COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY LOIS BECKETT
IN THE GUARDIAN
I’m sorry, but the problem is in the black community.
The level of violence among blacks in Chicago (and indeed in
every other American city where there is a large black presence) has been high
for all my life, only going up or down a little with events like the
availability of new drugs or gang warfare over turf or indeed additional
changes in population mix.
I grew up there.
This is a harsh social issue we never speak of.
It actually has little to do with guns, per se, except that
they make the killing easier.
In my youth, knives were common.
The national stats are clear - and they unfortunately agree
with those in other countries - black males are on the order of eight times as
violent as others.
By the way, in a place like Jamaica - whose entire
population no larger than Chicago's - they have about 1,500 murders a year.
South Africa's stats tell the same story, an extraordinary
rate of murder as compared to, say, Canada or Northern Europe.
