From: djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Another Bill Maxwell column
Date: 3 Oct 92 15:16:56 GMT
Organization: University of Florida, Gainesville

Here's another provocative column by Bill Maxwell, an African-American
professor of English and journalism and regular columnist for the
Gainesville (Florida) Sun.

David

        October 3, 1992
        Don't elevate thugs to hero status

        Several prominent black civil rights leaders and elected
        officials are raising money for the defense of the four black
        gang members on trial for assaulting white truck driver
        Reginald Denny during this year's Los Angeles riots.

        Although I'm dismayed that any adult would support the four
        thugs who, according to a videotape, apparently tried to kill
        a working stiff of a white man, I understand the motives of
        vote-grabbing polilticians.

        But how can civil rights leaders side with the accused
        assailants of an innocent man?  Because four white cops beat
        black motorist Rodney King, these misguided folks argue that
        the gang members were justified in beating Denny.

        Not only is this bad logic, but those using it fail to see
        that Denny's victimization was out of character for gang
        members who typically maim and murder their fellow African-
        Americans.

        The Denny incident was a "freak accident" in every sense of
        the phrase.

        Yes, black males are murdering one another in record numbers,
        leaving authorities frustrated, prisons filled to overflowing
        and loved ones -- mostly thousands of abandoned young women
        and their children -- angry, penniless and heartbroken.

        Don't these criminals comprehend the depth of the pain and
        loss they cause?  Can't they see that their wanton acts
        destroy people's lives forever?

        Think of the recent murder of Wayne Allen Simpson, the
        19-year-old student at historically black Bethune-Cookman
        College in Daytona Beach.  On the night of September 16,
        Simpson, accompanied by three friends, had closed the deli his
        father owned, where he worked to help pay school expenses.

        Four black gunmen approached Simpson and his friends, forced
        them to lie face down on the sidewalk, robbed and shot them.
        Simpson, who was shot in the back where he lay, died.  His
        companions were shot also, but they survived.

        The community where Simpson grew up, the tiny campus where he
        was a popular student and his family are devastated.  One
        irony is that this young man, who had proved himself a capable
        entrepreneuer, was to inherit the family business in a few
        months.  Everyone had predicted that he would be successful.

        The blacks who killed Simpson in Daytona Beach are the same
        type who beat Denny in L.A., who routinely blow away infants
        and toddlers in drive-by shootings, who terrorize
        neighborhoods, who vamp on girls before they're out of
        puberty, who cause cops to risk their lives.

        These are the very people for whom civil rights leaders are
        raising money.  When we elevate common thugs to the status of
        heroes, we discredit the legitimacy of our struggle for
        equality.  When we blame our self-destructiveness solely on
        whites, we become a race of fools.

        When are we going to learn that the incorrigibles among us --
        especially those of the crack generation who compulsively prey
        upon society -- need to be permanently locked away for the
        common good?

        I'm not merely reacting to recent events, but to a lifetime of
        watching black criminals run amok.  I think of my childhood
        years in Fort Lauderdale and Chicago, where black teenagers
        circumscribed the lives and movements of many law-abiding
        residents.

        I once lived in a neighborhood on Chicago's south side that
        was ruled by the Blackstone Rangers.  This gang decided which
        bus stops we used, which streets we walked, where we went for
        entertainment, where we played basketball, and which girls we
        dated.

        Fort Lauderdale's mostly black Northwest was no different.
        Many youngsters in the apartments where I lived, for example,
        weren't permitted in the nearby park after dusk.  And my
        mother, who after hard days of cleaning motel rooms on the
        beach or picking beans or tomatoes in sunbaked fields, had to
        worry about being robbed by black teens after getting off the
        bus just a block from our apartment.  I, a mere child, often
        escorted her home from the bus stop.  I always carried a
        switchblade.

        Before the heyday of the civil rights movement that began in
        the 1960s, most black adults were intolerant of crimes by
        children, and they tried to help through the schools, churches
        and families.

        Most of us boys had a healthy fear of what was called "reform
        school," a mythic, dark place where bad boys -- and girls --
        either changed their ways or wished they were dead.

        Today, however, no such respect for reform school, or prison,
        seems to exist among many black teeens.  And in too many cases
        in which serious crimes have been committed, too many adults
        are willing to play the victimization card, too willing to
        accept the "environment made us do it" claptrap and, as in
        L.A., too willing to raise money in defense of thugs.

        Ironically, because Simpson's killers were African Americans,
        a wire service article stated that race was not a factor in
        the death.  Nothing is more race-related than blacks killing
        other blacks.  It's all about race.  Blackness -- framed by
        generations of self-hatred -- is cause for African Americans
        to kill one another.

        And the biggest paradox of black-on-black violence is the
        claim that these drug dealers, thieves and murderers are
        looking for "power and respect."

        Speaking about this new wave of fratricide to The
        Times-Herald, a Daytona Beach area black newspaper, Lonnie
        Colon, a Bethune-Cookman student leader and friend of Wayne
        Simpson, said: "There are other ways to gain power and respect
        in this society, and we need to start showing young people
        other choices....  Right now, it's either you're the one with
        the gun or you're the one who's dead."

	End