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Black on black crime: The genesis


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The theory goes that the road to our self-hatred had been paved long before this, and that  black on black crime that was an offshoot of this mentality had actually been seeded with the actions of a tiny elite: the integrationists , and the athletes.

 

With hindsight, we all realize that integration was not the sacred cow black leaders had hoped it would be. For some reason, integrationists,  acted on the principle that our problems would be solved by living next door to Mr. Charlie and Miss Ann. Never had our leaders been so wrong.

 

1964.

In 1964, American politics were a constitutional hodge-podge, and it is highly unlikely that Congress was unaware of what would ultimately happen once HUD{Housing and Urban Development}, without ceremony, crashed the gates of black America to raze the slums to the ground.

 

More than anything else, the cranes and the bulldozers should have been welcomed, and the demolition crews applauded as hard-hat heroes.

What happened next was social genocide, the heady stench of white folks trying to perform a miracle of doing good to a people they didn’t know a damn thing about. Sometimes, the charity of white people can be a harrowing experience.

 

When the urban renewal program came thundering through the hood in 1964, the bulldozers which were the precious toys of integration also knocked over black, family life because white  researchers failed to recognize how tight-knit black communities were at that time.

 

Despite all the lavish spending to integrate blacks into the social fabric of America was socially spoiled because no one wanted the black youth------except white coaches! For them, integration was a sports bonanza, and at last they had gotten access to the fabled nigga athlete. Dreams of a sports dynasty danced in their heads.

 

To the black urban male, sports was the most masculine endeavor he could envision, but white coaches re-created the values these youth had been taught to cherish. Everywhere in the hood from the preachers, the pimps, playas, and coaches, the youngbloods were taught the etiquette of black sportsmanship. You never kicked a man when he was down; you never hit below the belt; you always gave a man a fair fight.  

 

In the hustling world, it was preached that you never took a man’s last, and that you always gave him a little something to go home with. This was “street” wisdom and there was nothing shabby about it. Even as a foe, the black man was first and foremost, a brotha.

 

The atmosphere in the white world was totally different, a complete reversal of the teachings in the black community. White coaches preached the theory that coming in second was for suckers, that you win at all costs, that it was your duty as an athlete to succeed by any means necessary. You kicked your opponent when you had him down, you punched him in the balls, and you took everything he had.

 

The quality and diversity of this new gospel sounded exotic to the black youth who swallowed it up, figuring that, at long last, they had found the Holy Grail, the esoteric knowledge that had granted the white man the power to do all the great things they had done. The black athlete felt privileged to finally have this key to success because If these pearls of wisdom had worked so well for the white man, surely they would work for him. And it was then that black neighborhoods became the testing grounds for these new-fangled teachings.

 

Like the Golden Horde that poured out of the Mongolian steppes, black athletes, already aggressive, bumrushed the hood and turned it inside out. Learning from scratch, these brothas went about the destruction of black America with uncommon arrogance.  Methodically, these brothas sought out the rules to becoming king-of-the-hill with the same intensity of an Einstein in search of the theory of relativity, or a Newton hunting for the laws of gravity.

 

For the first time, blacks made it a career to taking advantage of other blacks. Even during slavery, the question of stealing from another black was a not a question at all. It was a foregone conclusion. Taking from the white man could never-----under any circumstances-----be deemed stealing. It was stealing only when you took from another black.

 

Before 1064, and the teachings, most black on black crime were crimes of passion; unfortunate lover’s quarrels, or juke joint murder where the liquor got to talking a little too loudly. Hardly ever did blacks prey on one another, if not out of brotherly love, hen out of the notion that “niggas ain’t have shit worth taking noway.” Either way, black property was safe from the hands of other blacks.

 

True enough, we started defecating where we laid our heads.

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54 minutes ago, Gibran said:

In the hustling world, it was preached that you never took a man’s last, and that you always gave him a little something to go home with. This was “street” wisdom and there was nothing shabby about it. Even as a foe, the black man was first and foremost, a brotha.

 

This was before my time.  I heard about it from old timers and sometimes saw this acted out in films featuring old school gangsters. The Wire fans will recognize characters like Marlo Stansfield, the most ruthless sociopath on the series succeed, while the criminals who followed a code all ended up dead.

 

Even as a kids I could never understand why we robbed each other.  Just down the street there were wealthy folks (Harlem is adjacent to the the hyper-wealthy upper East Side). Part of the reason for engaging in crime against ourselves is how the different communities were policed.  Of course there are many other reasons...

 

@Gibran is was the above an excerpt from your book?

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Yes, that was part of my upbringing, and those were the lessons we were taught coming into the street Life. In 1964, I was a part of that crowd that entered into white schools for the first time, and let me tell you something, it was stressful. All during the summer of 64, we, (the students) were looked upon as pioneers and it was made clear to us that the whole 'colored' race was depending on us. In church, the sermons were geared to us, telling us about the importance of what was to happen when school started. Basically, they were afraid that the white students would humiliate us by showing just how much smarter they were than us. Brotha Troy, we represented.  Still, though, we messed up the hood with the so-called "teachings" of the white coaches

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