There can no longer be any doubt that certain people in America have a deep-seated atavistic horrific fear of black people, particularly black children.
We all know what happened to 16-year-old Ralph Yarl after he knocked on the wrong door in Kansas City. Ralph is hardly 5’ 8” and 140 lbs dripping wet. He’s not a threatening presence. He’s not scary. He’s in marching band and orchestra.
But it’s worse than that.
Not only was he shot in the head and the arm by a panicked terrified 84-year-old white man. After he fled he had to visit three different houses looking for help before he received any. And at that third house, he was forced to kneel in the yard with his hands up until he passed out.
Can you imagine?
Can you put yourself in his shoes, if you wandered up to the wrong house at 16-years-old that the response was two bullets, and then you’d have to literally grovel for help afterward?
This is not an isolated case. It’s not even that rare. It’s almost identical to what happened to Renisha McBride and Jonathan Ferrell.
Two weeks ago—a year and four days after Moore’s children died—Renisha McBride, a nineteen-year-old African-American woman, was involved in a car accident in a Detroit suburb at around 1 A.M. In the hazy series of events that followed, McBride, who was intoxicated, knocked at the door of Theodore Wafer, a white homeowner who fired a shotgun through his screen door and killed her. It had been less than two months since Jonathan Ferrell, a twenty-four-year-old African-American, was killed by police in Charlotte, North Carolina, after crashing his car into an embankment and knocking on the door of a nearby home, whose owner called 911 to report a robbery in progress.
On Friday, the Wayne County prosecutor, Kym Worthy, announced that Wafer would be charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter. Worthy discounted the role of race in the events of that night in Dearborn Heights—her decision to bring charges, she said, had “nothing to do whatsoever with the race of the parties.” But for McBride’s family and many observers in Detroit and beyond, there is a lineage of suspicion that binds the disparate events listed above.
Why?
What is driving this fear? How can anyone be this afraid of children?
Sadly, there are many answers to those questions. None are very satisfying.
Sigh.
We had thought that we had turned a corner with the election of Barack Obama as President. That we had crossed a bridge from centuries of hate, fear and loathing of the past to a new dawn of racial reconciliation.
We were wrong.
We do know that the most common portrayal of black youth in the media is of violent hoodlums. Of gangsters. Young, vicious and dangerous.
We all know what we’re talking about here.
This is the poster for the movie “Juice” as it was originally conceived, but wasn’t released. The gun you see in the hands of Tupac Shakur was obscured in the final version. That weapon and how it warped the friendship of several young men was the central plot point of the movie. Apparently, actually showing a black man with a gun on a movie cover was too hot an issue. For some people, that was too frightening an image. I wrote about this issue some years ago, it certainly wasn’t limited to this movie. For a time, it was an epidemic.
People see a black kid, they imagine that kid is armed and dangerous. They imagine that kid is a vicious thug. They imagine they need to take extraordinary measures to protect themself.
Then bang.
We know that there are many shootings in “Democrat cities” such as Chicago. We are told this all the time. When people say “Democrat cities” what they really mean is Black. What they’re really talking about is black kids.
They don't stop to wonder why that is the case. They don’t really even question the assumption, because in many ways it’s not even true.
The twenty cities with the highest violent crime rates (number of incidents per 100,000 people) are:
- St. Louis, MO (2,082)
- Detroit, MI (2,057)
- Baltimore, MD (2,027)
- Memphis, TN (2,003)
- Little Rock, AR (1,634)
- Milwaukee, WI (1,597)
- Rockford, IL (1,588)
- Cleveland, OH (1,557)
- Stockton, CA (1,415)
- Albuquerque, NM (1,369)
- Springfield, MO (1,339)
- Indianapolis, IN (1,334)
- Oakland, CA (1,299)
- San Bernardino, CA (1,291)
- Anchorage, AK (1,203)
- Nashville, TN (1,138)
- Lansing, MI (1,136)
- New Orleans, LA (1,121)
- Minneapolis, MN (1,101)
- Chicago, IL (1,099)
As you can see, Chicago is #20 on the list of most violent cities. Lots of places, in Red States, like Indiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and Missouri are more violent.
If you look at violent counties rather than cities the picture again changes drastically.
1. Orleans Parish, Louisiana
Homicide rate: 43 homicides per 100,000 people
Median household income: $36,792
New Orleans crime index: 6 out of 100
Orleans Parish, while the smallest parish by land area in Louisiana, has the highest homicide rate not only in the state but in the country. Orleans Parish is home to almost 400,000 people and includes New Orleans, the largest city in the state. New Orleans accounts for the majority of the homicides in this county, and in a metro to metro area comparison, it has a higher homicide rate than Chicago. Just 85 percent of Orleans Parish residents have a high school diploma, lower than the national average of 88 percent. 27 percent of county residents live in poverty.
2. Coahoma County, Mississippi
Homicide rate: 37 homicides per 100,000 people
Median household income: $28,851
Clarksdale crime index: 2 out of 100
Cahoma County is one of two counties from Mississippi to make the top 10. Even as a small county with just over 25,000 residents, Cahoma County is no stranger to violent crime. The county seat of Clarksdale had over 150 violent crimes in 2015, and with a population of about 16,000; that means almost 1 violent crime for every 100 residents. 35 percent of residents of Clarksdale live below the poverty line, and 1 in 5 residents are not high school graduates.
3. Phillips County, Arkansas
Homicide rate: 34 homicides per 100,000 people
Median household income: $26,844
Helena-West Helena crime index: 2 out of 100
Phillips County is another rural county to make this list, with a population of just under 22,000. The county seat is Helena-West Helena. Neighborhood Scout gives Helena-West Helena a crime index of just 2 out of 100, thanks in large part to 166 violent crimes in a population of just over 11,000. In addition to having the lowest median household income on this list, just 77.1 percent Helena-West Helena have a high school diploma, also lowest among these cities.
4. St. Louis City, Missouri (tie)
Homicide rate: 33 homicides per 100,000 people
Median household income: $35,599
St. Louis crime index: 1 out of 100
The city of St. Louis, which is an independent city and doesn’t fall within any county, has one of the highest rates of murder in the nation. While ranking fourth on this list, St. Louis’ murder rate has actually skyrocketed over the past few years, topping the 50 mark in 2014 and 2015. It is the only city on this list with a crime index of one, the second lowest score among this top 10. Just 84 percent of St. Louis residents have a high school diploma, and over 27 percent live below the poverty line.
4. Baltimore City, Maryland (tie)
Homicide rate: 33 homicides per 100,000 people
Median household income: $42,241
Baltimore crime index: 2 out of 100
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the country with over 620,000 residents, and like St. Louis, it has a historically high murder rate. After a period from 2007-2014 where total murders were in the 200s, Baltimore has gone over the 300 murder mark each of the last two years and is on pace to approach similar numbers in 2017. Just 82.5 percent of residents have a high school diploma, and almost a quarter live in poverty. The tension between residents and police reached a boiling point in 2015, after the death of Freddie Gray. Peaceful protests turned into a full-blown riot as police officers were pelted with rocks. Over the course of subsequent riots, over 20 police officers were injured, at least 250 arrests were made and nearly 300 businesses were damaged.
6. Petersburg City, Virginia
Homicide rate: 32 homicides per 100,000 people
Median household income: $31,798
Petersburg crime index: 10 out of 100
Petersburg is an independent town with a population just over 30,000, making it the smallest independent city on the list. Just 77.9 percent of residents have a high school diploma in Petersburg, and 28 percent of residents live in poverty. Petersburg also has a high rate of property crime, and their unemployment rate has stayed above the national average since 2001.
Again, Chicago is not in the Top 10, although all of these areas have either a plurality or majority black population. It’s also true that all of these areas involve people who are living largely in poverty.
Is it possible that high rates of crime have more to do with poverty than with race?
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, yes.
Poor whites and blacks had higher rates of violent victimization than poor Hispanics. The overall pattern of persons in poor households having the highest rates of violent victimization was consistent for both non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks (figure 4).
The rate of violent victimization was 46.4 per 1,000 for poor whites and 43.4 per 1,000 for poor blacks. For both groups, persons in high-income households had the lowest rates of violence. However, this pattern did not hold for Hispanics.
In 2008–12, the rate of violent victimization for Hispanics did not vary significantly across poverty levels. At each of the poverty levels measured, there was no statistically significant difference between whites and blacks in the rate of violent victimization. Among persons in mid and high-income households, the rates of violence were similar for whites, blacks, and Hispanics. However, poor whites and blacks had higher rates of victimization than poor Hispanics (25.3 per 1,000). Poor Hispanics had similar rates of violence as blacks living in high-income households (22.7 per 1,000).
The rate of violence among Blacks and Whites per household income is virtually the same with Hispanics being the outlier. Time and time again, the numbers show us that so-called “Black on black” violence is almost exactly the same as “White on White” violence.
Is that what the media tells us? Is that what we see news reports about? Is that what we see in our movies?
Let’s recall that just as we had this recent shooting of Ralph Yarl, we also had the shooting of a young 20-year-old girl because she was in a car that drove into the wrong driveway.
Washington County Sheriff Jeffrey Murphy announced on Monday that 65-year-old Kevin Monahan has been charged with second-degree murder for shooting and killing 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis on Saturday evening.
Gillis was driving with friends in Hebron, New York, a little over 200 miles north of New York City. The group was about 19 miles away from Gillis' home on Schuyler Street in Schuylerville when they attempted to turn their car around, the sheriff said in the briefing.
That's when Monahan came out on his porch and fired two shots at the car, one of which hit Gillis, police said.
There’s also the case of the cheerleaders who were shot at for mistaking their car for another.
A man has been arrested after two Texas cheerleaders were shot, one critically, after one of them mistakenly got into the wrong car, according to police and the owner of the gym where they trained.
Officers in Elgin, about 25 miles northeast of Austin, responded to reports of shots fired outside an H-E-B supermarket around 12:15 a.m. local time (1:15 a.m. ET) Tuesday, the Elgin Police Department said in a news release.
"Information suggests that an altercation occurred in the parking lot of H-E-B, and multiple shots were fired into a vehicle," police said. Two of the car's occupants were struck by gunfire, with one victim sustaining serious injuries and transported by helicopter to a hospital, where they were listed in critical condition, police said.
The suspect, Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, has been charged with deadly conduct, a third-degree felony, police said.
These situations were clearly not racial, but they were obviously deadly. They were White-on-White violence, but does it get reported that way? Do we get told we should fear white girl’s in random cars?
It could be argued that the cycle of poverty and violence we see here goes back generations and that when it comes to the poor — they are often quite underserved by police. When violence happens to the poor, those cases tend not to be solved. Generally, the “clearance” rate for murder in the nation tends to be about 60%. But for black people in Chicago, just to use it as an example, that rate is far, far lower.
Among the nation's largest cities, Chicago stands out for both its high murder rate and for the number of its murders that go unsolved. In recent years the police have been solving about 4 of every 10 murders in the city, but police data show the rate is even worse when the victim is African American.
The data, obtained by WBEZ under Illinois' open-records law, show the city had 849 murders between the beginning of 2018 and this past July. When the victim was white, 47% of the cases were solved during those same 19 months. For Hispanics, the rate was about 33%. When the victim was African American, it was less than 22%.
Community members, academics and police officials seem to agree on something: At the base of the department's failure to solve murders is a lack of trust.
Basically, 8 out of 10 murders of black people in Chicago remain unsolved without a suspect, and without an arrest.
Again, can you imagine what that must be like? That lack of trust between police and the public is so deep that people who may know something won’t report it — because most realize that the police can’t protect them if they come forward as a witness. And — just as the NRA often recommends — many out of frustration may take their own self-defense (and retaliation for various attacks) into their own hands. It’s a wild-west situation that has no apparent end in sight.
I grew up in South Central Los Angeles, where I was a member of the marching band and had to watch out both for the CRIPS who might steal my lunch money or violently assault me and also look out for the police who clearly cared nothing about stopping actual crime but had plenty of time to annoy and harass any young man who (with his own money) was driving a nice car through a poor neighborhood. I didn’t know anyone who didn’t have a gun in their house, including my own.
So when I see the shooting of Ralph Yarl, I recognize that experience.
Being automatically distrusted. Being automatically profiled and disrespected. Being automatically assumed to be the worst possible person.
I know what that is. I’ve lived through what that is.
And mostly, I received that treatment from police. The people who are supposed to be protecting me from the actual bad guys. We all had to be out for ourselves because no one else was out to help us. It is possible to escape poverty, it is possible to escape violence. It’s not quite as possible to escape the fear and suspicion over things you yourself have never done.
And they wonder why some black people are kinda angry. Why some of us are easily annoyed and often upset? You really don’t have to ask. The reason is obvious. It’s not just something we have imagined, we’ve lived it.
Can you imagine how all of this has impacted poor Ralph?
“[He is] able to communicate mostly when he feels like it, but mostly he just sits there and stares, and the buckets of tears just rolls down his eyes," said his mother, Cleo Nagbe. “You can see that he is just replaying the situation over and over again, and that just doesn’t stop my tears either."
Nagbe said "residual effect" of the shooting would remain with her son "for quite a while," and 84-year-old Andrew Lester, who admits he shot the boy on his front porch, could face up to life in prison after he surrendered on charges of first-degree assault and armed criminal action.
He’s scarred for life. Inside and out. Hopefully, he heals, but there’s no guarantee of that is there?