By overreacting to Don Imus, the Jena 6, and reports of nooses being hung on campus doors, black leaders like Al Sharpton are doing their constituencies a disfavor.
Clarence Page says that they should be should be at least as interested and outraged at black-on-black crimes as they are at these more politically explosive but ultimately unimportant incidents.
The centerpiece of Page’s argument is the failure of black leaders to bring attention to a horrific attack on a Haitian woman and her son by a gang of black men:
In June, armed attackers broke into her apartment in Dunbar Village, a public housing development, allegedly to retaliate for the woman’s complaints about their noise and litter. They repeatedly raped and sodomized her and forced her to perform oral sex on her son, according to a grand jury indictment. They also poured household chemicals on the victim’s eyes and threatened to set them on fire, according to police and news reports.
Was that a “hate” crime? It certainly wasn’t about love.
Page nailed it, don’t you think?
Black (and Hispanic) leaders are so focused on inter-race crimes that they can’t seem to recognize the fact that intra-race violence is every bit as hateful as the more exploitable, cross-color version.
Gina McCauley, who created the What About Our Daughters? blog seems to think so too:
She describes their refusal to publicly comment “Immoral Indifference.” “It is the height of hypocrisy that Black leaders have remained silent for so long about the Dunbar Village Rape tragedy. Black leaders remain silent about victims of Black on Black crime.” McCauley noted on her blog that several prominent African American issued statements on the humane treatment of animals during the controversy surrounding Michael Vick. “We can get a statement about dogs, but not about two human beings.”
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“This type of crime happened on our watch and our “leaders” are still silent. They are silent because they are indifferent. Their indifference is immoral.” McCauley says.
Shane Johnson wonders:
“How is it possible that practically every social justice organization from the ACLU to the NAACP to the SCLC knows something about Dunbar Village but refuses to speak out about it?”, asks, Shane Johnson who is a blogger and the author of Black Sapience…
“This protest is not to request that Sharpton and his allies march in West Palm Beach, but simply an inquiry regarding Rev. Sharpton’s peculiar silence on this issue.
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“This protest is a call to arms for anyone who cares about black women. This was a crime against humanity and I am surprised at the level of apathy and lack of outrage from our self-appointed black leaders.” adds Johnson.
I’m not saying that we should ignore racially-motivated crimes, far from it. But the fact is that it is the crime that deserves to be punished, not the motivation.
Black leaders would do well to concentrate on having justice done for all of the people who look to them for leadership, not just those whose cases can be made into political hay.