The conspiracy of silence must end. A few weeks ago, I asked youngsters in Miami what they would do if they saw drugs and guns in someone's locker in school. "I'd stay away from that person," was the common reply. Then, I asked what they would do if they saw a hood, a white sheet, and a rope in someone's locker. "I'd tell it. That sounds like the Klan and the Klan kills people. I'd tell it."
Yet, more young black men die each year from guns than the total who died
from lynching by the Klan. Our sense of loyalty, of solidarity is misplaced. If the killers were white, surely the young would report them to the police. But when blacks kill blacks, the young resist snitching to a police force that too often doesn't seem to care much anyway.
Recent testimony by some renegade New York City police officers who profit
from the drug trade and official corruption, may horrify the innocent, but it merely confirms what too many urban residents have come to expect. But alienation from authorities cannot be allowed to make the black community into a silent protector of those who kill brothers and sisters. The silence that protects these killers is not solidarity. It is betrayal. We have got to tell it - just as we would if they were with the Klan.
The neighborhood where Launice Smith was murdered is the deadliest in Washington, if not the nation. Thirty-two people have been murdered this year within a square mile of where she was shot. At her funeral, when I asked who there had lost family members to the drug war, some 50 people came forward.
