Black freedom and the gun control debate

The Florida Courier - Sharing Black Life, Statewide ^ | September 19, 2013 | Professor Akinyele Umoja, Georgia State Univ.

[2ndDivisionVet]

As almost every other issue in the U.S., the racial dimensions of gun control cannot be dismissed.

A slave-holding society fought to prevent enslaved Africans access to weapons to resist and increase potential for insurrection. After emancipation, Blacks sought arms not only to hunt, but also to protect themselves from White supremacist terror. Gun ownership was associated with citizenship and liberty and as a means to protect those principles.

The segregationists continued slave-holding society’s practice of attempting to disarm Blacks. Ultimately, Blacks utilized armed self-defense to protect activist leadership and their communities from White terrorist violence.

Survival, defense

It was a rite of passage for rural Black families taught children to use arms as a means of survival; for food and for protection. Black female youth were trained to shoot for defense from White rapists.

I have the utmost respect for Congressman John Lewis due to the sacrifice he made during the civil rights movement in the Deep South. In responding to those opposing President Obama’s gun control proposals, Congressman Lewis offers that he and his colleagues in the civil rights movement “…believed the only way to achieve peaceful ends was through peaceful means. We took a stand against an unjust system, and we decided to use this faith as our shield and the power of compassion as our defense.”

Nonviolent mythology

The notion that the civil rights movement was exclusively nonviolent is a popular mythology. In dozens of Southern communities, Black people picked up arms to defend themselves. In particular, Black people relied on armed self-defense in communities where federal government officials failed to safeguard Movement activists and supporters from the violence of racists and segregationists, who were often supported by local law enforcement.

Congressman Lewis’s statement is true for a small number of committed activists who engaged in civil disobedience and voter registration in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.

These activists were often protected by grassroots Black people armed with shotguns and rifles. Some members of Lewis’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee picked up weapons and worked with community people to defend their lives against White terrorists.

The post-civil rights and Black Power era brought a new dimension of this issue for Black communities. A crisis in Black families resulted from welfare policy, increased individualism, and the decline of the manufacturing economy that employed significant numbers of Black males.

The federal, state, and local COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) assault on activist Black leaders, organizations, and institutions weakened solidarity and Black political consciousness in the 1970s. Black communities experienced a growth in gang activity and an influx of drugs in this period.

‘Unstable elements’ armed

The access to automatic weapons and assault rifles paralleled the crisis in Black communities. Increased access of weapons to the most criminalized and unstable elements of the Black community only accelerated the crisis. Unlike generations of youth who were trained by their elders to protect their families and communities from emancipation through the civil rights and Black Power eras, large numbers of Black youth were supplied weapons in the underground economy.

As a youth growing up in Compton, Calif. in the early 1970s, I heard a plethora of rumors of elements external to the Black community providing caches of military weapons that contributed to the fratricidal war between the Crips and the Bloods in Compton, Watts, and South Central LA.

While this sounds like a wild conspiracy theory, it has been well documented that the FBI and local police agencies utilized “divide and conquer” tactics to incite fratricidal conflict between the Black Panther Party and the Us Organization in the same streets that the Crips and Bloods would inhabit a few years later.

The dilemma of the criminal use of guns still poses a challenge in several urban and rural places today. This situation has motivated support for gun control in our communities.

Other politically and socially conscious elements challenge the gun control position based on the history of White supremacy in the US and the desire of racists to disarm Black communities.

Self-defense

The growth of White supremacist and right-wing paramilitary formations and militias since the 2008 election of Barack Obama and the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin have done nothing to decrease the fear of White violence in the Black community. Several elements of the Black community recite the lyric of the late popular artist Gil Scott-Heron: “When other folks give up theirs, I’ll give up mine.”

Gun control for Black activists must be an issue of self-determination, self-reliance and self-defense. Black people will never disarm in a political and social environment where Black life is still challenged and not valued.

The Black community must advocate for policies that take weapons out of the hands of unstable elements (e.g., checks for mental illness), but be vigilant to make sure these policies do are not utilized in a manner to weaken the capacity of our community to defend itself from White supremacists. At the same time, more solidarity and grassroots organization of Black communities is needed to gain control and socialization of unstable elements of our community.

Cooperative economic projects provide alternatives to those trapped in the drug economy. The fight for the decriminalization of drugs and quality and culturally relevant education for our youth is another pillar in the fight to bring back community integrity and solidarity and a safer community.

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Akinyele Umoja is an associate professor and chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Comments?

[Paladin2]

“Blacks” and “whites” should find common ground in a quest to maintain personal liberty and to repel the anti-Constitutional precepts of Islam.

[infowarrior]

Comments?

I have no problem at all with US citizens, regardless of their origins, exercising *our* rights under the Second Amendment. I never have had a problem with, nor shall I ever have a problem with it...

the infowarrior

[Navy Patriot]

The basic premise that considerable gun control laws were passed to disarm post slavery blacks is valid.

[Bob]

The author might consider reviewing the FBI crime statistics. Most black homicide victims were killed by other blacks, not by white supremacists and right-wing militias.

[Henry Hnyellar]

We’re all slaves in the eyes of many in the government.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Black female youth were trained to shoot for defense from White rapists.

That was extremely effective.. there are years when white on black sex crimes are zero. Black on white sex crimes continue year-after-year however.

Criminal Victimization in the United States, [YYYY] Statistical Tables

Table 42: "Percent distribution of single-offender victimizations, by type of crime, race of victim, and perceived race of offender"
"Rape/Sexual assault"

Year of Stats	Total Rape/ Sexual assault	Race of Victims	% White Offenders	% Black Offenders	% Not known & other
1995	255,260	White	78.7	15.3
	38,330	Black	7.9 *	92.1
1996	216,710	White	82.2	8.8 *
	44,890	Black	13.5 *	80.2	6.3 *
1997	234,800	White	74.8	8.0 *
	43,890	Black	0.0 *	93.7	6.3 *
1998	225,330	White	77.2	9.9 *
	47,430	Black	7.2 *	68.9	23.9 *
1999	274,020	White	79.4	7.3 *
	67,890	Black	0.0 *	79.3	20.7 *
2000	199,360	White	81.5	7.0
	33,780	Black	7.0	79.7	13.3
2001	183,160	White	71.3	17.1
	29,980	Black	13.4	65.5	21.1
2002	134,140	White	76.0	13.1
	59,490	Black	14.2	85.8
2003	131,030	White	57.9	15.5
	24,010	Black	0.0	87.9	12.1
2004	139,900	White	65.1	8.3
	39,300	Black	0.0	89.8	10.2
2005	111,590	White	44.5	33.6
	36,620	Black	0.0	100.0
2006	194,270	White	50.6	16.7
	17,920	Black	0.0	43.0	57.0
2007	185,430	White	75.5	7.6
	12,780	Black	0.0	100.0
2008	117,640	White	74.9	16.4
	46,580	Black	0.0	74.8	25.2

*0.0 Estimate is based on 10 or fewer sample cases
May not sum to 100.0 % due to rounding

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

U.S. Dept. of Justice stats based upon interviews with crime victims. Some of those stats look odd to me but I tried to copy the figures accurately from the DoJ files list above, 1995 - 2008.

[Henry Hnyellar]

The author fears the bogey man of white supremacists and calls for more solidarity in the black community. Does that leave room for any common ground between whites and blacks?

[Navy Patriot]

That is also valid.

[RobbyS]

Most of the supremacist are white, all right, and they are most white liberals who want to use blacks to impose their values on both the ordinary white man and the ordinary black man.

[Paladin2]

"Does that leave room for any common ground between whites and blacks? "

Obviously not.

"Blacks" need to recognize that the Honkie, Cracker Arabs would love to put them back in chains.

[Paladin2]

Voting Slaves and Tax Slaves.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

And black-on-white violent crime is not quite as one-sided as sex assaults but it seems that some blacks have adopted the Bush doctrine of preemptive strikes with their Knockout games and murders.

Seems to me that since the doctrine of vicarious liability has been used to go after white supremacist groups like Tom Metzger's WAR then the inflammatory language of the author of the posted article -- and producers of movies! -- should be accountable by the doctrine of vicarious liability also.

IIRC the two skinheads who murdered a defenseless black man had no connections to Metzger and his group other than public statements made by Metzger and his group.

[truth_seeker]

Justice Dept. stats reveal blacks commit murder at 7 times the rates of whites.

With just 13% of the population, blacks commit about 50% of murders.

And black of white assault is 40 times the rate, of white on black assault.

[jmacusa]

This is one of the primary reasons The National Rifle Association was formed.

[fso301]

As a youth growing up in Compton, Calif. in the early 1970s, I heard a plethora of rumors of elements external to the Black community providing caches of military weapons that contributed to the fratricidal war between the Crips and the Bloods in Compton, Watts, and South Central LA.

Communists are first on the list of elements external to the Black community

[marktwain]

I think the high black crime rate is cultural, not racial, in its base:

European Murder Rates Compared to the United States: Demographics vs Guns

http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2013/01/european-murder-rates-compared-to.html

Remove the cultures that do not exist in Europe from the United States homicide rates, and the U.S. homicide rates fall in the middle of European rates.

[Bob]

Using that 13% overall population figure for comparison is misleading itself. A huge portion of the crimes are being committed by a subset of that 13%, specifically young black males. Using 13% makes the problem look less severe than it really is. The ‘usual suspects’ are probably no more than 4% or 5% of the country’s overall population.