The Narratives are all over the place on the shooting. Here’s yet another at the NY Times
ON Wednesday night, while my son watched TV, I logged on to Facebook to check my friends’ updates. Immediately I saw a post about a shooting at Emanuel A.M.E., a historic black church in downtown Charleston that is a stone’s throw from my office at the College of Charleston. I made my son turn from his show to the news coverage. We stayed up and discussed what had happened. I prayed that I didn’t know anyone who had died, but I did.
Today Charleston, nicknamed the Holy City, is in mourning. We are still dealing with last month’s shooting of an unarmed black man in a northern suburb, and in the hours since this latest shooting, many of us in the African-American community were left asking: Is there any sanctuary left?
Five years ago, my ex-husband and I jumped at the chance to leave the violence of Chicago’s South Side to forge a life in a safer, culturally rich community. In hopes of a better life, we eagerly joined the numbers of other African-Americans “returning†south in a wave of reverse migration.
And for a while things were good. But then Trayvon Martin was gunned down in Florida, and almost instantly black people seemed to be under attack. Then came the police shootings of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Walter Scott — just a few miles away, in North Charleston — revealing the threat of violence we face every day. And this month we saw the footage of teenagers being manhandled by the police in Texas and Ohio.
Interesting. Everything’s Super Bad. Of course, Charleston has a crime index of 25, meaning that it is safer than 25% of US cities. There is just a 1 in 568 chance of being a victim of a violent crime, with just 1.86 violent crimes per 1,000. The national rate is 3.8. Property crime is right around the national median.
Chicago has a crime index of 11. The chance of being a victim of a violent crime is 1 in 111, with a rate of 9.0 per 1,000. Property crime is 8 points over the national average.
For me, last night’s events signal several visceral truths. One, that we African-Americans have no sanctuary. Charleston is a wonderful city, but in some very real ways, my children are no safer here than they were in Chicago.
No, they are very much safer in Charleston. It is less of a liberal city, one which believes in law and order, and, let’s face it, one which has not achieved majority-minority status yet.
This daily threat of terror does not exist within a vacuum. It looms within the growing prison-industrial state, against the backdrop of school-reform debates, our slow movement toward gun reform and the political maneuvers by Republicans to make it increasingly more difficult for poor people and minorities to vote. The reality that our civil rights are under attack is just as heavy as our fear for our lives.
Do you know what is a threat? 50% of the violent crime is perpetrated by a race that represents just under 14% of the population.
That means committing ourselves, as the black community, to fixing the systemic barriers — in education, employment and housing — to black upward mobility that make it virtually impossible for poor African-American children to ever catch up with their white counterparts.
Then teach your kids to take learning seriously, rather than thinking “that’s white”. Teach them respect. Teach them to avoid violence. Teach them about family. Tell them to put away the hardcore rap which extols violence and treating women like whores. Teach them about working hard, rather than being on the government dole. Most violence against Blacks is perpetrated by Blacks, what is termed “Black in origin” crime. Teach them that rioting, looting, and violence in their own neighborhoods is a great way to make sure no one wants to ever invest in the community. Eric Holder stated that we can’t be cowards when it comes to discussing race. Blacks need to take the initiative to clean their own house, rather than just blamestorming. Personally, I refuse to take any blame anymore.
