You Have Met the Enemy, And He Is You
I’ve written quite a bit lately about violence and black-on-black crime. And I will frankly admit that it did feel like it was getting to be a bit much. But this blog post is different. It is not about the Baptist Ministers Alliance. It is not about Shamus Patton. It is not about absentee black elected officials. It is not about Brandon Johnson or my counterpart Amos Brown. Right now, they are irrelevant to any meaningful conversation. This is about the community.
And when I say “community” I am not talking about black people in Indianapolis as a whole, I am talking about people who live in crime-ridden neighborhoods. I truly hope this message some how reaches them. At the end of the day, there is only going to be so much law enforcement, and the city at-large can do for you. We can arrest the bad guys after a crime has been committed. We can extend our sympathies for your losses. We can try to elect representatives who help create better schools and bring economic development to town. Unfortunately, we can’t make your neighborhoods safer; only you can.
My friends at the Star have an interactive map of all the homicides since 2006. If you click each year, you’ll notice most of the them occur in the middle third of Marion County. And a significant percentage take place on the near north sides of town.
Only you can report crime before it happens, when someone talks about getting even or you find an illegally possessed weapon in your home. Only you can teach your children how to act like they have some kind of home training. And most importantly, only you can say that you’ve had enough of the crime and violence in your communities. And when you say that and carry it out, you will find that most of your problems will go away. There’s a reason why you don’t see certain crimes committed in certain places. It’s because most people won’t tolerate that kind of behavior.
If you study history, the only real way people stop killing each other is when the parties involved stand up and say they’ve had enough. It’s time for the residents to take charge of their neighborhoods. There is a reason why criminals commit most of the crimes they do, where they do. It’s because they can get away with it because there is an atmosphere of tolerance. Let’s be honest, your children are out of control because you have allowed them to be out of control.
I truly believe that the early Tuesday shooting that killed two people and injured several more could have been avoided if someone had stepped up and said something. This was not a random act, but someone targeting someone else. And somebody knew something before it happened. And had someone made a phone call or told someone, maybe things would have turned out differently.
There is only so much outside forces can accomplish. They can march, rally, knock on doors and hold prayer vigils, but there’s only so much the rest of us can do. As I’ve written earlier, more than half this city’s homicides have been young black men. And until crime-ridden communities say they’ve had enough, it’s an unfortunate statistic that will continue to grow.
It’s time to step up folks! Too many people have been victims of violence in this town. Violence that could have probably been avoided if someone would have stepped up. If this recent incident doesn’t wake people up, then to be honest, I don’t know what will.
And by the way, before someone comes here talking about some white folks, here’s a stat for you to chew on, Nearly 2,500 blacks were killed by lynching in America between 1882 and 1930. Nearly 6,800 blacks were killed by homicide in America in 2008, most by other blacks.
