were only 24 percent of the population. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of all gun assailants. Forty-nine of every 50 muggings and murders in the Big Apple were the work of black or Hispanic criminals.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirms Mac Donald’s facts. Blacks and Hispanics commit 96 percent of all crimes in the city, he says, but only 85 percent of the stop-and-frisks are of blacks and Hispanics.

And these may involve the kind of pat-downs all of us have had at the airport.

Is stop-and-frisk the work of racist cops in New York, where the crime rate has been driven down to levels unseen in decades?

According to Kelly, a majority of his police force, which he has been able to cut from 41,000 officers to 35,000, is now made up of minorities.

But blacks are also, per capita, the principal victims of crime. Would black fathers prefer their sons to grow up in Chicago, rather than low-crime New York City, with its stop-and-frisk policy?

So what does this have to do with white-on-white crime? For starters let’s just say that attempted to shift focus away from a conversation on race and the criminal justice system is indeed racist. And sadly there are many black people who do us no favors by running this conservative playbook. Take conservative commentator Crystal Wright for example. Wright recently wrote that if George Zimmerman was black, very few in the black community would care; and, there would be no collective national outrage. To be fair, this is an argument with which I agree. As I’ve written before, conservatives aren’t interested in solving gun violence. And neither is Wright herself is interested in fixing the problem. What she is interested in is using statistics to point fingers at the black community to reinforce her position in conservative circles as an exceptional Negro.

Sadly, this trial wouldn’t be receiving wall-to-wall national media coverage if Zimmerman was black. That’s what we should be talking about.

Startling statistics reveal that between 1980-2008, African-Americans were six times more likely than whites to be victims of gun violence and seven times more likely to kill with guns than whites, according to the Justice Department. African-Americans represent a mere 13% of the US population yet more than 50% of federal prisoners are black. You can claim racial bias in the judicial system, but that doesn’t explain all of it.

Why aren’t so-called black leaders outraged and marching over therecent shooting rampage in Chicago. During the 4 July holiday weekend, including the Wednesday leading up to it, 62 people were wounded by gun violence in Chicago and 12 others killed. The holiday shooting spree raised Chicago’s homicide tally to 200 for the year. Last year about 500 people were killed, and most of those killing and being killed in Chicago are black. According to the Chicago Tribune, “blacks make up about 33% of the city’s population, they accounted for nearly 78% of the homicide victims through the first six months of 2012”

You see, unlike Wright, I would point out that though the numbers may be correct, things aren’t that much different on the white side of town. Because as Jamelle Bouie recently pointed out: “Yes, from 1976 to 2005, 94 percent of black victims were killed by black offenders, but that racial exclusivity was also true for white victims of violent crime—86 percent were killed by white offenders.” Now if I were hell-bent on advancing an agenda that says something like liberalism has done nothing but destroy the black community as many conservatives often do. Like Wright and others, I too would never mention that 86% of white victims of homicide were killed by someone white. If I were a conservative I’d focus on black-on-black crime so as to stoke the fears and racial resentment of an aging loyal voting block who are overwhelmingly white. Yes, I wouldn’t advance any sensible arguments to explain that crimes in the black community are a component of poverty, opportunity, and proximity. Or the fact as Demos has pointed out recently: By race, overall, crime has been on a steady decline. But hey, being the habitual line-stepper I bring you facts.

Black on Black Crime Facts

• Black on black homicides have decreased by 67% in 20 years, a sharper rate of decrease than white on white homicide.
• According to FBI statistics 7361 Blacks were killed by fellow African-Americans in 1991. In 2011, it dropped dramatically to 2447 African-Americans
• Among black youth, rates of robbery and serious property offenses are the lowest in more than 40 years.

Don’t get me wrong, crime in the black community is a serious issue. As a black man living in the city of Memphis, TN. please believe that I know all too well how crime wrecks the community (read here). However, it’s important to understand that many discussions on black-on-black crime (especially in right-wing media circles) only seeks to deflect from the very real issue that is the inequality that exists in the criminal justice system.

Racial Inequality in the Criminal Justice System Facts

• African Americans were 2 times as likely to be arrested and almost 4 times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.
• In the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10% longer than white offenders for the same crime.
• 5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites
• African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of Whites
• African American juvenile youth are about 16% of the youth population, 37% of their cases are moved to criminal court & 58% of convicted African American youth are sent to adult prisons.
• Controlling for other factors, including severity of the offense and prior criminal history, white men aged 18-29 were 38% less likely to be sentenced to prison than their black male peers
• African American women are 3 times more likely than white women to be incarcerated
• African American defendants are 21% more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than Whites and are 20% more like to be sentenced to prison

Though you may not agree with anything I’ve said to this point, it’s important to know that the facts are quite clear. Inequality along racial lines exists, and it is an all too real experience for many people of color. In my opinion, we didn’t need the Zimmerman verdict to serve as proof of this.

Why?

Because as Jamelle Bouie also writes:

If African-Americans are more likely to be robbed, or injured, or killed by other African-Americans, it’s because they tend to live in the same neighborhoods as each other. Residential statistics bear this out (PDF); blacks are still more likely to live near each other or other minority groups than they are to whites. And of course, the reverse holds as well—whites are much more likely to live near other whites than they are to minorities and African-Americans in particular.

Overall, figures from a variety of institutions—including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Justice Statistics—show that among black youth, rates of robbery and serious property offenses are at their lowest rates in 40 years, as are rates of violent crime and victimization. And while it’s true that young black men are a disproportionate share of the nation’s murder victims, it’s hard to disentangle this from the stew of hyper-segregation (often a result of deliberate policies), entrenched poverty, and nonexistent economic opportunities that characterizes a substantial number of black communities. Hence the countless inner-city anti-violence groups that focus on creating opportunity for young, disadvantaged African-Americans, through education, mentoring, and community programs. Blacks care intensely about the violence that happens in their communities. After all, they have to live with it.

Because many of us have been having these discussions for “donkey years,’ as my Trinidadian mother would say. As long as this blog has existed we’ve attempted to bring to you stories that highlight this issue. Heck, and there are many not-so-high profile stories that we’ve missed just like the media has. Beyond that, if there’s anything to be learned from this post is that we have the choice to either be a part of the problem, or a part of the solution. To be honest, not telling the truth about crime on both sides of the divide is in fact counterproductive and hinders progress. To that point, I’m glad that left-wing media isn’t concerned with white out-of-wedlock births as a solution to white-on-white crime problem in America. Oh, that’s right, white supremacy ain’t havin’ it, son.

The post Can We Talk About White-On-White Crime? appeared first on Madness & Reality.

That said, it’s perfectly understandable to see people who look like me (and the many hipster white liberals out there) a bit riled up when a black kid is shot and killed by a white man over something as simple as music being played too loudly in a parked car. Anything other than that? Well, you know, the victim just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time just like Hadiya Pendleton. Unlike Pendleton, however, many other victims of urban violence are hardly a blurb on the conscience of society; and, for said victims, rest assured their funerals are not attended by someone who lives in the White House. But, I suppose the fact that “They don’t know, don’t show, or really care what’s goin’ on in the hood,” like my man “Dough Boy” in Boyz In Da Hood once said, is yet another reflection of the apathy of residents in the hood. Thankfully, however, we’re not all apathetic, desensitized, or unmotivated to affect change. That said, in steps the following story featuring a concerned black man in the city of Philadelphia recently.

Watch the video:

Personally, I think what this gentleman did was genius. In a society where the issue of black on black crime is discussed as a pathology, it’s good to see someone going to the lengths as this brother has to be heard. He is absolutely correct when he notes that there is a black hypocrisy, complacency, and apathy that runs rampant within communities of color associated with crime. And yes, this is of course one helluva marketing stunt to sell his documentary. But, the fact remains: it is time for us within the community to speak truth to power on this issue.

What I mean, is that as a community, we need to speak up and out about the systemic forces that produce the environments within which certain behaviors thrive. Yes, we can sit around and circle jerk all day and discuss or critique the behaviors of certain black folk; but, the truth is, to do so solves nothing. Ironically, I had this discussion with fellow blogger, my man Field Negro a few weeks ago on Madness & Reality Radio. The discussion centered on the current gun control debate. At the end of it, we all agreed that aside from personal responsibility, something needs to be done; and that something, has to be a holistic approach to the problem that is violence in urban communities across the country. You may not agree with me, and that’s perfectly fine. However, please don’t make the mistake of shooting the messenger as some of the folks in the above video made the mistake of doing. Why? Because at the end of the day, we need more black men wearing KKK outfits toting hat very same sign on every Philly street corner; as well as, in any hood across the USA. Question Sixx King’s tactics and motives if you will; but to me, to do so is a waste of time.

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Many make a connection between poverty and education, and suggest that for poverty, education is the panacea. In the case of Chicago especially such a notion begs the question: if school funding is directly tied to neighborhood property values, how then can we expect education to solve the conundrum that is poverty in America and how the many social ills closely tied to it are exacerbation? Having said that, it is good to know that people like Bill O’Reilly exist. At a time where many attribute much of the violence in Chicago — a byproduct of poverty — to bad parenting. It is good to know that someone like Bill can step in and clear up the debate as to what exactly is happening in Chicago. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I believe Bill is on to something. Forget about teacher strikes and education solving poverty in urban centers.

Clearly what has to happen as a quick fix (at least in the case of Chicago) is that more white folks need to purchase drugs like they once did. Isn’t that right, Bill O’Reilly? I mean then and only then will the violence, poverty, and the problems of shitty schools go away, right?

Heck, at least he didn’t blame the violence on bad parenting…

The post Bill O’Reilly: Blacks in Chicago are Killing Each Other Because Whites No Longer Buying Drugs appeared first on Madness & Reality.

by Alissa Griffith

Would you put your lunch next to THIS in the refrigerator at your job?The picture above is a fridge in Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic. Workers put their lunch in there…squeezed next to bags of dozens of frozen dead babies!

In Pennsylvania alone there are  30-40-thousand (reported) abortions performed per year and authorities say the above gruesome picture is just a snapshot into the horror that has been going on uninspected for 17 years in one Philadelphia clinic. Gosnell allegedly slit the necks, severed the spinal cords, and suctioned the brains of hundreds of born, living, viable babies, sometimes joking along the way.

Gosnell targeted poor minorities in his disgusting clinic offering them cheap, illegal underground partial-birth abortions performed by unlicensed and untrained staff. He even employed a local high-school student as an anesthesiologist! Gosnell, not licensed or trained himself, put white women in one waiting room and black women in the other commenting to his staff that white women are more likely to complain to authorities and authorities are more likely to listen to their complaints.

According to reports, Gosnell left patients sterile, passed venereal diseases with dirty instruments, punctured their intestines, left fetal parts inside of their stomachs and in some cases killed his patients. Gosnell even saved body parts of the babies and displayed them in glass bottles like trophies.

Still the abortion clinic was only stumbled upon by authorities during a prescription drug-related investigation.

How did something like this go on undetected for so long? The grand jury slammed the Pennsylvania Health Department and blamed race (most of his patients were low-income minorities) and politics (the governor of PA was pro-choice and officials concluded that regular inspections of abortion clinics would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions).

In fact, according to the grand jury report, when the Department of Health’s chief lawyer was asked about the Gosnell clinic and their inaction, she responded, “People die.” People also make money too; Gosnell reportedly brought in 1.8 million dollars in one year.

MaryClaire Dale and Patrick Walters of the Associated Press report
A doctor who gave abortions to minorities, immigrants and poor women in a “house of horrors” clinic was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said. State regulators ignored complaints about him and failed to inspect his clinic since 1993, but no charges were warranted against them given time limits and existing law, District Attorney Seth Williams said. Nine of Gosnell’s employees also were charged.

Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.

Patients were subjected to squalid and barbaric conditions at Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society, where Gosnell performed dozens of abortions a day, prosecutors said. He mostly worked overnight hours after his untrained staff administered drugs to induce labor during the day, they said.

Early last year, authorities went to investigate drug-related complaints at the clinic and stumbled on what Williams called a “house of horrors.”

Bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses “were scattered throughout the building,” Williams said. “There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose.”

The clinic was shut down and Gosnell’s medical license was suspended after the raid.

Gosnell and four workers were charged with murder, while five others were charged with controlled drug violations and other crimes. None of the employees had any medical training, and one, a high school student, performed intravenous anesthesia with potentially lethal narcotics, Williams said.

All 10 defendants were taken into custody, authorities said.

Two listed numbers for Gosnell in Philadelphia have been disconnected. Defense lawyer William J. Brennan, who represented Gosnell during the investigation, noted that the doctor served patients in a low-income city neighborhood for decades.

“Obviously, these allegations are very, very serious,” Brennan said.

The grand jury said the woman who died was a patient who came to Gosnell’s clinic for an abortion and died of cardiac arrest because she was given too much Demerol. Gosnell wasn’t at the clinic at the time, but directed his staff to administer the drug to keep the woman, a healthy 41-year-old woman, sedated until he arrived, prosecutors said.

Gosnell has been named in at least 46 malpractice suits, including one over the death of a 22-year-old mother who died of sepsis and a perforated uterus in 2000. Many others also involve perforated uteruses. Gosnell sometimes sewed up the injury without telling women their uteruses had been perforated, prosecutors said.

Gosnell charged $325 for first-trimester abortions and $1,600 to $3,000 for abortions up to 30 weeks. Abortions are legal up to 24 weeks gestation in Pennsylvania, although most doctors won’t perform them after 20 weeks, prosecutors said.

Some women came from across the mid-Atlantic for the illegal late-term abortions, authorities said. White women from the suburbs were ushered into a separate, slightly cleaner area because Gosnell believed they were more likely to file complaints, Williams said.

“People knew near and far that if you needed a late-term abortion you could go see Dr. Gosnell,” Williams said.

Few if any of the sedated women knew their babies were born alive and then killed, prosecutors said. Many were first-time mothers who were told they were 24 weeks pregnant, even if they were further along, authorities said.

Gosnell got his medical degree from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and is board certified in family practice. He started, but did not finish, a residency in obstetrics-gynecology, authorities said.

“He does not know how to do an abortion. He’s not board certified,” Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore said. “Once he got them there, he saw dollar signs and did abortions that other people wouldn’t do.”

The Pennsylvania Health Department is an accomplice in this crime and every single member of that department should be forced to stand trial right alongside of Gosnell and his associates.

Further, if Gosnell went unmonitored for 30 years how many more clinics just like his are being run in inner cities all over the country? We trust health departments to monitor what citizens cannot and to investigate complaints. The health department in Philadelphia failed its constituents and we can only hope that health departments across the country aren’t doing the same.

Undoubtedly pro-choice advocates will use this story to further their own stance that abortion should remain legalized in this country and that the  partial-birth abortion ban should be overturned. Keep in mind that former President G.W. Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban in 2003 and Gosnell has been performing these abortions since the late 1970s. This story clearly pokes a gaping hole in the argument that legalized abortion prevents underground clinics and dangerous activity.

Alissa serves as Managing Editor for theFreshXpress.com. She enjoys reading, writing, shopping, Facebooking, Tweeting and all things PINK Follow her on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AlissaInPink

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by Tracy Renee Jones
Published: Saturday, December 04, 2010, 5:20 PM Updated: Saturday, December 04, 2010, 5:22 PM”Six men are shot overnight in Newark”

NEWARK — Newark suffered a violent night as six people were shot throughout the city in five separate incidents between Friday evening and this morning, authorities said. At 10 p.m. Friday, one person was shot at 25 Broad St. At 10:15 p.m., two people were shot on the 300 block of 6th Avenue. Another person was shot at 216 South St. at 11:13 p.m. Shortly following that, a person was shot on Devine St. at 11:30. One person was shot on Telford Street around 5 a.m. today. All of the victims are believed to be male, according to law enforcement officials, and all were transported to University Hospital for treatment. All six survived, though the man shot on Telford Street is in critical condition. No further details were available yesterday.It’s easy enough for me to ignore the violent deaths that go on in the urban (read: poor black) sections of Essex County. I would say living here causes one to become detached and immune to news of another gun death but that’s not true. Living in any ANY urban dwelling causes one to grow distant from the violence that comes included with the utility bill. The only exciting news about Newark gun violence as of lately is that no one getting shot has been killed by the bullet. Apparently, we’re dealing with kinder, gentler more life valuing thugs or these mutha fuckas got bad aim.

And I’m grateful for that. I haven’t been writing much lately and I don’t feel like writing this right now but I must. My best friend’s seventeen year old son was approached by two men and shot in the back with a 9 millimeter on the evening of November 11, 2010. He lived, but the bullet severed his spine. He’s paralyzed and is now settled into a rehabilitation center learning how to become independent while his single mother scrambles to and fro in search of a new handicapped accessible apartment. I have no idea how she’s dealing with this. She has two younger children to care for so she is not afforded the luxury of falling out in a heap of self pity.

Every time I look at his picture I cry. She and I were raised together but fell out of touch. There is a picture on my desk of she and I and our then toddler children taken immediately after coming in contact with each other again. I was the one who spoke her son into existence after suggesting that she needed a child to slow her down and get her centered. Only days later she realized she was pregnant; and he did settle her down into motherhood.

The entire situation makes me ill. I tell myself it would be easier for me to accept had he been injured in a car accident. I could deal with the misfortune a little better had he been hurt while playing high school football. I could deal with ‘bad things happen to good people’ but it seems more like when your skin is brown that ‘brown people happen to brown people’.

As much as I love to indulge in debate and philosophical accusations of the inequality felt under the white foot of systemic disregard, I can’t ignore the fact that the only time a White man puts fear in my heart is if he’s dressed in blue with a badge or he’s speeding by in a pick up truck down a dark road at a late hour of the night. Besides red necks racist hicks and the police Blacks don’t fear Whites. But let me turn a corner and see a Black man coming at me and I’ll freeze and feel my eye twitch on some fight or flight shit.

Is it wrong to think that Blacks are the ones committing all the crime? Yup, it’s totally not true. Do I think the Black that’s walking up behind me, eye balling me while I sit alone on the city subway car or pacing directly behind me as I walk up a dark street is up to something? Hell, yeah, at least in my mind. Why? Because the violence in this city is being done FUBU (For Us By Us) style. Supposedly the men who shot my friend went on to shoot two additional people that night and may also have been involve in the shooting of a store owner the following night. They walked into the man’s corner store and shot him in the chest! My friend’s son wasn’t hit by a stray bullet; it was men approaching a young man and pulling the trigger of a gun because they can and do and they don’t give a fuck. It’s disgusting.

“On Wednesday Dec.8,2010 there will be a rally for my son @ 7th ave & Clifton in Newark NJ between 5pm & 7pm.”My friend is holding a vigil for her son to bring attention to gun violence in Newark. The City just laid off 167 police officers in an attempt to tame the annual budget. Do I think more cops are the solution to this problem? Hell no! The solution to this problem lies in parents and community residents getting a grip on the wild animals they live along side.

So many young people are in gangs because they think it’s cool or they join for their own safety. These parents know their children are involved; most don’t care and gladly take the drug money these young people earn in the street. These beasts play games with the lives of brown children, and the mothers of their imaginary nonsense rivals and are now in the habit of opening fire at the funerals of newly deceased rival gang members in hopes of catching innocent family members in cold blooded murder. They want to be notorious, feared and ‘respected’ by their brutality.

They will shoot your child on your front door and if they can’t find your child they will find your other child or the target’s mother. But for what? All this fire power but Niggas won’t fight a revolution!

Marching up and down the street won’t fix this. Having more police patrol the urban cities treating every brown person like an inmate is not the answer. Gun laws and capital punishment aren’t the answer. The answer is simply for us all to stop turning our hatred toward each other and aiming it at the real culprit in ways that will make Brown plight change. Anything less is a band aid on a bullet hole.

The only person that can stop the killing is the one choosing to kill. So when the police eventually arrive to the crime scene and ask ‘Who Shot Ya?’ we can all stop saying “I don’t know. Some Nigga”.

The post Urban Gun Violence: Who Shot Ya? appeared first on Madness & Reality.

A long time reader and friend brought me attention to the following documentary some time ago. It deals with the issue, or the idea that gun control laws are inherently racist. I’ve held off on posting this before now because I’m somewhat skeptical of the true intent of the presentation. Personally, I’m all for gun control. More specifically, as I’ve written in the past [read here & here]. I’m for laws that control or address the many ways the criminal element or everyday guy can purchase firearms illegally in our streets.

So that said, I’m very leery and see the following as nothing more than propaganda from right-wing sponsored pro-gun activists. Propaganda which pimps Black folks to promote their ideas; and quite frankly, I’m not down with that; and I’m not too sure those groups are concerned with crime in the inner-city. I admit that some of the material presented as far as a historical context, seems accurate. But yet and still I have a problem with the “sales pitch” as one which has the best interest of crime in the black community in mind.

So do me a favor and check it out will you? Please do and be sure to share your thoughts in the commentary on the gun control “problem” as you see it (total runtime 20 minutes). In light of recent events this past weekend in Chicago and the number of shootings and homicides, I think it’s time that we had this conversation, on this site at least. Yeah, let’s exchange some ideas on this issue, shall we?

Ironically, the recent Supreme Court decision on Chicago’s handgun ban is seen as a victory for pro-gun activists. Even further is the irony that it was a black man who filed the case against the city of Chicago, and is now victorious. If what’s said in the following video is true, one would think that the gun violence in the city would decline given the recent Supreme Court decision on the handgun ban.

But, here’s where I call bullshit; the lifting of the hand gun ban will not positively impact the problem of gun violence. As I see it, this is a flawed approach to fixing the “problem” of violent crime in the city. I mean let’s be honest: Does lifting the ban address the problem of guns being purchased illegally on the streets? Further, does it address the problem of guns “accidentally disappearing” off the back of trucks of gun dealers?

The issue of gun violence and Black on Black crime is very real, and needs to be addressed; but the following isn’t the solution. I’m sorry, I support the second amendment, and I think the Supreme Court got it right. However, I do believe that in the interest of true public safety, that local and state gov’t has the vested interests of protecting its citizens with the necessary and constitutional rules and regulations.

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