The Epidemic of Violence and Fratricide in Chicago and America’s Dark Ghettos

The tragic death of Nykea Aldridge, the cousin of basketball star Dwayne Wade, has once again called the nation’s attention to the horrific human carnage afflicting Black neighborhoods in Chicago and across the country. Chicago has become the epicenter, the focal point of an internal epidemic of violence and murders that is causing excoriating pain, anguish and anxiety in Black America. It was the subject of Spike Lee’s film Chicrac, and the latest version of Barber Shop also dealt with the issue. On the very day that Nykea Aldridge was killed, Dwayne Wade participated in a ESPN Town Hall Meeting on the crisis in Chicago and First Take with Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman devoted an entire show to the issue. Within 24 hours of this tragic loss, four more people were killed in Chicago and 23 others were shot.

As Marvin Gaye might put it, “what’s going on” in Chicago and America’s “dark ghettos?” Several times a year, after incidents like the death of Nykea Aldridge, there are momentary peaks of interest as newspapers write yet another series of reports on the issue and television networks convene panels of pundits to pontificate on the crisis and highly publicized town hall meetings are held to explore the “causes and the cures.” Frankly, I am “sick and tired of being sick and tired” of the national head scratching on this life and death issue. The answer is both simple and complex, racism kills!

For years the Institute of the Black World 21^st Century has persistently decried the “State of Emergency” in America’s “dark ghettos,” a multifaceted crisis brought on by a racist “White backlash” against the “gains” of Blacks during the Civil Rights Movement. Since the Reagan era, rightwing politicians have fueled and exploited this backlash to dismantle jobs and economic programs perceived to be of benefit to Black people. Massive federal government disinvestment shredded the safety net of social, educational and economic programs which ameliorated conditions of poverty in urban inner-city neighborhoods. Programs like the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), that employed hundreds of thousands of Black youth in public service jobs, no longer exist. And, de-industrialization has deprived vast numbers of Black people of the opportunity to earn decent wages working in a virtually non-existent manufacturing sector. As Harvard Professor William Julius Wilson has documented, in many inner-city Black neighborhoods, “work has disappeared.” Joblessness, which includes those who have given up looking for work, ranges from 30-50% among young Black men in many urban neighborhoods.

Under these circumstances an illicit economy emerged, largely engaged in by a relatively small number of residents, centered around drugs and related activities; an economy which breeds violent turf battles to protect territories and a cycle of murders and retaliation which become a way of life in some distressed urban neighborhoods. Over time an erosion of values, and what Cornel West calls a kind of “nihilism” sets in that accounts for how a few within these neighborhoods can commit senseless acts of violence and murder with no apparent conscience.

Urban inner-city neighborhoods have been deliberately neglected and abandoned by government and private institutions at the local, state and federal level. In fact, the response to the plight of America’s “dark ghettos” has been to declare a “War on Drugs” and impose racially targeted police and criminal justice policies and practices that have resulted in the constant harassment, intimidation, arrest, detention and killing of Black people. Massive disinvestment, de-industrialization, the emergence of the illicit economy, “the War on Drugs” and racially biased police and criminal justice policies and practices – these are among the root causes of the crises of crime, violence and fratricide/murders in Chicago and similarly situated Black neighborhoods across the country. Racism kills!

During the discussion on First Take, Professor Michael Eric Dyson brilliantly and passionately made the case that jobs and justice would go a long way towards eradicating the epidemic of violence and fratricide. Hall of Fame basketball star Isaiah Thomas also pointed to the absence of investment in recreation and community centers in Black neighborhoods. What needs to be done is not rocket science, but America, this nation, refuses to act to heal Black families and communities. Racism kills!

It is obvious that massive resources in the form of jobs, economic development, housing and educational programs are urgently needed to address the crisis, something akin to a Domestic Marshall Plan to create safe, just and humane communities. But, while the head scratching and handwringing go on, inaction is the order of the day. If the chronic tragedies transpiring in Black communities were happening in White communities, a State of the Emergency would be declared and this nation would act with dispatch to address the crisis. The crises in cities like Chicago have a “disparate impact” or “discriminatory effect” on Black people. This constitutes structural/institutional racism. But, Black people are the “wrong complexion to get the protection.” Hence, the death and destruction goes on in the midst of a presidential election in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” Racism kills!

In many respects Jackie Robinson, a World War II veteran, was/is symbolic of all the men and women, the patient patriots, who paid the price for Colin Kaepernick to sit or kneel during the playing of the National Anthem and the salute to the Flag. Africans in America and people of conscience and goodwill should resolve to stand with and defend him in his righteous pursuit to end the oppression and injustice of Africans in America. No struggle, no progress!

Dr. Ron Daniels is President of the Institute of the Black World 21^st Century and Distinguished Lecturer at York College City University of New York. His articles and essays also appear on the IBW website www.ibw21.org and www.northstarnews.com. His weekly radio show, Vantage Point can be heard Mondays 10:00 AM – 12:00 Noon on WBAI, 99.5 FM, Pacifica in New York or streaming live via WBAI.org. To send a message, arrange media interviews or speaking engagements, Dr. Daniels can be reached via email at info@ibw21.org

In Defense of Colin Kaepernick’s “Stand”

[For publication the week of September 4, 2016]

The uproar continues over San Francisco 49ner quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s decision to sit-down, rather than stand, during the playing of the National Anthem. Kaepernick said his decision was intended to protest the continued injustices being inflicted on Black people, including police brutality and killings. Though the negative tide has turned somewhat, his protest was initially met with a torrent of criticism from various quarters. He was called everything but a child of God for refusing to “honor America” and our men and women in the armed forces. The “love it or leave it” sentiment was very strong.

Frankly, I was infuriated by these reactions. It made my blood boil. I was already upset and had spoken about the fact that social media exploded with criticism of African American gymnast Gabby Douglas when she inadvertently forgot to put her hand over her heart when the National Anthem was played during the Medal Ceremony at the Olympic Games in Rio. So, when I took to the airways for my weekly radio show Vantage Point on WBAI, 99.5 FM on the Pacifica Network in New York. I unleashed a commentary which made the following points (listen to the commentary at www.ibw21.org):

There is no law which states that anyone must stand during the playing of the National Anthem or the Pledge of Alliance to the Flag. It is a strongly held “custom” and societal expectation that one stand, but no law which compels it. On the contrary, Colin Kaepernick has a Constitutional Right to express his views through protest. Freedom of speech is one of the most important cornerstones of this imperfect union. It is one of the avenues through which change can be galvanized. And, Colin Kaepernick has courageously chosen to exercise his First Amendment Right to point out longstanding, persistent injustices, “intolerable acts” that are being heaped upon African Americans who are supposed to be full citizens of this nation.

Most importantly, generations of African Americans have paid the price for Colin Kaepernick and any Black person to sit during the playing of a flawed Anthem replete with hypocrisy. Every time I hear the words “that our Flag was still there” in the Anthem, I’m filled with anger/outrage. When the War of 1812 was fought some 3.5 million Africans were still enslaved and the 500,000 or so “free” Blacks could not vote and were subject to racial discrimination and violence. “Our Flag?” We didn’t have a Flag. For Black folks, singing that line and most of the Anthem is ludicrous!

That notwithstanding, Blacks have spilled blood to protect and defend America even when America refused to protect and defend Black people. From Crispus Attucks, who died in the initial skirmish of the American Revolution, to the hundreds of “freedmen” whom George Washington reluctantly armed to fight in the battles of Bunkers Hill and Breed Hill, to the thousands who took up arms to fight for our own freedom in the Civil War, Black people have fought, bled and died aspiring to be free in a nation which repeatedly rewarded our military service with a failure to protect and defend us as citizens. We have been among America’s most patient patriots.

Thousands of Black troops went off to fight Kaiser Wilhelm during the First World War to save democracy, only to return to the United States to be gunned down in the streets in their military uniforms in the “bloody red summer of 1919.” We fought against Hitler and Tojo in the Second World War to once again return to an America where we were not free. Soldiers fresh off the battlefields faced humiliation, intimidation, lynching/murders and police violence in the segregated South and “dark ghettos” in the North. Indeed, the hypocrisy of fighting for freedom and democracy abroad while being denied “freedom and justice for all” at home helped to fuel the civil rights, human rights, Black Power and Nationalists/Pan Africanists movements which have painstakingly pushed a reluctant nation toward a more perfect union. Up through the Korean Conflict, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, Black soldiers have bled and died in every America war.

We have paid the price for Colin Kaepernick to stand or sit, kneel, recognize or ignore a flawed Anthem and Pledge, particularly as his protest continues to illuminate the killing of Black men and women by the police in the streets of this country. Indeed, Frederick Douglas might well have whispered into the ear of Colin Kaepernick, “Right on Brother. What to Black people is your Anthem and your Flag!” Or Kapernick may have been inspired by an “American icon,” Jackie Robinson who reflected in his autobiography on standing for the Flag as he carried the weight of the race on his shoulders as the first African American to play Major League Baseball: “As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world.”