WASHINGTON — Say their names: Secoreia Turner. Davon McNeal. These are just two of the children who lost their lives to senseless acts of violence that occurred over the Fourth of July weekend.
The loss of a child in any manner is always a heartfelt event, but the causes of their deaths makes them that much more tragic. Our hearts mourn for them, their families and communities.
The loss of these young lives is incredibly sad. They are also maddening on two fronts: The first being the loss of potential. We’ll never know what these youngsters could have been, or what they would have grown into; the contributions they were destined to make. The second is the way these tragedies were immediately fashioned into a stick, used to poke their communities. We see this time and again, always coming in the form of a question: "What about Black-on-Black crime?" With everything that is happening in the streets right now with the Black Lives Matter movement, the stick has become even more pointed.
The implication of this question is that somehow Black people don’t feel any sense of outrage. That we are fine with these deaths. I could say the same about any group of people that would allow mass shootings to occur in schools and seemingly accept them as a price of living with a certain level of freedom.
I could, but I don’t, because I know that the vast majority of those people are appalled by them and want controls put into place to try to stop them. Just as I know that the community is appalled by the violent crime within it. I know this because we’ve been talking about it for years. In music. In movies. Television specials. Community forums. All being done in an effort to stop the violence and make a change. The Black Lives Matter movement was conceived with a specific agenda in mind: Addressing violence committed against the Black community through unjust police tactics and a biased judicial system. That’s the struggle they’ve taken on. To think that those within the movement don’t care about the crimes happening around them is insulting. As insulting as the question itself.
If you should find yourself wanting to ask this question, think about where it’s coming from, and what you are trying to say by asking it. Black-on-Black crime is not a thing, intracommunity crime is, and only one community’s crimes are held out as a moral failing.
The reality is where there is poverty, where there is hopelessness, there is crime. It has been that way throughout the history of man. We know this as a society, yet we offer nothing but condemnation and judgment as a way out. Ask yourself why.