Y’all hike up your britches; I’m gonna talk about what most people prescribe to race.
There’s no secret that the city of Jackson has a severe problem with black-on-black crime, and it’s getting worse. In hopes of illuminating possible ways out of this, I want to address it clinically and without emotion as much as possible.
First, let me say that where I come from, my familial clan is considered the most violent, inhumane people in the history of Scotland. Some old women cross themselves when a Campbell enters the pub. In all honesty, we earned this reputation. There are an awful lot of murders staining our black and green tartan.
I don’t know that black-on-black crime is a race problem. Race is biological. Why doesn’t Neil DeGrasse Tyson do it if it's biological? If it’s not biological, then it must be cultural. When dealing with the cultural issues of Africans in America, it’s sometimes difficult to sift out what they brought with them and what they picked up once they got here.
Violence and crime in Africa, I tend to think of as a separate issue. Africans in America have been separated from their fellows in the motherland for something like three hundred years, including several generations who were forbidden, on pain of a whipping, ever to practice their own culture. Part of being a slave includes sharing whatever culture the master gives you, and in America, that meant a sort of distilled version of white culture, including the persistent meme of “You are less than us.”
The only way it’s safe to be around a slave is if he believes he is less than his master; otherwise, who would accept being a slave? This idea was literally beaten into slaves. Making them believe they were dumber, less moral, and less capable of living on their own than any white man was key to peacefully maintaining a culture where large numbers of slaves existed.
Let’s take a closer look at what’s happening now, here in Jackson.
Suppose there are two guys. One is named Tony, and the other is named Kenny. They are the same age, give or take a few months. They both live in Jackson, went to the same schools, and grew up less than a mile from each other. Kenny loses his job and borrows money from Tony to fix his car. Tony and Kenny like the same woman, but she likes Keith. One night, Tony hears Kenny say something about him at the club. He confronts Kenny. Shouting ensues. Thrown out of the club, their argument continues in the parking lot, and Kenny shoots Tony dead. The police come, and Kenny sits in Parchman for the next twenty years. Something like this will happen fifty or sixty times a year in Jackson.
So, what happened here? A lot of people who look like me will say, “See! That’s how they are! They’re naturally violent!”
I don’t believe there’s any biological reason why one human would be more violent than the other. The reason why this doesn’t happen as often in white neighborhoods isn’t that simple. We’re all pretty damn violent. Put a switch in my Momma’s hand, and you’d think she was Mousallini. The propensity to do violence is cultural, and in the case of African Americans, you’re starting with the culture that their masters gave them, the culture that was beaten into them. That kind of conditioning doesn’t just go away because Abraham Lincoln signs a piece of paper.
Nobody I know ever owned slaves. I doubt if anybody you know ever has either. My father never owned slaves, and neither did his father, or his father, or his father. You have to go back pretty far in our lineage in Attalla County, Mississippi, to find a slave owner. White slave owners did exist, though. We have to acknowledge that as a reality, even though it doesn’t make anybody living responsible for what they did.
In the story of Kenny and Tony, I see two guys who don’t place much value on each other or themselves. Kenny knows if he shoots Tony, he’ll spend a big chunk of years in prison, but since he doesn’t value his own life, what does it matter? Because Kenny and Tony didn’t value each other as human beings, one man is dead, and one man’s life is ruined, and people in Madison County tell their children to ever drive into Jackson because they’re shooting up in there.
So, who’s at fault here?
We live in a combined community. It’s much more than just black and white; there are Mexicans and Indians and Native Americans, and five different kinds of Asians and three different kinds of Arabs, not to mention the Jews. We are a community. The point of a community is to provide a cultural touchstone so that all community members find value in themselves and we find value in each other.
That’s not always easy to do. Where I come from, Scotland and Ireland, we don’t do such a great job of it. Howard Bavender used to spend his summers in Ireland trying to understand why they were killing each other, then returning to Jackson, where folks were killing each other too, but with handguns instead of bombs.
Murder means you don’t value yourself and you don’t value your victim. Robbery means you don’t value yourself and you don’t value your victim. Rape means you don’t value yourself, and you don’t value your victim. The key to solving the problem is correctly identifying the problem. The problem here is not one of race but one of culture, where we have a subculture that doesn’t believe in itself and, therefore, doesn’t believe in anyone else either. If you don’t believe in yourself, it’s unlikely that you’ll believe in others.
