Paralyzed? Black community is traumatized

As the nation comes out of its slumber about systemic racism and how deeply it has affected minorities in this country, there is a war going on in the Black community and it is Black men who are bringing it.

The bullets are once again flying, and death is once again erasing the storyline of too many young people long before the final chapter should have been written. Once again, the blood of an innocent — in this case, Kiana Brown — joins so many others like Tyrick Keyes and Clinton Howell. Bullets signed their death certificates with the flourish of finality, certifying once again, what has taken control — and more specifically, what remains in control in low- income neighborhoods.

Kiana’s death was just another reminder that urban youth have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide — and more importantly, no one to call for help.

If ever there was a time for the Black community to take a stand against Black- onBlack crime and help our youth, that time has come as we try to convince the nation that Black Lives Matter.

For many people, that slogan — regardless of what it actually stands for — defies what is happening every day in Black communities. To them, it proves that Black lives matter only when police are doing the killing. And on the face of it, it certainly looks that way. But maybe it is time for the public to take an educational course in urban reality. So, let’s open our books.

Being the bright, intelligent people that readers are, let’s start by taking a moment to refresh what has taken place and has been the headline in the Black community during the past 50 years: drugs, guns and fatherless children.

Let’s acknowledge the impoverished state of Black people in the 1950s as drugs infiltrated a community starved of cash, living in squalor and gasping for any way out.

Let’s acknowledge that powerful, untouchable — and unseen — forces were behind the scenes manipulating supply and demand on two levels: providing the product that put fast cash in the hands of desperate young men, and the farcical scales of justice that have indeed proven to be blind as the prison pipeline was built and sustained.

And finally, let’s acknowledge that the drug trade brings in so much money, it is not hard to find authorities who will look the other way.

And that is the problem; Black people don’t know for sure who to trust because the good guys and the bad guys are dressed just the same. If you do not believe that — if you have any doubts whatsoever that that is true — then stop reading now because you park your car in faraway land and not on the streets of actuality.

There is absolutely no other way that the drug trade and the violent deaths and destruction it brings can thrive in the manner it does, if there wasn’t a wall shielding the powerful forces behind it.

So, it’s easy for the public to cry “do something about it” when they don’t see the reality of doing so.

Aloud message was sent to the Black community on Jan. 8, 1999, when someone dared to step forward.

Her name was Karen Clarke. She was the mother of 8- year- old Leroy “B. J.” Brown Jr.

Both are now symbols of why gunfire continues to rage in low- income neighborhoods — and why “snitches lie in ditches” has paralyzed the Black community.

They were going to testify against drug dealers and it brought a terrifying end to their lives.

Their murders reverberated across the community and the message remains clear 21 years later: Talk and we will kill you and your kids.

Authorities found Clarke dead on the floor of her son’s bedroom, her outstretched arm indicating she was reaching for the phone inches away to call for help. Her son was found in the hallway, a bullet to the back of his head.

So I ask readers, is that message loud enough for you? If you lived in the Black community, what would you do?

Would you ... snitch? Would you put your children’s lives in the direct path of a bullet to take down a single drug dealer knowing that plenty more waited in the wings?

Would you allow your family to be scurried away in witness protection, never to see relatives and loved ones again? Is it worth you always looking over your shoulder?

I am betting the answer is no. And drugs are just one of the problems as guns and street cred have taken over neighborhoods.

“It’s almost like being paralyzed … paralyzed and traumatized,” said Thayer Barkley. “The community has PTSD … Think about it. All these young kids who are being shot at, killed ... they see all their friends dying.”

I talked to Barkley, a Bridgeport resident and volunteer for Moms Demand Action, during the taping of my podcast a week ago about Black- on- Black crime.

She talked about how young minorities see nothing but division from every corner when it comes to them having a better life.

That division comes over money to educate them, money for better living conditions, and the psychological impact of having to have mentors guide them along the way because in many cases there isn’t a father’s name on their birth certificate. Add to that police shootings and brutality, police patrolling the halls of their schools, their family and friends being murdered and chronicled in news and police reports, and it’s easy to see they are surrounded by negative forces.

“This is trauma,” Barkley said. “You just can’t go on like it’s OK. These kids see division across the board. ... You hear it over and over again but nobody is getting treatment for it.”

And it is leaving the Black community handcuffed and frustrated. We can’t really move forward unless we solve the issue of Black- onBlack crime and the only way to stop it is to step forward — and I have explained why that is so difficult to do. It is a conundrum. Meanwhile, the bullets just keep on flying … and people just keep on dying. And still, there are no solutions. Paralyzed? The Black community is traumatized.