Listen to all voices

Left out of the gun debate are those most affected by violence: black youth.

In the weeks since 14 students and three teachers were killed during a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the teenage survivors of the massacre have become the new face for gun control.

They have started a #NeverAgain movement, staged rallies in Tallahassee, organized a March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C., challenged President Donald Trump in speeches and a White House listening session, confronted National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch and Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio on a nationally-televised town hall and slapped down right-wing critics like Tomi Lahren on Twitter.

They are passionate, intelligent, well-spoken, social media-savvy — and mostly white.

The national conversation they have started — while long overdue and sorely needed — focuses mostly on preventing mass shootings: improving school safety, banning bump stocks and assault weapons, keeping firearms out of the hands of the mentally disturbed.

Left out have been the voices of those most affected by gun violence, those who have been in the front lines of the fight for gun control for years without garnering the kind of support, sympathy and attention given to the Parkland students. Black youth. Under the umbrella of the Movement for Black Lives, groups such as Black Lives Matter, Black Youth Project 100 and the Dream Defenders, have been speaking out against police brutality and working to support African-American candidates running for elected office. The Dream Defenders have been active in lobbying against Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law.

But unlike the Parkland students, whose efforts have thrust them into the mainstream spotlight, the activism by black teens has largely been overlooked.

After Oprah Winfrey announced a $500,000 donation to the March for Our Lives gun control rally, Charlene Carruthers, the national director at Black Youth Project 100, tweeted, “Gosh. This is amazing. And I'm not being sarcastic. I have to be honest and say that I'm a bit taken aback (and a bit hurt) that those of us who were in the streets in the past five years for Black lives didn’t receive this type of reception or public support.”

Mass shootings are horrific. They shake us to our very core. They shatter our veneer of safety. But they account for a fraction of gun deaths in this country, which sees an average of 13,000 gun homicides a year.

The African-American community is especially hard-hit, with black men 13 times more likely than non-Hispanic white men to be killed with guns. The firearm homicide rate for black children is roughly 10 times higher than the rate for white children and Asian-American children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last month, the Parkland students met with teenagers from Chicago and talked about the impact of gun violence in their lives. Over pizza, they vowed to join forces and expand the fight for gun control “beyond gated communities.”

As Emma Gonzalez, one of the Parkland leaders, tweeted:

“Those who face gun violence on a level that we have only just glimpsed from our gated communities have never had their voices heard in their entire lives the way that we have in these few weeks alone … People of color in inner-cities and everywhere have been dealing with this for a despicably long time, and the media cycles just don't cover the violence the way they did here.”

Why, as a society, are we more sympathetic to the young, white survivors of Parkland than to the young African-Americans fighting to stop the gun violence ripping through their communities?

We shake our heads in horror after a mass shooting, but not at the routine gun violence that results in an average of 96 deaths a day. We shout for bans on assault weapons, but only whisper about the lax laws that allow weapons to flow into cities like Chicago, where at least 370 people have been shot so far this year.

We pray after two young children, a 8-year-old boy and his 5-year-old sister, are shot in Third Ward, but the city quickly returns to the status quo.

We applaud the activism arising from the aftermath of Parkland, but turn a deaf ear to the young people working for change in Ferguson and Baltimore and Houston.

If we are serious about ending gun violence, listening to those voices would be a good place to start.