Friday, October 24, 2014

Endangered Species


Andy Lopez, John Crawford III & Michael Brown
The tragic premature deaths of these three young men, Andy Lopez (13), John Crawford III (22) and Michael Brown (18) glaringly illustrate that something is horrifically wrong with how a number of police departments handle dealing with young black and brown males.
These young men are just the latest of countless others who have been killed by members of law enforcement. Officers who although sworn to protect and serve, become judge, jury and executioner in the split second it takes to pull a trigger. I need to make perfectly clear that I am not accusing the entire law-enforcement community of racism or extreme bias toward young Black men, but it it obvious that a minority of them have an unhealthy pre-judgemental condition that is illustrated by these killings.

Young men of color are dying at alarming rates and no one seems to know how to stop it. The proliferation of guns that are seemingly pumped like water into the inner cities of America has created an explosion of youth to youth homicidal violence. With the rancorous cancer-like infestation of street gangs and drug cartels, homicide continues to hover over our young man like tremendous cumulus clouds filled with bullets instead of raindrops.

Antonio Smith Jr.
Black males have, in my eyes, literally become an endangered species in America. The three young men above are only a small sample of how they are killed on the streets and towns of our country. Through the plague of the so-called "iron pipelines", kids as young as nine years old are murdered just for being in the wrong neighborhood, as in the case of Antonio Smith Jr. in Chicago.

As I stated, no one seems to have a clear cut solution to stopping this virus. But, in my opinion, the so-called mainstream media (movies, TV, music videos…) surely seems to know how to keep the spread of this virus going.