While the Rev Al Sharpton was in Ferguson last Sunday, whipping up continued frenzy over the refusal of the grand jury to indict white Officer Darren Wilson for killing a black man who had just committed a robbery and when apprehended, tried to grab the officer’s gun, 8 black people were shot – 3 fatally – in Newark and 4 more at a baby shower in Brooklyn. These were all young adults whose lives were snuffed out or brutally impacted by other blacks, though no arrests have been made so far. A month ago, a black man used his car to plow into a crowd of black people who had also attended a baby shower, killing one and injuring two. The racial violence of black on black is a nightmare for law-abiding urban black citizens, most of whom understand that the police are there to protect them, not act as executioners. But for the Reverend Al, playing the race card has always been and continues to be his only modus operandi. It’s the ticket to his overwhelming acceptance by American political leaders, too intimidated to excoriate a lying tax cheat who profits from his motor-mouthed characterization of black people as continually oppressed and victims of white racism.
Numbers tell a different story than the narrative that’s been super-imposed on Ferguson. According to the FBI data for 2011: out of 2,695 black murder victims – 2,447 were killed by blacks. Though only 13% of our national population, blacks account for more than 50% of homicide victims, 94% of whom are killed by other blacks. When we look for reasons for poverty and criminality, there are two overriding statistics that govern their predictability – education and being raised in a single parent family. According to the Schott Foundation, only 52% of black males graduate from high school within 4 years (compared with 58% Latinos and 78% whites) and perhaps most significantly, 73% of black children are being raised by a single mother (Fed Center for Disease Control). What we see is that black children are most victimized by the disintegration of black family life and the resultant difficulty they face in completing their education and becoming gainfully employed. Without those two pre-requisites, there is a tsunami of possibilities for drug and alcohol addiction, mental problems, poverty, criminality, homelessness, disease and death by violence.