BLACK, BROWN COMMUNITIES FACE A SECOND PANDEMIC
In the Black and Brown communities, there was a surge of local gun violence before the COVID-19 pandemic landed in San Diego County. Since March 2020, we have been dealing with two pandemics — COVID-19 and community gun violence. In San Diego, seniors are dying from the COVID-19 pandemic and community members younger than 45 are dying from the other pandemic, community gun violence. Even though our local elected leaders are seriously addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, there seems to be widespread apathy among these same leaders when it comes to addressing community gun violence.
This may be the reason why COVID-19 positive tests are plummeting in the county of San Diego and the state of California, while there are surges in community gun violence. The Violence Policy Center reported that 85 percent of Black homicide victims are shot and killed with guns. It also reported that an important part of ending the gun violence epidemic is to reduce homicides in the African American community.
To end community gun violence in the Black and Brown communities, we must understand the complex issue of gun violence. Our elected leaders must turn their attention to the issues within their government institutions that have created a system in which their policies, practices, narratives, personal biases and culture representations perpetuate racial inequity. They must address specific racial disparities, and not just overall crime rates.
I appreciate our elected leaders addressing access to guns. But I urge them to equally address the underlying issues that lead to poverty crimes, trauma and communities being overpoliced yet underprotected. Addressing these basic issues will help take away the need for a gun.
Elected leaders don’t want to deal with these complexities because it is much easier for them to pass laws on gun access — and more comfortable for them to operate out of fear and blame — than it is for them to work to change the underlying factors that have caused fragmented systems in our communities.
In February, President Joe Biden met with some amazing gun control groups, including Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Gun prevention groups that represent Black and Brown communities who were not included wrote to the White House expressing their concerns about being excluded from these meetings.
According to NPR, the White House eventually did meet with leaders from the gun violence prevention groups that had been overlooked, but these leaders said the initial exclusion still speaks to a familiar pattern. While the White House met with grassroots gun violence prevention advocates from Black and Brown communities, San Diego Black community gun violence prevention groups weren’t invited to meetings with the White House.
Our local elected leaders must take an active role in assuring us that San Diego will be included in any discussion about how to address community gun violence. After all, San Diego is the eighthlargest city and the fifth-largest county in the U.S.
President Biden has included in his American Jobs Plan a historic $5 billion commitment to fund community violence intervention and community-based public solutions, and we must insist that our local members of Congress support President Biden’s proposal.
In addition, Mayor Todd Gloria and the San Diego City Council must invest portions of $306 million from the city’s share of the federal American Rescue Plan (ARP) to help reduce community gun violence by supporting proven, evidencebased public health solutions.
In like manner, it is imperative that county Board of Supervisors Chair Nathan Fletcher and the rest of the board invest a part of the county’s $647 million of ARP funds to reduce gun violence in our most impacted communities.
Community gun violence and COVID-19 have heaped damage on already-unprotected neighborhoods. It is a shared responsibility for all of us to help reduce gun violence in our most vulnerable communities.
Bowser is a bishop with the Charity Apostolic Church in San Diego and the founder of Shaphat Outreach. He lives in El Cajon.