When innocent 9-year-olds are killed a community response is required. We have to say loud and clear that this kind of mayhem is unacceptable, no matter how much some thugs consider deaths like hers to be “causalities of war.” For these predators, the shootouts are merely a consequence of making money in the drug trade. It’s become part of their lifestyle. They’ve actually grown to crave the danger of the shootout; to them, it proves their machismo.
This point couldn’t have been made any clearer than the other night after a Jay-Z-Beyonce concert here in town. An east side hangout spot, the DPG Dog Pound Bar on St. Clair Avenue and East 186th Street, hosted an after party and became the site of a shootout where seven people were wounded as the club was closing.
A rapper, “Q Money,” put the word out on his Instagram page that he was shooting a video at the bar so the joint was packed. Evidently, neither he nor the bar owner gave a second thought to providing some kind of security, or if they did, it certainly wasn’t adequate. The bar owner will not take responsibility since the gunfire occurred outside of his establishment, conveniently forgetting that his bar is the magnet that attracts the gun-toting thugs, and the excitement created by the rapper’s presence was all of the spark that was needed.
The rapper is probably thrilled the shootout happened since, in the upside-down world of gangsta rap, this is the best free advertising he could get for his new album before it actually drops. The only thing that could be any better is if one or two of the shooting victims, who are currently in critical condition, dies.
Isn’t that really fucked up?
Yeah, but it’s true. Gun violence and death have become normalized in a certain segment of the young black community, the Nightcrawler Set you might call them — the maggots of our black society that have become an open wound oozing rancid pus into the culture. Seriously, given the level of gun violence on Cleveland streets, any sane person would think twice about going to any venue late at night that features gangsta rap. And they are doubly stupid if they hang around until closing time when most of the shootouts occur. And increasingly, shootouts are occurring at nightclubs that were formerly considered “safe.”
If the crazies would confine their gunplay to select nightclubs at closing time, I am almost at the point of saying, “To hell with them, just let them thin the herd — anyone foolish enough to be around that kind of shit perhaps deserves to get shot.” Yeah, I know how brutal that sounds, but we’ve got young people that are now running towards gunfire, not away from it. Please, stop and read that last part again: Some of our kids are actually running TOWARDS gunfire. Now that’s a mark of insanity.
At virtually every point in our black history on this continent, when our race has been under extreme duress, it has been our strong black women that have shouldered the burden of pulling us through. The problems certainly were not of their creation, but they certainly were the only ones who could solve it — and we again find ourselves at one of those junctures.
Women have to look to the past, to the Greek play by Aristophanes, Lysistrata. In the play, the women of Greece, tired of the Peloponnesian War, refused to have sex with their men until the war ceased. Where I’m going with this is simple: If young black women quit participating in gangster culture, quit appearing half-naked in videos, quit accepting the gifts bought by ill-gotten gains, quit dating and idolizing these thugged-out idiots, the gangsta rap culture would soon die a slow death of its own accord. It simply cannot exist without women participants since that’s what machismo all about — impressing the opposite sex.
I know, I know, this is totally unfair to place the burden of cleaning up this mess on young black women; they don’t deserve this responsibility. But, like it or not, if they want the male children they will one day bear — if they don’t have a son already — to live a full life, to not someday be a victim of gunplay, then this is something they simply must do — because no one else can.
Mature black women (perhaps sororities will have to make this a prime focus of their activities) are going to have to start a movement to influence younger black women, to explain to them that this is what they’re being tasked with in order save our race. Again, this is grossly unfair to our black women, but I just don’t know of any other way. Besides, life isn’t always fair, is it?
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.
One Response to “MANSFIELD: Nightcrawlers”
Harry
What Passes For Black Culture Today Is Extremely Toxic And Deeply Embedded Within Black Social Life.