Comment: Do we have numbness to a black and black crime? – essence

Over the past two weeks we have heard (and said) a lot in regards to the death of Aiyana Jones. How should we. We should say her name until justice occurs. We should shout her story until she wakes up masses of individuals on this country, not realize what the centuries of racism have done our ability to live freely. As this poison may be very trained, to protect us, they have tightened around our neck, stopping respiratory. We still have to discuss Aiyana. But what about Thomas Wortham? Thomas Wortham was an officer of the Chicago Police Department for nearly three years. He served the Englewood district, an area that’s a real epicenter of more and more dangerous Chicago status. Wortham crossed Call of Duty, working on organizing community members to respond to violence that was harassing the town for thus long. He also served in two trips of the service in Iraq. On May 13, 2010, Thomas Wortham lost his life. Not while service. Not within the trenches of Iraq. The 30-yr-old was murdered in front of the parents’ house in Chatham, one in every of the black middle class enclaves in Chicago. He was shot after a group of young men tried to steal his motorcycle. His father, a retired police officer in Chicago, emerged from his home with a weapon and managed to kill one suspect and critically hurt the opposite. It seems that such a story – marked by the extraordinary violence, the cruel irony of a man returning home from the war just to be killed by young men who’re essentially his neighbors, a daring attempt to protect his family – his family would take up – she would take up His family – would take the national headlines. However, evidently it didn’t say much about this tragedy outside Chicagland. Why is it? It seems that we have accepted the lack of black people from black hands as simply a reality of black life. Are we convinced that we cannot do anything higher? Do we not realize that the more our own blood we spill on our streets, the more open we are for cops governing us in the identical bad, terrifying way that caused Aiyana’s death? In Chicago it had at the very least 141 killings in Chicago. Of these, about 109 victims were black. And not to mention Detroit. Baltimore. Philadelphia. DC. Brooklyn. Aiyana’s death was a shock to the system. It was an unhealthy relationship that we have with the police who got here to essentially the most stunning fever. Thomas’ death was a well -known script: the lifetime of a young black man limited by black men. Just just like the famous Jersey City pair Michael Muchioki and Nia Haqq, Wortham was one in every of the “good”; Automa for his community and killed along with his own hands. We didn’t reconcile the extent with which the many years of cracking, generational poverty and total despair created monsters amongst us. Seemingly soulless creatures that shorten shortly, just to catch them “without visible guilty conscience”. We have grow to be accustomed to the concept that there may be a segment of our population that seems not to serve any purpose than annihilation, mutilation and destruction. And we allowed ourselves to forget that for every Aiyana there are a dozen or so who will probably be lost by the hands of their very own brothers and sisters. We must remember Aiyana. And we must remember Thomas. And we have to find a way out of this nightmare. Before we can demand that anyone else value a black life, we must value it ourselves. Jamilah Lemieux writes about breed and culture on his blog, Beautiful fight.