Many hear “Black Lives Matter” as implying that black lives matter more than other people’s, and respond that “All Lives Matter.” A common response — and a correct one — has been that “Black Lives Matter” means not “Black Lives Matter More” but “Black Lives Matter Too.” However, another issue related to Black Lives Matter is being misunderstood in a similar way, this time by advocates of Black Lives Matter rather than its opponents. It’s time to clear up this second misunderstanding.
Namely, it has become highly incorrect among supporters of Black Lives Matter to refer to “black on black crime.” Over the past several months a meme has been settling in among left of center people that to even use the term “black on black crime” is as unenlightened as saying that someone is a “credit to your race” or saying “you people” to a black crowd.
The idea is that since most whites are killed by one another, there’s no reason to think of it as extraordinary that most black people are killed by other black people. Murder, like so much else, is all about who you know and who’s nearby, after all.
That is true, but this truth is a different business than what people are referring to when criticizing Black Lives Matter. Some have argued that exactly because black people are in much more danger of being killed by other black people than by cops — witness the epidemic of homicides within inner-city communities every summer as is currently happening in Chicago and elsewhere — Black Lives Matter is wrong to focus only on the occasional cop killing a black person.
To respond to someone making this point with “white people are most likely to kill each other, too” is a nonsequitur. It’s like a town being advised to put fluoride in its drinking water and taking offense at the advice by objecting that the town next door hasn’t been putting fluoride in their water either, while people in both towns’ teeth are rotting out.
Yet a simplistic idea is settling in that it is simply and undeniably wrong to ever utter the sequence of words “black on black crime” regardless of the point one is trying to make. This is sloppy thinking. What’s wrong is to refer to black on black crime as evidence of something uniquely pathological about black people. There is nothing wrong with saying that something normal about black people — a tendency for murder to happen more within the group than outside — suggests that Black Lives Matter is attending to but a sliver of what most threatens the lives of the people it is concerned for.
That is: in reference to the Black Lives Matter issue, the term black on black crime refers simply to black on black crime in contrast to white on black crime, as in cops killing black people. To instead classify the term “black on black crime” as a slur, period — and this is what is happening of late — is illogical. Moreover, it detracts attention from genuine concern for black communities, including plenty of black ones who suggest Black Lives Matter extend their focus to what happens within black communities.
And finally, treating “black on black crime” as a new “bad word” will only create fakery, and the way we discuss race in this country already has enough of that. Enlightened people’s impulse to avoid causing offense to black people and to always demonstrate that they are not racists will force a certain attendance to the pox on saying “black on black crime.” It will become a cocktail party cliché to dutifully observe “But white people are more likely to be killed by whites!” and shrug, with the implication that anyone who doesn’t understand that is “one of them,” unenlightened, and likely willfully so, impeded by their inner racists from giving black people are fair shot.
But under the radar, plenty of people will always know that this taboo doesn’t really make sense, and that it even seems to pull attention away from what real black people living real lives think of as their real problems.
We should, to the extent we can, use language with clarity and honesty. Pretending it’s always wrong to refer to something called “black on black crime” is antithetical to that mission, and we need to nip the burgeoning of this new and useless taboo in the bud with all deliberate speed.
