While many African Americans take issue with one of the most brilliant and self-assured minds of our time, Princeton University scholar and professor Cornel West, especially for his incessant criticism of President Barack Obama policies, what many fail to see is that often he is correct. He was correct on the plight of African Americans going steadily downhill from an economic perspective since the reign of the POTUS and he was correct regarding his policies serving the interest of plutocrats from big banks, corporations and Wall Street. Now he may be right again.
In a recent interview, Dr. West stated: “Not a peep; not a mumblin’ word when the black folk getting shot. But now Newtown, vanilla side, low and behold we got a major conversation.”
He continued by asserting that Democrats and liberals always want to point the finger at the NRA and “gun lobby” when they need to look at themselves.
Again it appears that Dr. West has a point and that the data supports his position. First, according to many city and FBI statistics, the majority of gun crime is committed by gang members. In the 2011 FBI National Gang Threat Assessment Report, they note that “gang members are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions and much higher in others.” In Chicago for example, Chicago Police Department data reveals that 80 percent of homicides in the city are gang related.
Overall, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the homicide rate among blacks was 23.1 per 100,000 and 2.7 for whites. The Bureau of Justice statistics document that nearly half of all murder victims are African Americans, of which more than 90 percent were murdered by other blacks. In summary, African Americans are seven times as likely as people of other races to commit murder and are three times as likely to use a gun while committing a crime of violence, according to a study conducted by the New Century Foundation
West may be right. Have politicians examined the liberal policies that undermine traditional marriage, or even contribute to the number of African Americans born out of wedlock, whose rates have risen from 25 percent in 1965 to 72 percent now? Do they examine the economic conditions that have seen an increase in poverty rates among African Americans of the past decade to nearly 47 percent? To date these questions remain unanswered, but Dr. West maybe on to something as opposed to just crying wolf, I mean racism.
