← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 11561 | Posts: 19 | Started: 2003-12-21
2003-12-21 09:28 | User Profile
I'm so inured to "meaningful" stories like this that nowadays the only possible response is to laugh at them. Here, a Negress - at least I assume it's a [I]she [/I] with a name like 'Adamma' - assumes the SOP sober-yet-hip tone as she essentially recycles a story that 'alternative' weeklies like The Voice run every few years, the same as they do with AIDS stories. First, note that - although the purported message of this thing is 'we be killins each other!' there is [I]always [/I] that surly undertone - this time unspoken, but it's there, it's there, implied with a ball-peen hammer - that this is somehow the fault of 'the cops' or 'the politicians', thus 'the white power structure', thus 'the whites'.
This is the one unending, never-changing core of all these urban-hell stories. Underneath all the hatred and resentment of whites is the grudging, sotto-voce mutter of 'help us, you white muthafukka!' As if anyone of [I]any [/I] color could possibly "help" blacks from being murderous animals. Then there is the obligatory 'Reagan/Bush policies done [I]made [/I] us kill each other fo six dollaz' okeydoke that - by this point - only burrheads (and learned white academics) believe. Look, nobody despises Bush, pere and fils, more than Yrs Truly, but blacks would be free-range savages whether or not we were at war with Iraq. What none of these piercing social critiques ever touches upon is that when segregation ruled and white cops regularly busted heads in black neighborhoods, five year olds weren't routinely shot dead in crack-gang turf battles. Just as needles under fingernails wouldn't get this writer to fess up that (in NYC at least) the 'race-iss' policies of Giuliani (ie, cops busting heads in Darktown) was the secret recipe to those momentarily-lower murder totals Ms Ince crows about. This state of cradle-to-grave dependance/defiance towards their moral and intellectual superiors never ends - and I had to chuckle at one line in this story that proves how clueless even the most articulate mooncricket is to what they laughingly call Reality: she asks, referring to yet another waste-of-time government program budgeted to keep niggas from actin' like niggas, "Why, in a time of economic duress, are taxpayers kicking out so much money for this?"
Because we're not doing it [I]willingly[/I], dumbass. The taxpayers are [B]never [/B] consulted on these matters; we're simply raped by the politicians at will. Were it up to [I]us[/I], you people would be cordoned off behind an electrified fence to kill each other until the overpowering stench of death signalled that your numbers had at last thinned out to a managable total.
Civility is not the natural state of the black man and can never be (how else can you explain a sentence like "when the killings bottomed out at 580, [I]people breathed a sigh of relief as it seemed that the crisis had subsided[/I]"?); thus civility must be [I]enforced[/I] upon them.
The benefit accrued from the tactics of the bad old days of segregation and police racism was that most blacks got to make it past 11 years old and could at least walk their [I]own [/I] streets without fear....but like most minorities carefully reared under Jewish indoctrination, Ince will not settle for anything less than utter fantasy beyond any prayer of actualization. So instead of arriving at '4' when she adds 2 + 2, she prefers to turn to the sages like "Chuck D" for the answers, and quotes (with a straight face somehow!) black "educators" who explain away constant gunshots and street homicide with "these kids are acting up again"(!). Uneducable, even when they're "educated".
Ms Ince should have turned to any garden-variety white racist if she were truly interested in the answer to "why are we killing each other, and when will this end?" It's because you are black, ma'am; and as long as you're allowed to move about without strict white supervision, it will [I]never [/I] end. [B]Never[/B].
[url]http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0348/ince.php[/url]
[QUOTE][COLOR=DarkOliveGreen][FONT=Book Antiqua][SIZE=4]Double Dutch in a War Zone[/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR] by Adamma Ince with additional research by Christine Lagorio November 26 - December 2, 2003
[COLOR=Navy][SIZE=3][FONT=Times New Roman]There is no greater pain for a parent than to have a child die, except perhaps watching that child gunned down in the streets in cold blood. In one breath you could be looking into the eyes of the life you have sworn to protect; in the next, you're wailing over an innocent, lifeless body. On November 17, the parents of eight-year-old Deasean Hill felt that agony when their little boy was shot dead on the streets of East New York as he walked home with his stepfather and siblings. Though devastating in its own right, the murder of Deasean is just one of many, as rampant violence continues to plague Black communities throughout this city—despite assurances by the NYPD, the mayor's office, and the headlines that New York is safer than it's ever been, for everyone.
Just look at the bulletins flashing on the police department's website, boasting of a hard-earned victory in the "war on crime":
"Homicides are at a 40-Year Low"
"Overall Crime is Down Another 6% this Year; 11% Over the last 2 Years"
"NYC Leads the Nation in Crime Fighting"
The messages offer no consolation to mothers like Deasean's, who suffer the reality of the streets. "I was afraid something like this would happen," Kimberly Hill told UPN 9 News the day after her son got caught in the crossfire of drug dealers.
She was afraid, and she was right to be. Overall crime—break-ins, auto theft, loitering—may be down, but several city precincts, from the Bronx to Queens, are experiencing significant increases this year in murder, shootings, and other forms of violence. Last weekend alone, four people died in a wave of six shootings, 10 knifings, and one attack with a baseball bat.
If you live in Brooklyn neighborhoods like Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York, no one has to tell you what's going on. In the 73rd Precinct, part of Brownsville, overall crime through the end of September was down 8.94 percent—but murder was up 50. In the 81st Precinct, in Brownsville/Bed-Stuy, that same period saw total crime fall by 7.23 percent—but murder rose 62.5.
Meanwhile, in the 77th Precinct, Crown Heights, crime dropped 6 percent—but murder in September alone spiked 400 percent over the same period last year.
The situation has gotten so bad that the city opened a special court this year to handle felony gun cases from the five Brooklyn neighborhoods that account for a quarter of the city's shootings, from Crown Heights to Flatbush.
"How you look at crime depends on which spin you accept," says one African American cop who lives in my Bed-Stuy neighborhood. "You can say that crime is down in New York City and be absolutely right—the statistics back that up.
"But there's another side to the story," he continues, willing to talk but not comfortable being identified. "Crime in minority neighborhoods is not accurately reflected by those stats. There are still too many serious crimes endangering the lives of those residents. So that if you live in Park Slope and your biggest fear is having your car stolen, then you can feel safe because car theft is down, but if you live in a place like Bed-Stuy, where shootings are up, then there is cause for concern."
The scene after a shooting is always the same: The blaring of what sounds like a hundred sirens saturates the area, shocking all senses into alert. Within seconds, a stampede of NYPD officers stops you in your tracks. Neighbors surface from behind dumpsters and cars, or file out from their homes, asking "What happened this time?" and "Where my kids at?" Within an hour, officers secure the area with yellow tape, keeping bystanders from peeking at the victims lying in the street. At night, the flashing lights from the parked patrol cars and the smoking flares used for lighting cast a soothing red glow, as residents quietly watch the paramedics tend to the wounded. Body heat from the crowd traps a nauseating aroma of fresh blood.
That stench was waiting for me the night of October 6, around the corner at the Gates Avenue housing project. Like most parents who roll up after a shooting in the 'hood, my first instinct was to make sure it wasn't my daughter. As I made my way through the crowd, the story unfolded: A foot was lying perfectly still on the pavement—the shoe didn't look familiar, so I knew my kid was safe. The rest of the body was hidden by cops and ambulance workers and onlookers, but voices from the crowd filled in the blanks. "That girl's in bad shape, son. You see all that blood pouring from her head?" said a man behind me. "Word, she mad young—she can't be no more than 15. She shoulda been in the house," replied another.
Eventually, the victim was removed and people went back to their routines—five little girls jumped double Dutch a few feet from the pool of blood, though it was after 10 p.m. Adolescent males held court in front of the corner bodega, replaying the events as if they'd just watched a bloody Tarantino flick: "Yo, that nigga came out from nowhere and just started blasting, son," one of them said. He pointed to the bloody spot. "One minute love was standing up right there. The next minute she on the ground, shot the **** up."
Another guy joked about the need for bulletproof vests customized for the head, and they all broke down in laughter—a testament to the way violence becomes normal when ingested over a lifetime. Across the street, where older residents gathered, that normalcy showed its toll. "I'm tired, tired, tired of this bullshit," yelled a woman who appeared to be in her forties. "I been living in this stinking-ass ghetto all my life and it's always the same shit, day in and day out, shootings, stabbings, fighting, all kinds of unnecessary violence. We always talking about how much other people like to kill us, but we don't never talk about how we love to kill each other. It's like a damn hobby with y'all."
This was the third shooting I've come home to since July. It is clear that some streets, mine included, are just not as safe we've been told. "I've been noticing an alarming rise in gunshots around here lately," says Al Martin, assistant principal of a Brooklyn high school and a 15-year resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant. "These kids are acting up again, I don't know why. It could be lack of jobs or no supervision; it could be turf wars, drugs, gangs. Who knows, but there is definitely a rise in gun violence."
Despite the radical policing strategies implemented over the last few years, many Blacks are still living in war zones—in my neighborhood and around the nation. In 1997, this country saw 783 people murdered by juvenile gang members. At the time it was hard to envision an end to the violence. The following year, zero-tolerance strategies designed to tackle young thugs dropped that number to 628. In 1999, when the killings bottomed out at 580, people breathed a sigh of relief as it seemed that the crisis had subsided. But a new upswing in violence suggests yet another change for the community; in 2000, another 653 people were killed by thugs with guns, and by 2001 that count had ballooned to 865, breaking the 1997 record.
Relatively unnoticed by society at large, the violence crept back into the lives of Black folks.
Recognizing the ease with which the killing could again reach epic proportions, some leaders have taken to the streets with an urgent message for the youth. "Black-on-Black violence, stopping the violence, let's be real about it. The Ku Klux Klan don't have a damn thing on us," Malik Shabazz, leader of the New Black Panther Party, told hundreds of inner-city youth gathered on Fulton Street in September for the Million Youth March.
"As much as we talk about police brutality, we get right back at it. We're killing each other at a rapid rate," he scolded. "You quick to pull a gat from your pocket and say, Nigga, I'll kill you. We're quick to gangbang on each other, quick to kill each other. It has to end."
The inability to stop the bloodshed is mind-boggling, as everyone from Shabazz and Louis Farrakhan to Russell Simmons and Chuck D have spoken out against it. The conversation is never-ending among Blacks, but talk is as far as it goes until a little kid like Deasean dies and all of society is forced to look at Black violence. Then elected officials promise to work diligently until the problem is solved—or until the television cameras go away.
The right to safety should be a national issue. But getting the public to feel patriotic about this latest attempt to end bloodshed in the Black community comes at a time when most city residents couldn't feel safer. Images of Blacks gunned down in the streets no longer dominate the nightly news—out of sight, out of mind. Those thugs who survived the height of the old violence were swept into prison—one in three Black males between the ages of 20 and 39 is under supervision by the criminal justice system in some fashion. Reinforcing the comfort level, headlines claim that the social conditions responsible for the worst of the '80s and '90s—crack, gangs, and the economic hardships of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations—have improved enough that Blacks aren't as angry as before. For many outside these neighborhoods, the only threat to society as we know it are Osama bin Laden and his network of terror.
About the only time we hear of Americans gunned down in the streets, other than in Iraq, is in the resurrected theme of threats, gunshots, and dead bodies in rap music. Far too often those lyrics have jumped off wax and into the streets—the last year has seen the attempted murders of rappers Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, and Joe Budden and the murder of Jam Master Jay. Media images of young Blacks dying in the streets have been replaced with those of young Blacks dying in hip-hop.
The hype has eclipsed the community's cry for peace in the streets, and in some cases reduced the issue of Black-on-Black violence to one big moneymaking hoax. Last June, in an article entitled "Keepin' It Unreal," the Voice used artist 50 Cent, who lives in a hail of bullets, as a prime example of gangsta rap in its fakest form. The paper urged readers not to be taken in by the twisted tales of the 'hood as portrayed by the money-hungry rapper and his PR geniuses: "The sobering fact is that the streets as 50 presents them, brimming with shoot-outs and crack fiends, do not exist."
But what appears "unreal" to some is often brutally real for others, and while the Voice was stroking the sensibilities of those who actually live in a safer New York, residents of 50's Jamaica, Queens, neighborhood were drowning in the reality of his lyrics. "It is the worst killing streak in the 103rd since 1994," announced a four-page Newsday spread on September 28. The article laid out a compelling story, complete with photos of residents killed (none white), in one of the smallest yet most dangerous precincts in the city. Murder was up 178 percent there and shootings up 18.
Anyone still confused about what is really going on in the streets need only look at the actions of the NYPD for clarity. In January, Mayor Bloomberg announced that police would "flood" 61 "violent hot spots" throughout the city—neighborhoods, subway stops, and housing projects in predominantly Black and Hispanic communities like Brooklyn's East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Brownsville; Morris Heights in the Bronx; and Jamaica with 1,400 rookies fresh out of the academy. The initiative would be called Operation Impact. At the time, the mayor explained that while there was a 5.3 percent drop in crime overall, a 1.3 percent hike in shootings commanded swift attention. The program was slated to cost up to $10 million and last for three months, but has since been extended, twice, to the tune of $20 million in police overtime.
If, as the Voice professed, "gangsta rap today is as about as reflective of reality as, well, a reality show," why, in a time of economic duress, are taxpayers kicking out so much money for this?
For many residents, the rosy statistics and headlines just don't add up to their reality. "The last time I saw a dead body in the street was '97" says 36-year-old Trevor Moore, an electrician from Bushwick. "But in the last month or so I've seen two and heard about plenty more. Two dead bodies in one month is enough to tell me that something isn't right around here. The police vans that cruise around here every night are always full of criminals, and yet people are still dropping like flies. How you figure that?"
The relationship between crime, its decline, and the rising incarceration of Blacks has always been fuzzy. In the late 1980s, Benjamin Ward, an African American police commissioner, addressed a group of 150 journalists: "Our dirty little secret is out of the box. Most crime in this city is Black-on-Black crime. . . . Most crime in this city is committed by young Blacks under 30 years of age. . . . We are the victims and the perpetrators. . . . We should not try to hide it. We have to speak out about it."
But it's never been a secret that Blacks have been singled out as the main perpetrators of most of the city's crime. No period in history confirmed that more than the era famously dubbed "Giuliani Time." The mayor's notorious Street Crime Unit, unleashed throughout city ghettos in 1997, engaged in what courts have since deemed the illegal stop and frisk of thousands of Blacks. Strong-arm tactics led to a wave of police shootings, severe brutality, and endemic misconduct under the guise of fighting crime. Instead of getting better policing, the neighborhoods got worse—and more oppressive—policing. Crime dropped, but the neighborhoods became police states.
The question remains: How do you protect the people you target? Bloomberg dismantled the Street Crime Unit. Crime came back. Bloomberg created Operation Impact. This year, the Civilian Complaint Review Board says citizen reports are up again, by 21.6 percent. Blacks account for 51.1 percent of the substantiated complaints, compared to 20.4 percent for white residents.
And still, in the safest big city in the country, young Black males are 10 times more likely to be gunned down than white ones. "Shots go off, mothers cry./Death rate rise, homicide, Black-on-Black crime needs to stop./Y'all can't blame it on hip-hop," urges Wyclef Jean on his recently released album The Preacher's Son. " 'Cause what we say is what we see, what we see is reality./The ghetto's the ghetto, you got them living in sorrow,/Soon they won't live to see tomorrow."
Tomorrow has never come cheap for Black folks, and some say the price is growing. "I have no doubt that we are heading back to a time when violence was a fixture in our lives," says Bakari Kitwana, former executive editor of The Source and author of The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture.
"The tension on the street, in the 'hood, is very much like it was in the early '80s and '90s, and that is largely due not to rap music but to the changing economics—close to 3 million jobs have been lost in the last two years," he adds. "As usual we make up the bulk of the people unemployed. I think that now you have this growing intensification of these conditions. I mean, people are ready to explode. It seems like we're going back down that road, almost with a certain blindness, like people can't see it coming."
But it is predictable, relentlessly predictable. "Unfortunately violence is a part of Black inner-city culture," says S. Eric Blackwell, a professor of urban studies at Long Island University in Downtown Brooklyn. "I hate to say this, but we are almost like trained animals, bred to be volatile; our poverty, our morality, our circumstance—several things collide and it makes for combustible volatile situations at any given moment, and that part of us is expressed through rap music."
And that's where the crowd turns, to the poetry of the streets.
At the crime scene on my block, another shift of officers arrived to guard the scene until daylight. Exhausted, the older residents retired for the night, leaving the young males by the bodega rapping freestyle. The little girls still jumping double Dutch caught hold of the beat and jumped in rhythm—"They call me Superman, cause no other nigga can outrun bullets like I can./Girly over there was chillin' on the block when all of a sudden bullets started to rock./I ain't dumb, a nigga started to run./That's why her mama grieving now and I'm still breathing." The rest of the group made gunshot noises indicating that his lyrics had won the battle—life goes on in the 'hood.
Forty-eight hours later, blood would stain the entrance to another building, two blocks up on the corner of Gates and Nostrand avenues. The crime scene is always the same. [/FONT] [/SIZE] [/COLOR] [/QUOTE]
2003-12-21 09:49 | User Profile
They need another Garvey--or at the very least another Booker T. Washington.
Plessy's apartheid was a good thing for American Negroes. All of their better accomplishments--Jazz; the Harlem Renaissance; an independent Black film industry--were made under Jim Crow.
2003-12-21 10:04 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Adolescent males held court in front of the corner bodega, replaying the events as if they'd just watched a bloody Tarantino flick: "Yo, that nigga came out from nowhere and just started blasting, son," one of them said. He pointed to the bloody spot. "One minute love was standing up right there. The next minute she on the ground, shot the **** up."
Another guy joked about the need for bulletproof vests customized for the head, and they all broke down in laughterââ¬âa testament to the way violence becomes normal when ingested over a lifetime. [/QUOTE]
As you imply, the delusion here is that blacks' problems are somehow "cultural" with "culture" being radically divorced from "race."
But that's obviously nonsense. Black culture is largely a function of black genetics. It matters little where blacks find themselves in the world, they tend strongly to the anomic, jungle mentality expressed by these young bloods above and the little girls jumping rope:
[QUOTE]The little girls still jumping double Dutch caught hold of the beat and jumped in rhythmââ¬â"They call me Superman, cause no other nigga can outrun bullets like I can./Girly over there was chillin' on the block when all of a sudden bullets started to rock./I ain't dumb, a nigga started to run./That's why her mama grieving now and I'm still breathing." The rest of the group made gunshot noises indicating that his lyrics had won the battleââ¬âlife goes on in the 'hood. [/QUOTE]
Whites aren't like that, neither are Asians. Blacks are like that, and that's why nobody in their right mind would want them around. As the author said, "out of sight, out of mind." Indeed.
We have a right to separate from them. Blacks must be expatriated to Africa, there is no other way to ensure our survival. I think that we should build them a nice country with nice, modern infrastructure, just to assuage our consciences while understanding that after we leave it will look like Haiti in short order. They'll shite all over the place in less than a generation, because Negroes are what they are, and their genetic tendencies will always win out in the end.
It's sad, but true, but it's not our fault and we shouldn't have to pay for it. We just need to say good-bye to them. Tip them nicely, and send them on their way.
Good article, thanks for posting it.
Walter
2003-12-21 10:10 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Howard Campbell, Jr.]They need another Garvey--or at the very least another Booker T. Washington.
Plessy's apartheid was a good thing for American Negroes. All of their better accomplishments--Jazz; the Harlem Renaissance; an independent Black film industry--were made under Jim Crow.[/QUOTE]
That's a really good point. The best that blacks can hope for is to let whites run the infrastructure and maintain order, which lets them express their impressive artistic talents. But that won't work in the long run. Apartheid proved to be unstable, both here here and in Africa.
Blacks naturally tend to envy the relative success of whites and others (they kicked all the Indian merchant class out of central Africa 40 years ago), and whites especially tend strongly to feel guilty about their own position, a weakness preyed upon by our Tribal enemies to great effect.
So, even though it's a nice thought that blacks could enjoy a great betterment of their position in absolute terms, that can only come at the price of their acquiesing to permanent second place in relative terms, and the cussedness of human nature simply won't allow that.
We must separate. Out of sight, out of mind.
Walter
2003-12-21 13:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE]I think that we should build them a nice country with nice, modern infrastructure, just to assuage our consciences..... [/QUOTE]
We already did. They used to call it "America".
[QUOTE]Tip them nicely, and send them on their way.[/QUOTE]
Okay, but you get the tip.
Seriously, Walter, these two quotes of yours buttress a point I made elsewhere: I can't think of another group of savages in the history of the world whose victims have wasted so much concern on. The bleeding heart is almost the default position on blacks - it unites their most passionate defenders and harshest detractors alike. [I]Build them a nice country....tip them generously[/I]....I know where you're coming from and I still shake my head in disbelief. It's as if I broke into ypur home, raped your wife, cooked and ate your dog, shat on your sofa and wiped myself with your kids' baby pictures....and in response, you buy me a [I]house[/I]. Hello?
Let's draw straws instead, and the loser gets to shake a tin can at the families of the Wichita Four for donations. Hey - it's for a good cause...!
2003-12-21 14:55 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]What none of these piercing social critiques ever touches upon is that when segregation ruled and white cops regularly busted heads in black neighborhoods, five year olds weren't routinely shot dead in crack-gang turf battles.[/QUOTE]
I wonder if that was really the case, or did Whites, who were much more sensible about these things back then than we are today, just not waste a lot of time keeping track of black-on-black crime. I suspect that most of them had an attitude similar to Huck Finn's when he was asked if anyone was hurt when a cylinder-head exploded on a steamboat. A look at the history of songs like Stagger Lee and Frankie and Johnnie shows that the bro's been singin bout bussin a cap in each others ass for a long time.
Stagger Lee: [url]http://www3.clearlight.com/~acsa/stagroot.htm[/url]
Frankie and Johnnie: [url]http://www.umsl.edu/services/library/blackstudies/stacentc.htm[/url]
2003-12-21 16:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]We already did. They used to call it "America".
Okay, but you get the tip.
Seriously, Walter, these two quotes of yours buttress a point I made elsewhere: I can't think of another group of savages in the history of the world whose victims have wasted so much concern on. The bleeding heart is almost the default position on blacks - it unites their most passionate defenders and harshest detractors alike. [I]Build them a nice country....tip them generously[/I]....I know where you're coming from and I still shake my head in disbelief. It's as if I broke into ypur home, raped your wife, cooked and ate your dog, shat on your sofa and wiped myself with your kids' baby pictures....and in response, you buy me a [I]house[/I]. Hello?
Let's draw straws instead, and the loser gets to shake a tin can at the families of the Wichita Four for donations. Hey - it's for a good cause...![/QUOTE]
I know what you mean. I'm not saying that we owe it to them, or that the bleeding heart of whites is a good thing. I am saying that the practicalities of the situation - having to induce blacks to leave peacefully combined with whites' overweening need to feel good about themselves - mean that this will cost us big time.
But it's only money, as they say. We'll amortize it over 100 years. And just think of the upside. Hell, I'll bet getting rid of the drag blacks and their weird problems impose on the economy will result in such a productivity boost that the thing will largely pay for itself.
Walter
2003-12-21 16:06 | User Profile
I ran this article through an Ebonics translator. Or maybe I should say "re-translator" as the article above is probably a translation of something like this:
Double Dutch in uh War Zone by Adamma Ince wiff additional research by Christine Lagorio November 26 - December 2, 2003
There iz nahh greater pain fo' uh parent than ta gots uh child die, except perhaps watching dat child gunned down in da streets in cold blood. In one breath ya could be looking into da peeps o' da life ya gots sworn ta protect; in da next, you wailing over an innocent, lifeless body. On November 17, da parents o' eight-year-old Deasean Hill felt dat agony when they little boy wuz smok'd dead on da streets o' East New York as he walked home wiff his stepfather an' siblings. Though devastating in its own right, da murder o' Deasean iz just one o' many, as rampant violence continues ta plague Black communities throughout dis here cityââ¬âdespite assurances by da NYPD, da mayor'soffice, an' da headlines dat New York iz safer than it'sever been, fo' brothas.
Just peep at da bulletins flashing on da po-po department'swebsite, boasting o' uh hard-earned victory in da "war on crime":
"Homicides iz at uh 40-Year Low"
"Overall Crime iz Down Another 6% dis here Year; 11% Over da last 2 Years"
"NYC Leads da Nation in Crime Fighting"
The messages offer nahh consolation ta mothers like Deasean 's, who suffer da reality o' da streets. "I wuz afraid somethin' like dis here would happen," Kimberly Hill told UPN 9 News da day afta her son got caught in da crossfire o' drug dealers.
She wuz afraid, an' she wuz right ta be. Overall crimeââ¬âbreak-ins, `64 theft, loiteringââ¬âmay be down, but several city precincts, from da Bronx ta Queens, iz experiencing significant increases dis here year in murder, shootings, an' other forms o' violence. Last weekend alone, four peeps died in uh wave o' six shootings, 10 knifings, an' one attack wiff uh baseball bat.
If ya live in Brooklyn neighborhoods like Brownsville an' Bedford-Stuyvesant an' East New York, nahh one has ta tell ya what'sgoing on. In da 73rd Precinct, part o' Brownsville, overall crime through da end o' September wuz down 8.94 percentââ¬âbut murder wuz up 50. In da 81st Precinct, in Brownsville/Bed-Stuy, dat same period seen total crime fall by 7.23 percentââ¬âbut murder rose 62.5.
Meanwhile, in da 77th Precinct, Crown Heights, crime dropped 6 percentââ¬âbut murder in September alone spiked 400 percent over da same period last year.
The shit has gotten so bad dat da city opened uh special court dis here year ta handle felony gat cases from da five Brooklyn neighborhoods dat account fo' uh quarter o' da city'sshootings, from Crown Heights ta Flatbush.
"How ya peep at crime depends on which spin ya accept," says one African American 5-0 who lives in muh ma ****in Bed-Stuy hood. "You can say dat crime iz down in New York City an' be absolutely rightââ¬âthe statistics back dat up.
"But dere'sanother side ta da story," he continues, willing ta jive but not comfortable being identified. "Crime in minority neighborhoods iz not accurately reflected by those stats. There iz still too many serious crimes endangering da lives o' those residents. So dat if ya live in Park Slope an' yo' biggest fear iz havin' yo' 64 stolen, then ya can feel safe cuz64 theft iz down, but if ya live in uh place like Bed-Stuy, where shootings iz up, then dere iz cause fo' concern."
The scene afta uh shooting iz always da same: The blaring o' what sounds like uh hundred sirens saturates da area, shocking all senses into alert. Within seconds, uh stampede o' NYPD officers stops ya in yo' tracks. Neighbors surface from behind dumpsters an' cars, or file out from they homes, asking "What happened dis here tyme?" an' "Where muh ma ****in kids at?" Within an hour, officers secure da area wiff yellow tape, keeping bystanders from peeking at da victims lying in da street. At night, da flashing lights from da parked patrol cars an' da smoking flares used fo' lighting cast uh soothing red glow, as residents quietly watch da paramedics tend ta da wounded. Body heat from da crowd traps uh nauseating aroma o' fresh blood.
That stench wuz waiting fo' me da night o' October 6, around da corner at da Gates Avenue housing project. Like most parents who roll up afta uh shooting in da 'hood, muh ma *in first instinct wuz ta make sure it wasn't muh ma in daughter. As I made muh ma in way through da crowd, da story unfolded: A foot wuz lying perfectly still on da pavementââ¬âthe shoe didn't peep familiar, so I knew muh ma *in kid wuz safe. The rest o' da body wuz hidden by 5-0's an' ambalance workers an' onlookers, but voices from da crowd filled in da blanks. "That ho'sin bad shape, son. You see all dat blood pouring from her head?" said uh nig behind me. "Word, she mad youngââ¬âshe can't be nahh mo' than 15. She shoulda been in da crib," replied another.
Eventually, da victim wuz removed an' peeps jet back ta they routinesââ¬âfive little ho's jumped double Dutch uh few feet from da pool o' blood, though it wuz afta 10 p.m. Adolescent males held court in front o' da corner bodega, replaying da events as if they'd just watched uh bloody Tarantino flick: "Yo, dat nigga came out from nowhere an' just started blasting, son," one o' dem said. He pointed ta da bloody spot. "One minute love wuz standing up right dere. The next minute she on da ground, smok'd da **** up."
Another guy joked about da need fo' bulletproof vests customized fo' da head, an' dey all broke down in laughterââ¬âa testament ta da way violence becomes normal when ingested over uh lifetime. Across da street, where older residents gathered, dat normalcy showed its toll. "I'm tired, tired, tired o' dis here bullshit," yelled uh biotch who appeared ta be in her forties. "I been living in dis here stinking-ass ghetto all muh ma ****in life an' it'salways da same sheeit, day in an' day out, shootings, stabbings, fighting, all kinds o' unnecessary violence. We always jivin' about how much other peeps like ta kill us, but we's don' never jive about how we's love ta kill each other. It'slike uh damn hobby wiff y'all."
This wuz da third shooting I've come home ta since July. It iz clear dat some streets, mine included, iz just not as safe we've been told. "I've been noticing an alarming rise in gunshots around here lately," says Al Martin, assistant principal o' uh Brooklyn high skoo an' uh 15-year resident o' Bedford-Stuyvesant. "These kids iz acting up ag'in, I don' know why. It could be lack o' jobs or nahh supervision; it could be turf wars, drugs, gangs. Who knows, but dere iz definitely uh rise in gat violence."
Despite da radical policing strategies implemented over da last few years, many Blacks iz still living in war zonesââ¬âin muh ma ****in hood an' around da nation. In 1997, dis here country seen 783 peeps murdered by juvenile gang members. At da tyme it wuz hard ta envision an end ta da violence. The following year, zero-tolerance strategies designed ta tackle young thugs dropped dat number ta 628. In 1999, when da killings bottomed out at 580, peeps breathed uh sigh o' relief as it seemed dat da crisis had subsided. But uh new upswing in violence suggests yet another change fo' da community; in 2000, another 653 peeps wuz ganked by thugs wiff guns, an' by 2001 dat count had ballooned ta 865, breaking da 1997 record.
Relatively unnoticed by society at large, da violence crept back into da lives o' Black folks.
Recognizing da ease wiff which da killing could ag'in reach epic proportions, some leaders gots taken ta da streets wiff an urgent message fo' da youth. "Black-on-Black violence, stopping da violence, let'sbe real about it. The Ku Klux Klan don' gots uh damn thin' on us," Malik Shabazz, leader o' da New Black Panther Party, told hundreds o' inner-city youth gathered on Fulton Street in September fo' da Million Youth March.
"As much as we's jive about po-po brutality, we's git right back at it. We're killing each other at uh rapid rate," he scolded. "You quick ta pull uh gat from yo' pocket an' say, Nigga, I'll kill ya. We're quick ta gangbang on each other, quick ta kill each other. It has ta end."
The inability ta stop da bloodshed iz mind-boggling, as brothas from Shabazz an' Louis Farrakhan ta Russell Simmons an' Chuck D gots spoken out against it. The conversation iz never-ending among Blacks, but jive iz as far as it goes until uh little kid like Deasean dies an' all o' society iz forced ta peep at Black violence. Then elected officials promise ta werk diligently until da problem iz solvedââ¬âor until da television cameras jet away.
The right ta safety should be uh national issue. But getting da public ta feel patriotic about dis here latest attempt ta end bloodshed in da Black community comes at uh tyme when most city residents couldn't feel safer. Images o' Blacks gunned down in da streets nahh longer dominate da nightly newsââ¬âout o' sight, out o' mind. Those thugs who survived da height o' da old violence wuz swept into prisonââ¬âone in three Black males between da ages o' 20 an' 39 iz under supervision by da criminal justice system in some fashion. Reinforcing da comfort level, headlines claim dat da social conditions responsible fo' da worst o' da '80s an' '90sââ¬âcrack, gangs, an' da economic hardships o' da Reagan an' Bush Sr. administrationsââ¬âhave improved enough dat Blacks aren't as angry as 'bfoe. For many outside deez neighborhoods, da only threat ta society as we's know it iz Osama bin Laden an' his network o' terror.
About da only tyme we's hear o' Americans gunned down in da streets, other than in Iraq, iz in da resurrected theme o' threats, gunshots, an' dead bodies in rap rap. Far too often those lyrics gots jumped off wax an' into da streetsââ¬âthe last year has seen da attempted murders o' rappers Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, an' Joe Budden an' da murder o' Jam Master Jay. Media images o' young Blacks dying in da streets gots been replaced wiff those o' young Blacks dying in hip-hop.
The hype has eclipsed da community'scry fo' peace in da streets, an' in some cases reduced da issue o' Black-on-Black violence ta one big moneymaking hoax. Last June, in an article entitled "Keepin' It Unreal," da Voice used artist 50 Cent, who lives in uh hail o' bullets, as uh prime example o' gangsta rap in its fakest form. The paper urged readers not ta be taken in by da twisted tales o' da 'hood as portrayed by da money-hungry rapper an' his PR geniuses: "The sobering fact iz dat da streets as 50 presents dem, brimming wiff shoot-outs an' crack fiends, do not exist."
But what appears "unreal" ta some iz often brutally real fo' others, an' while da Voice wuz stroking da sensibilities o' those who actually live in uh safer New York, residents o' 50'sJamaica, Queens, hood wuz drowning in da reality o' his lyrics. "It iz da worst killing streak in da 103rd since 1994," announced uh four-page Newsday spread on September 28. The article laid out uh compelling story, complete wiff photos o' residents ganked (none white), in one o' da smallest yet most dangerous precincts in da city. Murder wuz up 178 percent dere an' shootings up 18.
Anyone still confused about what iz really going on in da streets need only peep at da actions o' da NYPD fo' clarity. In January, Mayor Bloomberg announced dat po-po would "flood" 61 "violent hot spots" throughout da cityââ¬âneighborhoods, subway stops, an' housing projects in predominantly Black an' Hispanic communities like Brooklyn'sEast New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, an' Brownsville; Morris Heights in da Bronx; an' Jamaica wiff 1,400 rookies fresh out o' da academy. The initiative would be called Operation Impact. At da tyme, da mayor explained dat while dere wuz uh 5.3 percent drop in crime overall, uh 1.3 percent hike in shootings commanded swift attention. The program wuz slated ta cost up ta $10 million an' last fo' three months, but has since been extended, twice, ta da tune o' $20 million in po-po overtime.
If, as da Voice professed, "gangsta rap taday iz as about as reflective o' reality as, well, uh reality show," why, in uh tyme o' economic duress, iz taxpayers kicking out so much money fo' dis here?
For many residents, da rosy statistics an' headlines just don' add up ta they reality. "The last tyme I seen uh dead body in da street wuz '97" says 36-year-old Trevor Moore, an electrician from Bushwick. "But in da last month or so I've seen two an' heard about plenty mo'. Two dead bodies in one month iz enough ta tell me dat somethin' ain't right around here. The po-po vans dat cruise around here every night iz always full o' criminals, an' yet peeps iz still dropping like flies. How ya figure dat?"
The relationship between crime, its decline, an' da rising incarceration o' Blacks has always been fuzzy. In da late 1980s, Benjamin Ward, an African American po-po commissioner, addressed uh group o' 150 journalists: "Our dirty little secret iz out o' da bawx. Most crime in dis here city iz Black-on-Black crime. . . . Most crime in dis here city iz committed by young Blacks under 30 years o' age. . . . We iz da victims an' da perpetrators. . . . We should not try ta hide it. We gots ta speak out about it."
But it'snever been uh secret dat Blacks gots been singled out as da main perpetrators o' most o' da city'scrime. No period in history confirmed dat mo' than da era famously dubbed "Giuliani Time." The mayor'snotorious Street Crime Unit, unleashed throughout city ghettos in 1997, engaged in what courts gots since deemed da illegal stop an' frisk o' thousands o' Blacks. Strong-arm tactics led ta uh wave o' po-po shootings, severe brutality, an' endemic misconduct under da guise o' fighting crime. Instead o' getting bettah policing, da neighborhoods got worseââ¬âand mo' oppressiveââ¬âpolicing. Crime dropped, but da neighborhoods became po-po states.
The queshun remains: How do ya protect da peeps ya target? Bloomberg dismantled da Street Crime Unit. Crime came back. Bloomberg created Operation Impact. This year, da Civilian Complaint Review Board says citizen reports iz up ag'in, by 21.6 percent. Blacks account fo' 51.1 percent o' da substantiated complaints, compared ta 20.4 percent fo' whitey residents.
And still, in da safest big city in da country, young Black males iz 10 times mo' likely ta be gunned down than whitey ones. "Shots jet off, mothers cry./Death rate rise, homicide, Black-on-Black crime needs ta stop./Y'all can't blame it on hip-hop," urges Wyclef Jean on his recently released album The Preacher'sSon. " 'Cause what we's say iz what we's see, what we's see iz reality./The ghetto'sda ghetto, ya got dem living in sorrow,/Soon dey won't live ta see tomorrow."
Tomorrow has never come cheap fo' Black folks, an' some say da price iz growing. "I gots nahh doubt dat we's iz heading back ta uh tyme when violence wuz uh fixture in our lives," says Bakari Kitwana, former executive editor o' The Source an' author o' The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks an' da Crisis in African-American Culture.
"The tension on da street, in da 'hood, iz very much like it wuz in da early '80s an' '90s, an' dat iz largely due not ta rap rap but ta da changing economicsââ¬âclose ta 3 million jobs gots been lost in da last two years," he adds. "As usual we's make up da bulk o' da peeps unemployed. I th'o't dat now ya gots dis here growing intensification o' deez conditions. I mean, peeps iz ready ta explode. It seems like We be going back down dat road, almost wiff uh certain blindness, like peeps can't see it coming."
But it iz predictable, relentlessly predictable. "Unfortunately violence iz uh part o' Black inner-city culture," says S. Eric Blackwell, uh professor o' urban studies at Long Island University in Downtown Brooklyn. "I hate ta say dis here, but we's iz almost like trained animals, bred ta be volatile; our poverty, our morality, our circumstanceââ¬âseveral things collide an' it makes fo' combustible volatile situations at any given moment, an' dat part o' us iz expressed through rap rap."
And dat'swhere da crowd turns, ta da poetry o' da streets.
At da crime scene on muh ma ****in block, another shift o' officers arrived ta guard da scene until daylight. Exhausted, da older residents retired fo' da night, leaving da young males by da bodega rapping freestyle. The little ho's still jumping double Dutch caught hold o' da beat an' jumped in rhythmââ¬â"They page me Superman, cause nahh other nigga can outrun bullets like I can./Girly over dere wuz chillin' on da block when all o' uh sudden bullets started ta rock./I ain't dum, uh nigga started ta run./That'swhy her mama grieving now an' I'm still breathing." The rest o' da group made gunshot noises indicating dat his lyrics had won da battleââ¬âlife goes on in da 'hood.
Forty-eight hours later, blood would stain da entrance ta another building, two blocks up on da corner o' Gates an' Nostrand avenues. The crime scene iz always da same. with muh beeotch
2003-12-22 10:14 | User Profile
Yo, it be time ta crank up da American Colonizashun Socitay again, know whum sayin'?
I sincerely hope these dark rumblings portend another massive eruption of the nigga caldera that will snuff hordes of the ugly-ass apes. Nothing is more satisfying to me than the sight of waxed brillos ten toes up in the ghetto gutters. For every one so exterminated, it means that some White lady will go unraped, or a White convenience store clerk won't lose his life for $50 (the fate of my cousin's wife some years ago).
The Monrovia-bound pigboat or the morgue slab: it all good, dawg.
2003-12-22 11:20 | User Profile
I definitely think Walter's got the right idea here: the congoids should be sent back to Africa with enough enticements to go quietly. No, whites don't owe negroes a damn thing, but such a "severance package" would make the whole transition smoother and would get far more whites on board than more extreme measures, such as driving out the blacks at gunpoint. (The latter would still be an option to be exercised on those who refused to leave, of course.)
So-called "liberal" whites who would inevitably protest such treatment of their pets could be dealt with by pointing out that if what they've been squawking all along is true -- e.g., that whites are the reason for all the bad things that happen to blacks in America, that whites exploit blacks, blah blah blah -- then sending all the blacks back to Africa would be doing the blacks a big favor. "We whites are incorrigible in our tendency to exploit blacks," we could say, "and so it would be in everyone's best interest for a final separation to occur. Let's let the blacks take a good amount of money with them so they can 'blossom' without 'the white man keeping them down,' as it were." The expense would seem high, but it would actually be FAR less in the "not-too-long run" than all the yearly negro-related expenses for crime control, welfare, affirmative action programs, and the like.
In addition to miniscule numbers, the White Nationalist "movement" suffers from disorganization and the lack of a clear plan to reach its goals. If WNs could all just compromise with one another and agree to give an idea like Walter's a shot, then we could start making real progress.
2003-12-22 14:23 | User Profile
Alas for the rest of us - there's only ONE N.B. Forrest.
His side-splitting one-paragraph truth bombs are like Zen koans for the sinking ship of Western democracy minus the obscurity and the chopsticks. In an age where sheep nudge each other baa-ing over Semitically-vetted 'cutting-edge' potty-mouth and congratulate themselves on their daring, he's a pair of much-needed shearing clippers.
Even when you see his byline and KNOW it's coming, you're still left out of breath from laughing so hard. The 'shock of recognition' was never so cleansing.
2003-12-22 20:11 | User Profile
Excellent ideas... Offering of $25,000 each to go to Africa!.. Some black mare's with five or more would jump on the offer right now, and Mother Africa would love to have their ten point higher I.Q. and the money!.. This is an idea who's time has come, two thirds of the states would go for it too. There will be only ONE GROUP that will oppose this, and oppose it hard, with their Media/Movies etc.. Hmm, now what non-African group would oppose this,huh?.. Marcus Garvey of blessed memory, was stymied by that group in his effort's to have African leave the U.S. I read he walked in the Head quarters of the NAACP in NYC and stamped his feet and stated this ain't nothing but a white run organization, in 1913 or earlier. The district of Criminals is bearing down Ranch Rescue in AZ and it is private property and they have stopped Arabs on the property I read.. Who is it in the government that would be sending agents to harrass or Murder ranch rescue patriots in AZ?
2003-12-22 21:05 | User Profile
Excellent info.
Very similar to the "We are Family" thread I just posted.
2003-12-23 20:24 | User Profile
"Were it up to us, you people would be cordoned off behind an electrified fence to kill each other until the overpowering stench of death signalled that your numbers had at last thinned out to a managable total."
Marvelous! (How the hell do you quote on the new board?)
The IR-WY discussion about paying off the nigras is a good one because it raises the question of how we, when we achieve power, will deal with some 25 million North American blacks.
IR: fry 'em. WY: pay 'em off.
OK, I've oversimplified the positions, but that's the debate as I see it. Pay 'em off is more realistic. White taxpayers have basically been doing this for decades. Soccermom and Hannitydad are only too happy to write out checks to the various penal systems of our land to keep the darkies penned up. That's not a great state of affairs, obviously. But here's a thought: if you (like I) seek racial separation, who, exactly, do you think will oversee and administer the process? Dat be us, dawg. Let's not turn jelly-headed all of a sudden and buy off little pieces of the conservative argument that, once freed of white oppression, blacks will blossom. They won't. No matter where they are, what resources they have access to, or who they're living with, they will, for the next few thousand years, be stamped Unfit for Civilization. So. This means that the quest for racially-oriented states will mean, eventually, a full-scale model recreation of Haiti somewhere in the south, and Minnesota everywhere else. Which, ideally, we wouldn't be paying for (the Haiti part). But getting there might require some deals, which I think we should entertain. It would cost us. But Walter's right about the amortization... no problem. How much would you pay to save your race, and do so with a clean conscience? Me, a lot.
2003-12-23 22:36 | User Profile
Arent there any white people out there who are smart enough to come up with some genetically engineered virus that would kill off anyone with more than 1/4 black in their blood? Then we could put it in all the KFC chicken, watermellons, and Colt 45 and be done with em by weeks end. :)
I can dream cant I?
2004-01-01 06:11 | User Profile
At $25,000 per individual it would cost approximately one trillion dollars to pay off every African American to move to Africa-a bargain.
2004-01-01 17:42 | User Profile
I'm writing this on New Year's Day, 2004.
However we achieve the goal of separating ourselves territorially from our African friends, won't the end result be glorious?
Just think of walking in Central Park on late on Sunday afternoon with naught by white folks and their children playing on the Green while the New York Philharmonic plays in the summer twilight. Imagine watching a Geoffrey Ballet free concert in Lincoln Park in Chicago on a 4th of July picnic.
And as far as the eye can see - no blacks! No young bloods looking ominously on, cutting into lines, talking trash and listening to gutter music from their third world briefcases. No old black bums warming begging quarters, no nameless fear of violence. It would be like finally seeing the Mona Lisa without a moustache.
Just us white folks. Wouldn't it be great?
Oh, and no Jews, either.
We can achieve that. I just know we can.
On that happy thought, I bid you all adieu for a couple of weeks - I'm taking the family on VACATION.
Happy New Year!!
Walter
2004-01-01 17:44 | User Profile
I'm writing this on New Year's Day, 2004!
However we achieve the goal of separating ourselves territorially from our African friends, won't the end result be glorious?
Just think of walking in Central Park on sunday with naught by white folks and their children playing while the New York Philharmonic plays in the summer twilight. Imagine watching a Geoffrey Ballet free concert in Lincoln Park in Chicago on a 4th of July picnic.
And as far as the eye can see - no blacks! No young bloods looking ominously on, cutting into lines, talking trash and listening to gutter music from their third world briefcases. No old black bums warming begging quarters, no nameless fear of violence. It would be like finally seeing the Mona Lisa without a moustache.
Just us white folks. Wouldn't it be great?
Oh, and no Jews, either.
On that happy thought, I bid you all adieu for a couple of weeks - I'm taking the family on VACATION.
Happy New Year!!
Walter
2004-01-02 20:26 | User Profile
A beautiful vision, Walter. Here's to working toward it in '04.