By J. Ted Williams
GreenvilleOnline.com
September 23, 2012
The deaths of Chavis Carter, Trayvon Martin and Billey Joe Johnson were tragic.
Chavis Carter shot in the head in the back of a police car with his hands handcuffed behind him. Trayvon Martin killed by a so-called vigilante and Billey Joe Johnson, George County football star, considered to be one of the top recruits in the country shot in the head after being stop by police on a routine traffic violation.
Guess what? All three young men with their whole lives in front of them are said to have caused their own deaths. Two supposedly shot themselves and the third caused his death by defending himself from a man with a gun pointed at him.
The term "tragic" doesn't come close to explaining these gruesome, evil events. Can you imagine the pain the families must deal with on a daily basis - and no justice!
Many people find themselves relating to these tragedies, because they have children and grandchildren, and their loss would be devastating.
Now using a metaphor, let's take a serious look at what's happened on the other side of the tracks. Young man gunned down while walking to school in District Heights, Md. Marckel Norman Ross, an 18-year-old black male and excellent student, was shot down as he walked to school.
Elizabeth Ross, Marckel's mother, said her son had been bullied by a group of boys. She took her bullying complaints all the way to the Board of Education. No suspect information was immediately available.
A 2007 special report released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveals that between 8,000 and 9,000 African-Americans are murdered annually in the United States. This chilling fact is accompanied by another sobering fact: 93 percent of these murders are perpetrated by other blacks.
FBI records reports in 2005, African-Americans accounted for 49 percent of all homicide victims in the U.S. - again, almost exclusively at the hands of other African-Americans.
To put these numbers in perspective, close to 7,000 U.S. service men and women have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over the course of a decade-long war fought in those nations. During the Vietnam War (1959-1975), close to 60,000 Americans were killed.
According to the Department of Justice (from 1993 to 2005), approximately 100,000 African-Americans were killed on our own streets at the hands of other African-Americans. Blacks are only approximately 13 percent of the population of the United States.
Folks, what's wrong with us? This is a very serious problem in our country, that borders on genocide. We should be bombarded by the media - television, radio, Internet - with pleas to stop the killing. Our civil rights organizations and churches should be using maximum effort to intervene in the neighborhoods.
African-Americans should demand - not ask - that our public education system be overhauled to include an array of hands-on courses that lead to good jobs.
We have helped bail out Wall Street, the auto industry and banks, but we can't or will not fight for the lives of our children.
If we put so little value on their lives, why are we surprised when other groups do the same?
WAKE UP!
Coach J Ted Williams
Hattiesburg
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Monday, September 24th 2012 at 7:31PM
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