My Theory on Violence

This post is not intended to discredit the police or law enforcement agencies working 24 hours a day to help make communities safer across the United States.

Everyone has a role to play in reducing homicides. In cities like Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis, Detroit, and Chicago, the majority of homicides occur in the African American community. The police cannot effectively stop homicides in the African American community because the motives are all over the place.

Select officials in law enforcement and in academia always point to gangs, drugs, and guns being the main contributing factors behind the violence. This could be true in some cases, however, I believe that the main culprit behind the violence stems from an innate "self-hatred" that exist in a particular segment of the population. You cannot police self-hatred. It stems from poverty and a lack of opportunity. It's easy to blame the violence on gangs, but you will find that the majority of violence is interpersonal if you dig a little deeper.

The gang theory could be justified during the '70s, '80s and the '90s, but we have a different problem now. Another culprit behind the violence is the "penitentiary mentality" spilling over on the streets. Many young men that go to jail for years must abide by a strict code which dictates, eliminate, or destroy another person for the slightest infraction.

It is difficult to police this particular issue. When you add drugs, gangs, and illegal guns to the equation, then you have recipe for disaster. Some people may disagree with this theory, but you have to look a little closer. Law enforcement officials have tried almost every strategy in the book with little to no success in regards to containing homicide rates in our major cities. Additionally, this post was written to help enlighten law enforcement officials and those in academia to think out of the box when addressing homicides in the African American community.

African American leaders are equally responsible for not presenting a feasible plan that could bring an end to the increasing homicide rate in their community. Desegregation helped African American people in many ways, but it hurt the community in the area of criminal justice. They experienced fewer homicides before desegregation because the men in the community would not tolerate this kind of behavior. During segregation, seven out of ten African American families had fathers in the home which led to more stable communities. The criminal justice system was never designed to prevent killings in the African American community. It's a respond after a crime was committed. If law enforcement officials and those in academia would design a new strategy to address self-hatred and the penitentiary mentality, then we could make some progress in the area of reducing homicides nationwide.