Editorial
At Last – Respite for Black Children
Manhattan, NY | December 19, 2012
According to the New York Times, each morning at about 5:30 a.m., Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emmanuel, receives an email from the Chicago Police Department listing crimes committed the previous night. The man who served as first chief of staff to the nation’s first black president has to grapple with the fact that by the end of 2012, his [and the president’s] home town will be tainted with the gun-related violent deaths of more than 450 souls – mostly young black ones.
But perhaps relief is on its way in 2013 and beyond for Mr. Emmanuel, his city and countless black parents and communities. A few hundred miles south-east of one of the biggest cities in the US – in a small Connecticut community of Newtown – a ‘mentally challenged’ man started his day by shooting his mother in her face while she slept. A few minutes later, at a nearby elementary school he himself is rumored to have attended as a child, the gunman shot the security doors down and inside, he proceeded to open fire. It is said that less than 5 minutes later – some reports even say this lasted 2 minutes – 26 people were dead. Adam Lanza then turned the gun on himself, committing the last grave sin he’d ever commit in this life.
Sigh.
After a week’s sabbatical, we did not expect to return with another editorial on indiscriminate death. There’s much too much to write about: Democratic progress in Ghana, Uganda’s anti gay ‘Christmas Present,’ the newly approved Caribbean Community Aid for Trade Strategy, and also, the relevance of the recent release of Lord Taylor of Warwick, Britain’s first black Tory peer from jail.
But the death of any young person is just unacceptable and moves us deeply. Parents should not have to bury their children – whether death is from disease or, in this case, from a carnage that could have been prevented. Our last editorial memorialized the 17-year-old Jordan Davis who, like Trayvon Martin before him, was senselessly gunned down. Today, we are besides ourselves in grief for the 20 children between the ages of 5 and 7; for 6 of their teachers. Yes, we even mourn the gunman who was only 20 years old himself and for his mother – whose corpse is unrecognizable from the numerous shots pumped into her body.
An Interlude
Many black people are rightly incensed that American is questioning the mental status of this killer. They wonder why the same benefit of doubt courtesy is not granted unto black people. One of our readers goes as far as saying it is ‘unacceptable how the mainstream white media continues to make excuses for [a] despicable animal and any other white mass murderer.’ The reader terms Adam Lanza as ‘the man in the mirror’ white people do not want to see.
We completely understand the principle here; and yet, at the same time, we beg to differ. Adam Lanza was medically diagnosed with a mental disability. He did not wear a scarlet letter on the forehead – but many ‘normal’ people could see, right away that he was a little different from them. Simply, one cannot be termed ‘mental’ from a brain scan or because of public opinion. If a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist does not pronounce you ‘unsound,’ then you will not be reported as unsound by the media or even by the law. You will be violent, you will be a criminal and you will be homicidal. Thus, infuriating as it might be, Mr. Lanza imbalanced throughout his days as a high school student: He was put under the purview of the school psychologist and was reportedly on medication for his condition. Nonetheless, while all this was going on, there was just no way to ‘legally and humanely’ to sequester him away for the sake of society’s safety.
On the other hand, many African Americans do not have access to mental health specialists. That does not mean that African Americans do not have mental challenges. As a matter of fact, there’s no doubt that if a health professional were to visit many inner city communities, they’d be inundated with the plethora of nature vs. nurture issues. Black kids deal with death each day. One does not know how this affects them. They also have to deal with either one or both of their parents being irresponsible, on drugs, in jail, or simply unavailable and under educated. There are a wide range of consequences to this that one may even feel helpless. Perhaps, even, many white professional and the mostly white public policy administrators may not want to open a can of worms as an increase of mental challenges – as a result of going into black communities – may ‘mess’ with their orderly statistics and projections.
The Law of the Jungle
On the other hand, one may ask why young black men are not known to commit the scale and kind of indiscriminate murder their white colleagues are known for. To this, we have a half-hearted theory: Darwin concluded that weaker species can survive if they live in isolation. Either you are the fittest one, or you isolate yourself and your environment from any rival, stronger top predator. This phenomenon happens in the black societies that display the most violent of behavior. In Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia inner cities, there’s a chance that the mentally challenged are sequestered by their parents or they are killed if they cannot prove useful to the drug kingpins or the petty criminals. Basically, unlike in white neighborhoods where a ‘weirdo’ may have a chance, it is much harder in the black zones for a whole lot of reasons. Besides, with the amount of law enforcement in the black neighborhoods, the kids who even rise their heads to act up are immediately either sent to juvenile detention facilities or are beaten in to shape by their brethren. But again, much of this, in the absence of indepth research is conjecture garnered for cursory reading, from media presentations and a slight experience with boarding school in Uganda.
Provocateurs
Thus, we come full circle to justification: This most recent gruesome murder of 20 little mostly white boys and girls and their equally white teachers may eventually save the lives of countless black boys and girls in inner cities like Mayor Emmanuel’s Chicago. The truth is that many, MANY young black children lose their precious little lives each day across the US as a result of either a drive-by shooting, just as their parents are killed in a police raid or raids of the criminal kind; and we cannot even start to tell you of the number of black teenagers who go straight to a cold mortuary slab from street corners where they are synonymous with Joseph Kony’s LRA child soldiers. But we can safely assert that while a blue eyed blond child will melt your heart just as quickly as the extended arm of a brown toddler, dead black children are commonplace – widespread enough to make cynics even out of us their own black parents. In the end, we find that nothing causes as much actionable anguish like the death of a white child, let alone 20 beautiful boys and girls.
Anger and anguish aside, one needs to consider tiny facets before they can fully grasp the clinical simplicity and agency of this unspeakable deed. Valued at about US$500, the AR-15 Bushmaster rifle’s magazine holds up to 30 bullets. This gun is semi-automatic, meaning you get one shot per trigger squeeze. Considering that each of the dead in Connecticut was hit more than twice – some of the little children’s bodies were mangled with as many as 11 bullets each – Mr. Lanza may have pulled the trigger more than 100 times and changed his magazine more than thrice. Basically, his mother’s trips with him to target practice effectively paid off. But what was a mentally challenged boy doing with a weapon of this kind of destruction? How did he come by all these rounds of ammunition and also, by the three other handguns he left his home with? Surely, his mother neither needed this arsenal to protect herself after her divorce and neither can anyone say that the tough Obama economy caused enough to warrant preparation for an armed rebellion. Lastly, why would people who live in some of the world’s safest neighborhoods have guns that can cause the kind of damage that would prevent parents from looking at their little children one last time? One can only imagine what the town’s medical examiner and his colleagues were working with from the expression of pain on the face of someone supposedly used to the finality of death.
America’s constitution sanctions that people have a right to bear arms. The original intent of this, enshrined in the Second Amendment, was probably for the purposes of armed rebellion against a federal government that was overreaching and spreading tyranny. But when was the last time tyranny affected American lives? Besides, in being taxed enough already. this nation’s people have a right to demand the most they can from their law enforcement officials! In essence, the police have guns and sometimes, the citizens have even more powerful weapons. Many say these guns are for hunting. Others will cite their First Amendment rights – basically saying they are free to do as they please as long as it is legal under the law. Whenever someone goes off the rails and commits a crime like Lanza did, those in favor of guns – like the National Rifle Association [NRA] – say it is people, and NOT guns, that kill!
What a cavernous argument! Perhaps more children would have gone home to their parents if Mr. Lanza had only had a machete or a knife or even a club with nails. More people would have celebrated if even one little life had been spared. What an argument of this nature misses is that people, by their very nature, are only as violent as their options. Give them a sub machine gun and they will use this to fulfill their specific need and justify their actions.
Many say that their high powered sub-machine guns are for hunting. But how many deer or bears are you going to carry home with you after a hunting rampage with a sub machine gun? Secondly, to those who mention that these military style weapons are for defense, it is obvious that they do not understand robbers or those who plan to commit harm against their neighbors. For the record, if someone is coming into your territory, even a falling chair or glass can have the same impact on their nerves as a double barrel shotgun. Besides, we would understand why anyone would keep an arsenal in Wyoming or Kentucky. But why would anyone in Newtown, Connecticut possess more than 5 guns and enough ammunition to take over a small city? There are just not enough deer or petty thieves! Infact, for the pious, this could be a case of avarice – a cardinal sin!
Americans are, today, being forced to make lemonade out of the lemons they have been handed. One of those NRA endorsed senators, Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, even managed to break his lockstep stride with the gun people in being as affected as just about everyone else. ‘Never before have we seen our babies slaughtered,’ he exclaimed. Under our breath, we invite him to visit with the various city mortuaries. He adds: ‘It’s never happened in America that I can recall.’ Again, we have no choice but to pardon him for not seeing the carnage just below his glasses. And then he touches the heart of the matter: ‘I don’t know anyone in the sporting or hunting arena that goes out with an assault rifle, I don’t know anybody who needs 30 rounds in a clip to go hunting!’
Congratulations, Mr. Lanza! Your act was horrendous enough to twist the hearts of those that had refused to see things for what they really were. May your soul know the peace you could not find in this life. May your mother rest in peace. May each of the 20 children sprinkle us with angel dust from heaven; may their teachers know another heavenly calling in their next lives and may all of us left behind – especially white parents – push for better gun control as they are doing now. They may not know it yet – but they will have saved lots and lots of black American kids as well.
Dennis Matanda
Editor | editor@thehabarinetwork.com
Editors Note
Following a reader’s comment, this editorial was updated to include a cursory look at mental challenges, the African American psyche and making excuses for those who kill.