Dr Boyce Watkins: Black men dying is always a tragedy, even if a white guy didn’t do it (2168 hits)

By Dr. Boyce Watkins


Today on Hot 97, I think some people were seeking to pin me into some kind of “Uncle Tom” category for mentioning my concern about the glorification of black-on-black homicide by corporations that pay the bills for toxic rappers. I’m honestly not sure why I’ve been invited onto the network so many times. Typically, the minute I start mentioning what major media companies are doing to destroy the black community, they cut me off faster than Kanye West during a Hurricane Katrina special.

I hate having to be the one to bring bad news, but it annoys the hell out of me when we protest like crazy when a white guy kills a black man, but say nothing when corporations pay black men to celebrate their own genocide. Of course we should fight police brutality, that’s a given – but we should be fighting the glorification of Thug Brutality as well. The bottom line is that our sons are dying, and people are making money from it.

So, when I hear mothers say, “I’m so concerned about letting my son go out because people are trying to kill him,” I feel obligated to help her prepare her son for ALL THREATS against his life, and not pretend that police are the only ones seeking to put him into an early grave. Yes, the police are a serious threat to the existence of our kids, and we must fight them every step of the way. But while police have an obligation to serve and protect all of us, black men also have an obligation to serve and protect our children as well.

Black men aren’t meant to be thugs/gangstaz/killers and we’re the only community exposed to music that consistently endorses the deaths of our own people. This is truly, truly sick. So, for the mothers who want to protect your sons from police, we unfortunately have to also protect our sons from EVERYONE who wants to kill them. All of these issues have to be addressed….fighting police brutality is a given (which is what Cornel West, Carl Dix, Jerome McCorry, Michelle Alexander and myself are asking people to do during the October month of resistance against police terror – Visit Stopmassincarceratio n.net to join us). It doesn’t have to be one or the other, it should be BOTH.

The death of a black person is not acceptable, no matter who pulls the trigger….period. Yes, protest the untimely homicide of Michael Brown. But we must decide if our sole objective is to keep white police officers from killing our sons or to keep everyone from killing our sons. If you narrow your objective only focus on the bullets coming from one direction, your son is going to end up being shot in his back instead of his front.

If your goal is to stop black men from dying, never forget that dozens of black men have died since Michael Brown, and many of them were killed in their own communities. This is a fact that cannot be ignored. Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Monday, August 25th 2014 at 11:00AM
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