Black genocide? Preliminary thoughts on the plight of America’s poor black men

Abstract

Our aim in this article is to offer an examination and preliminary defense of the claim heard frequently these days that poor African American men are subjected to conditions of life that are sufficiently destructive to amount to an instance of genocide. To make our case, we define the term genocide and apply measures of this phenomenon to the life experiences of poor black American men. Our focus is on grossly disproportionate death rates among this group, which we examine as one of a number of products of social deprivation. The emphasis is on understanding indirect genocide, which involves creating life conditions which destroy a group and facilitate black on black violence. "Not since slavery," notes former U.S. Secretary of Human Services Dr. Louis Sullivan, "has so much calamity and ongoing catastrophe been visited on Black males" (Majors & Gordon, 1994:ix). The calamities and catastrophes to which Dr. Sullivan alludes fall disproportionately on poor black males, especially the poor young black men who inhabit our nation's ghettos. This has led many observers to characterize poor black men as an endangered species (see Gibbs, 1988). Mortality data and other social indicators, discussed in this article, suggest that Dr. Sullivan's observation is fundamentally correct, particularly when it is applied to the plight of poor black men. The notion that these men comprise an endangered species is, however, a misleading and ultimately counterproductive one.' A more accurate view, though we can offer only tentative proof and argument at this juncture, is that such men may be victims of genocide. (We believe this claim holds for poor black women as well, but that takes us beyond the confines of this article.) Those who identify poor black men as an endangered species do so out of concern, to raise an alarm and move society to compassionate action. The term is thus used with the best of intentions. Yet one can't help but note that the very notion of an endangered species of people is dehumanizing. Reference to any group or subgroup of people as a "species," let alone a species at risk, sets them apart, implicitly, as less than fully equal with other human beings. Such labels may inadvertently reinforce harmful stereotypes of poor black men, making it harder for outsiders to fully appreciate the scope of the pressures affecting their lives, pressures that we suggest may well reach genocidal proportions.Johnson & Leighton, Black Genocide p 1 of 18. Downloaded from http://paulsjusticepage.com > Class, Race, Gender & Crime As a general matter, people are strongly inclined to deny genocide wherever and whenever it occurs, and to do so firmly, and even passionately, when the group at issue can be readily dehumanized (see Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990:7). This is clearly the case with the black men in our inner cities. It is a bitter irony that, for many in the larger white society, they comprise not only different species of men but a distinctly predatory group that is largely if not entirely responsible for their i...

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