The recent indictment of a major rap star on gun charges raises again the double question of why violence is so prevalent in the African American community, and why most of the victims of that violence are African Americans.
Most proffered answers are inadequate, but it is clear that the community pays a terrible price.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a nationally syndicated columnist and the director of the National Alliance for Positive Action. Whatever happens in this case, we must ask why men such as Combs, rich and famous beyond their wildest fantasies, act like thugs rather than gentlemen. During two centuries of slavery and a century of legal segregation, blacks were forbidden, often under pain of death, to strike back or vent their anger at whites. Their internalized anger was transformed into violence against other blacks. The consequences have been deadly.