Within the last couple of years, there seems to be a wave of news related to the socioeconomic conditions of Urban America and the social uprisings of different racial groups. Racial inequality has been brought to the forefront of public dialogue now more so than ever. America has historically struggled to engage in an honest conversation about race and its role in society. Rarely are we able to seamlessly bridge both sides of the social platform. This lack of connection between the heard and the unheard, the haves and the have-nots, the privileged and the not-so-privileged is an obstacle for any intellectual discourse.
This brings me to one of the most misguided counterarguments that’s usually brought up in opposition to real issues such as police brutality and systematic discrimination: “black on black crime.” The black on black crime narrative, a common talking point of conservative media, is usually meant to neutralize the discomfort when speaking on police brutality. These outlets argue that police brutality is rarer than black on black crime, and therefore police brutality is less of a social issue.
While black on black crime is indeed a real problem, it is a different kind of problem than police brutality, or any heinous crimes, against colored people. The Black Lives Matter initiative doesn’t deny that inner city crime is a problem. It simply demands that those outside of those communities are held to the same legal accountability as those who commit crime within these inner city communities.
This counterargument seems to conveniently leave out all of the social factors that may lead to black on black crime: the school-prison pipeline, lack of economic and health resources and centuries of beaten self-esteem stemming from the days of slavery (which still awaits any type of formal reparation or apology from the government). When colored people are caught committing crime, they are brought to trial swiftly and without question. People of color suffer harsher penalties with lower thresholds of guilt than anyone else. When law enforcement commits blatant crimes in these inner city communities, they have the opportunity to have a hearing before a grand jury before the system even considers bringing them to trial. This opportunity reveals a blatant double standard that becomes obscured when media pundits and social figures deflect the argument, simply saying, “fix your own community first.”
I don’t mean to point fingers at any particular group or play a blame game. If there’s anything that the liberal arts education has taught me, it is that there are always many ways to approach a social problem. We are the future lawyers, judges, journalists, etc. Soon our young faces will begin to replace the old, and we will be able to create the change that we envision. In putting this out there, I hope to encourage more genuine conversations amongst your peer groups. It’s not always about making a big change in small amounts of time. It’s about making small changes over a long period of time.
-Sylla is a sophomore intended economics major from Bronx, New York