A correct diagnosis is needed for a positive solution

By A. Peter Bailey
TriceEdneyWire.com Columnist

If any problem is to be successfully dealt with, it must first be correctly diagnosed. One of the biggest problems confronting many inner-city Black neighborhoods is too many low-income Black males killing other low-income Black males. Needless to say that is not the way such crimes are diagnosed in most of the press and by Black “leaders.”

In newspaper articles and on radio and television news programs, the focus is always on “Black males killing Black males,” which is technically accurate but if one is to assess the situation correctly with the goal of developing a solution it is more accurate to speak about “low-income Black males killing other low-income Black males” which is the case in a huge majority of such incidents.

The reality is if those low-income Black males were killing, at the same rate, white homeless males, not to mention white executives, they would be stopped by the city’s top officials by any means necessary.

If they were killing young people from middle-income Black families, they would be stopped. If the police didn’t act, the middle-income families would find a way to stop the killing of their children. This basically means that low-income Black males, without their realizing it, are being allowed, even sometimes encouraged, to kill one another. They mistakenly believe they are getting away with the killings, that they have beaten the system when they are not punished or barely punished for those killings when all the while they are doing just what the system wants them to do.

A second wrong diagnosis of the current situation is the insistence that most of the killings involve fights over drug turf or drug usage. There is no doubt that drugs are one of the factors in such criminal behavior but a careful examination reveals that many of the killings occur because one party believes, rightfully or wrongly, that another party has dissed him. The slightest incident — “you bumped into me and didn’t say excuse me,” “you looked at me the wrong way,” “you loud-talked me,” etc., — has much too often led to fatal confrontations. Dudes who have little else going for themselves are extremely sensitive about being “disrespected.” These aspects of the killings are often either ignored by the press, politicians and academicians who nearly always look for a drug angle.

Finally, much too often the very relevant fact that in most instances the killer or killers and the victim know each other, either personally or from a previous confrontation at a party or in a bar, is too often ignored. It’s not a case of strangers killing strangers. The question thus becomes how to stop people who know each other from killing each other. More police presence or carefulness can reduce strangers being killed; it is much more difficult to stop people who know each other from killing each other. Diagnosing the situation accurately is the first step in creating a solution to the extremely serious problem of low-income Black males killing other low-income Black males. Of course that presumes that the system is interested in a solution. Right now that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Journalist/Lecturer A. Peter Bailey, editor of Vital Issues: The Journal of African American Speeches can be reached at 202-716-4560.

This story originally published in the June 13, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.