RICHARDSON: Do black lives matter?
Since Michael Brown was killed by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, an impromptu demonstration has turned into a movement called Black Lives Matter. I'm not here to bash or promote the idea. I understand the frustration as time and again members of law enforcement have been shown to be on the wrong side of the law.
On college campuses, black students and others also have complained about racism to tone-deaf administrations. I'm aware of the difficulty in understanding a problem if it had never been a issue to them, but those administrators were paid big bucks to recognize just such situations — and they failed.
Some take offense at the Black Lives Matters movement. Don't all lives matter, they ask? Of course all lives matter, but like the pressures of racism, the intensity varies for different groups of people. Some don't recognize it at all and think it invisible. It's not.
But I have a different question. Do black lives matter? It's a question that's been keeping me up at night. It started when the murder statistics for Baltimore, Maryland, were released on Nov. 14 when the Monument City hit 300 murders.
The Baltimore Sun has a database (http://data.baltimoresun.com/bing-maps/homicides/?) that lists each victim's name, date of death, age, gender and race. I first set the database to look at the last 30 days. There sat 23 names through Nov. 19, and the month isn't over. If you click on the date of death or the victim's name, a map will show you where he or she died and by what means. Of those 23 names, all were black with the exception of three that are still listed as unknown. I ask, do black lives matter?
I took the next step. Of the 300 homicides in Baltimore in 2015 — and we still have more than a month remaining — 288 of them have been black, 15 have been female. The victim demographics are all over the age spectrum. Thirteen victims were over 50. Seventeen were under 18, and 88 fell into the 18-25 age category; 102 were 26-34 and 61 were in the 35-50 demo.
Baltimore, a city of 622,000, the largest city in Maryland, has been clicking along at a murder a day.
I can't say with certainty who the perpetrators of these murders are, but I would bet a paycheck that most died at the hands of another black. So I ask again, do black lives matter — to blacks?
It's not just Baltimore. It's not just Chicago or Los Angeles or San Francisco or St. Louis or Warner Robins or Macon. And while I appreciate the Black Lives Matter movement's efforts of disruption because that's the only way some folks listen, as the movement matures, those voices need to be heard not just when a white cop shoots a black man, but when a black man shoots a black man.
And to take it a step further, white people have to start their own movement. There is something going terribly wrong when a 13-year-old guns down a 16-year-old in any city. As Curtis Mayfield wrote, "You're just the surface of our dark deep well ... and if there's a hell below, we're all goin' to go."
I don't know about you, but I'm tired of watching mothers and fathers crying over their children in coffins at funerals and prayer vigils. Please don't get me wrong. We have to mourn our dead, particularly those taken from us by a force of unimaginable evil. I just wish it would stop. We have to figure out what do we do after the candles have all been snuffed out. How do we stop the carnage?
Wars are always fought by the young, so it's only fitting and in great tradition that young people, be they black, white, brown or yellow, lead us to find our better selves. That is what we have been searching for. Maybe they have found a path to that goal we overlooked. We should, at the very least, hear them out no matter what banner they foist. As a few former college administrators can attest, a little time listening may have averted the hammer from falling on their heads.
Mayfield also wrote:
"Loving one brother and killing the other
When the time comes and we are really free
There'll be no brothers left you see."
Charles E. Richardson is The Telegraph's editorial page editor. He can be reached at 478-744-4342 or via email at crichardson@macon.com. Tweet@crichard1020.
This story was originally published November 21, 2015 at 2:33 PM with the headline "RICHARDSON: Do black lives matter? ."