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Jewish World Review /Nov. 20, 1998 /1 Kislev, 5759
Walter Williams
Tragedy in black neighborhoods
THE LEARNING CHANNEL and Discovery Channel both feature shows about medical trauma centers
around the United States. Many trauma patients suffer from gunshot and stabbing wounds. Some
of them are gang-bangers, but quite a few are innocent victims of drive-by shootings or stray
bullets through walls or windows.
Doctors and social workers are shown consoling grieving friends and family members,
sometimes having to tell them their loved one died, or is brain dead, or will never walk
again.
Some of the justifications given for the shooting or stabbing by the victim, his family or
friends defy imagination. The victim might have worn the wrong color jacket or looked at the
perpetrator the wrong way. The victim might have stepped on the foot or brushed against the
perpetrator, or he might have dated the wrong girl in the wrong neighborhood. Most often, the
victim is black and the perpetrator is, not a policeman, not a white person but another black
person.
Sometimes, the victim's family mentions the tragedy of day-to-day life in black
neighborhoods, a life that no one should have to live. Nights punctuated by sounds of
gunfire. People afraid to come to their windows or serving meals on the floor for fear of
stray bullets. Parents wondering whether their children will get through a school day safely.
Parts of black life in some neighborhoods, not featured on TLC and Discovery programs,
include law-abiding people living behind bars, facing wanton property destruction, traveling
miles outside of their neighborhoods in order to access supermarkets and other stores.
What is seen today in black neighborhoods is entirely new. Psycho-babblers tell us it's a
result of poverty, discrimination and a legacy of slavery. During the '40s and '50s, I lived
in North Philadelphia's Richard Allen housing project. Nights were not punctuated by gunfire.
Many residents seldom locked their doors. Within a few blocks, there were supermarkets and
many stores that attracted both neighborhood and non-neighborhood shoppers, not to mention
providing full-time and part-time employment opportunities. I hope there's no psycho-babbler
stupid enough to explain North Philadelphia's, as well as other slum neighborhood's, greater
civility in the '40s and '50s by saying back then blacks weren't as poor, didn't face as much
discrimination and were unencumbered by a legacy of slavery.
What's seen in black neighborhoods is easy to explain: Black people have accepted it. You
say, "Williams, what do you mean, black people accepted it?" Let me put it this way: Would
black people sit still for the nonsense of psycho-babblers, politicians and civil-rights
leaders if white thugs and sociopaths were coming to their neighborhoods shooting, stabbing
and battering black people? My guess is black people would arm themselves and stop it. Being
shot or stabbed by a black person is just as devastating as being shot or stabbed by a white
person.
By the same token, black people living in fear and their neighborhoods being turned into
wastelands by blacks should be no more tolerable than if the same thing was done by whites.
It's not totally true that black people have accepted the day-to-day mayhem in their
communities. Those with means to do so leave. But that's not an option for many. The solution
calls for law-abiding black people to build an unyielding intolerance for crime and property
destruction. If the civil authorities won't do their job of ensuring safety, that simply
means black people must bring political pressure and at the same time organize privately to
guarantee neighborhood safety -- by any means
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