At this point, I've heard a lot about black parents who warn their children about how to act around police.
I've yet to hear about the black parents who warn their children that, statistically speaking, they are most likely to be killed by other black children. If black children want to be safe, they need to hang out with white, Asian or Hispanic children.
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And despite our fear of the dark, white children and adults are statistically more likely to be killed by other whites. We don't want to believe that Judas is sitting down at the table with us.
Twelve years ago I witnessed a secretary in the hospital where I worked shoot one of the physicians and then, as they say, "eat her gun." She was skinny, unattractively so, I thought. I learned only afterward that brittle hair that never grew and the soft down that covered her face were signs of advanced anorexia. We worked at one of the best hospitals in the world and no had noticed or taken care of the mortally ill woman. The leper is sitting down with us as well.
Whites are nearly 80% of the population, blacks are about 10% of the population.
The two produce the same number of murders each year. A black child is five times more likely to be killed, period, than a white child is.
And, while about 80% of crimes are same-on-same, it is still the case that blacks murder whites at 18 times the rate whites murder blacks. Blacks commit about seven times more violent interracial crimes than whites, although they comprise only one-seventh of the white population.
So, yes, the leper is sitting down in every community... but the disease is pernicious among blacks to a degree unmatched in any other segment of society.
I trust you on the numbers. I don't know how to reckon statistics. And I believe “disease” is the right word. We quarantine the violent in prisons and, in a de facto way in neighborhoods that, because of historical inequalities in income and education, invite the shadow economy of drugs and guns.
There is the acute pain of the victims of violence, but also the chronic pain of the witness. For me, the flashbacks are few and far between now, but the tendency to dissociate continues. So I can understand how in these neighborhoods people become numb to the problems and do not take responsibility. Well,
Jesus could heal the sick but not those his hometown. I've found a new devotion to Mary whose seven sorrows were as a witness.
And there is my own hometown and parish. It's a university town, where the prayers of the faithful often include: “For students, that they have success in their exams.” We hear a lot of sermons on larger social sins, and how to file up to communion respectfully, but I never hear Satan mentioned. My life recently is taking me down to New Bedford on the weekends, a tough town, where we pray “For the prisoners, especially those from New Bedford” and “For all those that will die today.” I cried in church when I heard a sermon on the “glamor of evil.” Well, the least we can do is acknowledge the problem and make our prayers more generous.
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