The Longer the Root the Stranger the Fruit
This is not a debate; it is a history lesson. I have heard a lot of suggestions that Black people should be more focused on Black on Black crime rather than racial inequality and the inequitable divide in the country. Personally, it means that people should first analyze how the increase of Black on Black crime began increasing in the first place.
Black Gangs and drug violence began to flourish during the 1970’s, 80’s, and 90’s after social aid and pleasure clubs were infiltrated during the 1950’s, 60’s and 1970’s by a project known as COINTELPRO. Social aid and pleasure clubs were created to administer aid to men and women in Black communities by Black men and women from those communities. The Clubs that distributed social aid that came in the form of breakfast for the less fortunate and tutoring for children around the neighborhood. Those clubs weren’t referred to as Drug Gangs until the 80’s and 90’s. It began after drugs and insurgents were planted into the organizations for the purpose of sabotage toward the Black community. With government support, the destruction of the organizations as well as the black community was extraordinarily successful. That event wasn’t the second attack on the success of the Black community in this country. We can always consider the blatant war like attack against the Black community during the Black Wall Street Race Riot in Tulsa Oklahoma in 1921.
Going further back into history, the Black family has endured insurmountable attacks since slavery. African American people have had to manage to find some sort of honor and decency in living in America while being left with disproportionate amounts of disadvantages. While they forged forward, Black families weren’t perfect and yes, remnants of the fragmented Black family lingered in the form of double families and high levels of blatant infidelity. However, there are many records predating that during the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s Black people tried to manage to heal and reconstruct what they were deprived of for centuries. An equitable honorable black family…
After withstanding numerous attacks for decades, it worked. The Black family fragmented and scattered in all directions. Sometime after the Great Depression rules for governmental aid were redrafted, many Black men left their households in droves so that their loved ones would be eligible to receive welfare and food stamps during more than a few economic downturns throughout the country’s history. Many Black women had to become accustomed to being the single breadwinner/or soul provider for her family which further deepened the fractures of the Black family dynamic.
The War on Drugs dragged Black men to jail for basic drug possession charges. The inequitable social economic climate, covert racist constructs throughout the structure of American systems, and the crack epidemic caused a desperate parentless generation to use criminal means to acquire income For survival. Biased laws in this country escorted decades worth of Black men away in droves to subjugate them to unethical confinement practices, extraordinarily long incarceration sentencings, and death/or mental illness that has tragically plagued the Black community for generations.
Lost and alone, many Black Women who had been consistently deemed as undesirable for their strength elevated themselves; Many times, in the absence of her male counterpart. Considering her offspring, she has had to make executive decisions to evolve past the attacks on her community and elevate herself to a place of security without the help of anyone. Many other races of people have done this as well. But very few have done it with all odds against them and while still being deemed a second-class citizen to all. Underrated, underpaid, and overwhelmed Black women have had no choice but to adjust and guide her children to brighter future while the country has consistently made it difficult. Lack of and defunding of social programs for women on welfare and the generational wealth gap that kept Black women impoverished has been perpetual.
Many Black men and women work two and three jobs to make ends meet, which prevent them from being home with their families to teach their values and spend much needed time with their children. The cost of living is steady rising and the wage has not kept up. There aren’t any free 24 hour social programs, extracurricular programs, or after school care that can help monitor and care for children while their parents are away working two or three jobs. All while the gap in education, opportunity, respect for the Black man is tested and strained. It is a not rocket science that all the culminating circumstances are a recipe for disaster.
The circumstance yielded a lost generation that raises itself, they get lost in the streets, and left behind. Ask me again about Black on Black crime. African American people have been bearing witness to strange fruit around this country for more than 350 years. No, Black on Black crime isn’t the bigger problem for Black people to be concerned about in this country, because it is a result of the actual problem in America: systemic racism and the war it has waged against black bodies in this country since we touched this soil.
Happy Juneteenth!
