2.04.2009

excuse or cause?


Black on black crime has suddenly dropped. Stopped in some cities, as if death really has, as in that old 30's movie, taken a holiday.

Self hate leads to brother/sister hate which leads to places where it's not safe for kids to play ball in front of their house. It leads to the triplets indoors all day most days, which leads to me taking it personal: black on black crime.

So I'm rejoicing that it's down, and I know it has to do with Obama. But I'm also worried.

"Every child has lost every excuse," pipes Congressman James Clyburn at the (first ever) BET honors awards in D.C. Oh? I know Obama brings more hope - to all of us but especially to the black boys inhaling black-is-bad messages daily, and learning so early that they have to be bad just to be safe.

But hope isn't therapy for violent trauma. Hope isn't food and it isn't healthy food or a place to exercise when you find yourself fifteen and obese. Hope isn't a yard to play in or a teacher who likes you. Hope isn't the spiritual fortitude to forgive the parent who beats you and to passively resist the twelve-year-old who wants to kill you and bought a straw-bought handgun to do it with.

Hope isn't a man. Hope isn't an excuse to blame children. Hope is many men and women--adults--courageously and persistantly facing and removing causes. Hope is or should be the end of denial and apathy.

Blaming the victim widens the chasm of misunderstanding between the races. Let's not give kids excuses to give up by ignoring true causes. Let's listen to their stories, and to the stats.
I need to write about Bryan.

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