>> Comparing gang-related homicides and lynchings and other race-
>> related political violence is essentially comparing apples and
>> oranges. Unlike lynchings and race riots, though, Black victims
>> don't outnumber white ones in gang-related violence nationwide.
>
> Yoshie, you are predictable like bowel movement. I was almost
> certain that you will chip in with some spin trying to exonerate
> gangbangers, who unlike lynching mobsters are "cool." And those
> 100,000 dead in last 20 or so years and counting? Who gives a
> shit. It is better to be dead than uncool.
>
> BTW. Did not you cheerlead some flick glorifying killing of white
> men some time ago?
You are, as always, attributing an imaginary problem of an imaginary left to me. You never respond to anything specific that I've written about, on this or any other subject.
Fiction, like movies, is not the same as reality, and gang-related violence has different impacts on people and get different reactions from them than lynchings, race riots, and other political violence intended to subordinate Blacks or other races.
I've looked at statistics, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics and other data collectors demonstrate that a larger proportion of victims of gang-related homicides are white (57.9%) than Black (38.7%) (the proportion is reversed in the case of drug-related homicides: 37.0% of victims are white and 62.1% are Black) ("Homicide trends in the U.S.: Trends by race" <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/ race.htm>) and a majority of victims of gang violence are gang members themselves (64% in the case of Los Angeles County <http:// www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/1376.html>). Grasping such facts is crucial to understand different responses of people to gang-related violence on one hand and lynchings, race riots, and other political violence intended to subordinate Blacks.
If gang-related violence impacted richer whites or Blacks, I'm sure it would get more people's attention, but it (unlike lynchings, whose victims were often assertive Black political activists and property owners who earned more white elite rage than meeker and poorer Blacks) normally doesn't. Gang violence is mainly a problem of intra- poor, intra-race, and intra- and inter-gang violence: poor whites on poor whites, poor Blacks on poor Blacks, poor Latinos on poor Latinos, etc. Mostly gang members die at the hands of other gang members, and non-gang-member victims of gangs are also as poor as gang member victims of them. Hence lack of public sympathy.
For instance, Rhonda Erwin, a mother working on the problem of gang violence in California, says that victims of gang-related violence, unlike victims of other crimes, do not get much assistance, for they are poor and many of them are gang members or "youth with a questionable past":
<blockquote>The only fatality not addressed by the [California] DRT [Death Review Team] is youth murdered by youth. Think about it: a youth takes her/his own life (suicide prevention programs); a youth is murdered by an adult (child abuse/neglect awareness month, numerous programs); a youth is murdered by another youth (life-term prison commitments). I began to wonder. Where are the DRT services such as public service announcements focusing on youth and disarming aggression? Where are the billboards? Where are the support groups acknowledged by the DRT as vital and important to uplifting families? Where are the bereavement, grief, and counseling programs such as the DRT Victim's Assistance program to address youth-on-youth violence?
I learned families of youth with a questionable past are not offered victims' assistance funding. Therefore, in the mist of grieving and suffering, parents are washing cars, selling barbecue chicken dinners, and selling their child's photo on a T-shirt to raise burial funds. Deceased youth are sometimes laying in the morgue for up to three weeks while parents who cannot afford insurance premium must focus on their inadequacies to lay their child to rest. How can you become empowered by focusing on inadequacies?
(Rhonda Erwin, interviewed by Seth Sandronsky, 'A Mother's Cry in Sacramento: Grassroots Activism to Prevent Youth Homicide Crisis," <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sandronsky040206.html>)</blockquote>
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>