As I read the newspaper and watch television news, I continue to see references to “black lives matter,” the slogan made famous by demonstrators in the aftermath of the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police.
I am in full agreement that black lives do matter. The part that is quite confusing and contradictory to me is: when do black lives matter?
Does a black life only matter when a white policeman pulls the trigger to end it? Or is it equally as devastating when a black youth is gunned down by another black youth? It appears to me that black lives only matter to some when a person of opposite color or culture is involved in the killing.
I firmly believe that if we are sincere when we say black lives matter, then it shouldn’t matter who pulled the trigger, be they black or white. I am gravely concerned about the excessive number of African Americans being gunned down on the streets of America, regardless of whether their deaths are at the hands of law enforcement or gangs.
The unadulterated crime of this is the enormous number of young African-American males who are being gunned down on a daily basis by other African-American males. The irony is that all of this black-on-black crime goes without fanfare, almost unnoticed, without any loud outcry or protest.
When an African American is killed by a white policeman, hundreds or even thousands of individuals gather and demonstrate and demand accountability. However, when an African American is gunned down by another African American, there aren’t any significant demonstrations or demands for accountability; it’s just business as usual. The “bad cop syndrome” is being somewhat exposed while black-on-black killings continue without any viable solutions surfacing.
In fact, we have lost more African Americans on our streets in the United States than we lost in the “wars on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. In those 10- to 12-year wars, which involved some of the most sophisticated and technologically superior weapons in modern time, approximately 12,000 U.S. soldiers were killed. In that same time span, we lost approximately 25,000 African Americans per year to gang-related and other forms of violence. Also during that same 10 to 12 years, approximately 250,000 African Americans unnecessarily died at the hands of other African Americans. That’s a casualty count of more than 20 times our war dead, and all of it happened without demonstrations, investigations or special prosecutors. Do black lives really matter?
I believe that the situation is so severe that it has earned the term “epidemic.” And this is not just a problem for African Americans, because epidemics don’t stop in just one neighborhood or in one city or in one state; they spread to all communities. America can no longer sit idly by and let this disastrous detrimental activity take place. If we can spend billions of dollars on wars in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and other countries, we should be willing to invest in combating this epidemic at home. It is time for America to address this epidemic with the same vigor and energy that we address matters in other countries. We must do so because this crime has serious consequences.
In the short term this crime perpetrates itself in the following manner: Many of the young men who are involved in gang wars and who are killed or incarcerated leave thousands of children without a father. This also leaves a large number of single female parents to raise these children, ultimately creating an enormous economic burden for society.
Keep in mind that the minimum cost to house one inmate is $25,000 per year, and that doesn’t include the cost of feeding, housing and educating those children left behind. And one can only speculate about the lost advancements in technology or the breakthroughs in medicine that lie needlessly dead on the asphalt with each slaying of a young person.
So again I ask the rhetorical question: Do black lives really matter?
Hezekiah Brown is a resident of Elizabeth City. This column was originally published in The Daily Advance.
http://www.reflector.com/opinion/other-voices/hezekiah-brown-make-black-lives-matter-2859017
