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- Aug 18, 2009
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It's not true to say that no one cares about the violence within those communities. The people in those communities care. They care about both gang shootings and crime and police shootings.Look, I get the whole government versus gang shooting and why people would care more about one than the other, but 10k black people were straight up murdered last year. No one cares. But the police shoot someone and suddenly their life/death has purpose where as if they had been gunned down over sneakers, no one would bat an eye. Police shoot a shitbag and there are teddy bears and candles and shit like that. And my point is also that people like Castile will be shot and they barely blink but shootAlton sterling and suddenly six cops have to be murdered. The community has chosen its side. It would rather side with shitheads than with the cops who together, maybe they could tackle the rampant crime issues.
I live in a major US city. And while I live in a downtown area, not a lower socioeconomic community, the people overlap because lots of people who grow up in those areas go on to do things with their lives that take them out of the community while extended friends and family remain. People in the community care. They talk about it, they try to intervene, they make the effort. They're as frustrated with the local crime as they are with the police mistreatment.
It's the people outside those communities who don't care. People who only bring up the inner city crime as a pivot into belittling the people in those communities. The news vans don't show up for community nights or "stop the violence" block parties or whatever it is that the local community tries. The not as subtle as they think "I'm not racist, it's culture" characters who don't even pretend to care about what's going on in those areas, comfortably falling back on 100 year old stereotypes rather than the actual people.
And, of course, there will be teddy bears and candles. Because the "shitbag" is also a person. He has parents who care for him, friends he stood up for, people he loved and who loved him, even if he was also doing dirt. No one is bad all of the time, even shitbags, so we can't expect no one to mourn the loss of someone they called friend, family, or lover.