From: cwm54@cas.org ()
Subject: Re: Another Bill Maxwell column
Organization: Chemical Abstracts Service, Columbus, Ohio
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 17:08:34 GMT

In article <37247@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns) writes:
>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




     Black leaders should not be collecting money for these guys but the

     situation isn't as simple as he seems to be saying. I don't know

     this guy from Adam but the tone seems like one of those most

     dreaded of beast...a black republican.


	    my opinions only and not those of CAS
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american