Jackson is in the vanguard of what may turn out to be a crucial repositioning of the civil-rights movement. In the past that movement has focused primarily on questions of access, equality and economic empowerment–with law-and-order issues ceded to the political right. Even when civil-rights leaders did address the problem of violent crime, they preferred to talk of white violence against blacks–the bombing of a church in Birmingham, the lynching of Emmett Till. But with people growing ever more fearful of criminal mayhem, and with African-Americans disproportionately ending up as both victims and perpetrators, the civil-rights community can no longer dance around the problem.
Not that old-line organizations are exactly rushing to join Jackson’s parade. His National Rainbow Coalition, in conjunction with the Congressional Black Caucus and other groups, has scheduled a “stop the violence and save the children” conference in Washington for this week, but many of America’s major civilrights organizations (including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban Coalition and the National Urban League) were not scheduled to participate. That reflects, in part, the fact that no great effort was made to include them. But it also reflects a degree of discomfort with Jackson among his peers, many of whom fault him for his flamboyance and a perceived lack of follow-through. (One official of a civil-rights organization derided Jackson’s current crusade as little more than “an effort to revitalize a slumping image.”) Even some who agree that Jackson has seized a legitimate issue worry that concentrating on black criminals will foster harmful stereotypes–and make it easier for political enemies to promote repressive, antiblack policies. The Rev. Calvin Butts, pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, fears that people who “want to make crime synonymous with black people” may “try to lock up all black men and think that will solve the problem.”
Jackson himself frets that the focus on his crimefighting rhetoric could obscure his calls for federal reinvestment in urban areas. “What some conservatives want to do is see a guy in a hole down in a well and say, ‘Behave down there. Do the right thing’,” Jackson says. But he argues, in effect, that the risk must be taken–even as he admits that fighting black criminals is not what he had in mind when he signed up during the ’60s for “the struggle.” Things have changed a great deal from the old days, he says, when “the architects of violence and brutality were the enemies.” Now, he notes, the top killers of blacks are not racist assassins but “homicide, or fratricide, and AIDS–both of which are preventable.”
Statistics bear Jackson out. The FBI cataloged 23,760 murders for 1992. Roughly half of the victims were black; and in cases where the assailant was known, 94 percent of black victims were slain by other blacks (chart). A national survey conducted in 1992 by the Boston-based research firm of Marttila & Kiley found 38 percent of respondents agreeing with the statement that “Blacks are more prone to violence than people of other races.” “When close to 40 percent of the population perceives you in that way and violence is the thing they fear most, I think that is a big problem,” says Milton Morris, a vice president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. “That is the challenge that civil-rights, race-relations advocates have to contend with,” he adds.
While some advocates bristle at the thought that African-Americans should be particularly responsible for fighting crime (“I don’t consider this a problem that is unique to the black community,” says Butts), they see little choice but to make crimefighting a part of their agendas. Since many people believe “crime is now synonymous with race, we’re being forced to debate the issue on those grounds,” says Wade Henderson, head of the NAACP’s Washington office. The NAACP supported the Brady bill, which establishes a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases. The organization also endorsed more police hiring and expanding the gun-buyback and drug-treatment programs.
It is true that crime is not only–or even mostly–a “black problem.” (Between 1965 and 1991, according to the FBI, arrests of whites for violent crimes went up nearly 250 percent–a clear sign that something other than race is driving crime statistics.) Yet it is also true that violent crime disproportionately affects young blacks–particularly young black men–and that any countermeasures must focus on them and on the communities in which they live.
Ramona Edelin, president of the National Urban Coalition, argues that the task is too large for civil-rights leaders alone. The private and public sectors, she believes, also must help to “fashion a solution that’s as big as the problem.” The particular solution she has in mind would create “urban-life campuses”–inner-city centers of learning and employment that would serve as an alternative to prison for first-time nonviolent offenders. Realizing that aspiration, Edelin acknowledges, “would require a level of coordination among city agencies and state agencies that we have never seen.” It would also require a new (and so far elusive) political consensus that putting criminals in jail is not a total solution to crime–that the “root causes,” as liberals are fond of calling them, must also be addressed.
Roger Wilkins, a historian, former justice Department official and longtime civilrights activist, concedes that the very tendency of many established organizations to focus on so-called root causes has made it difficult for some to shift and say, “We are against violent crime,” He notes, however, that many black groups–particularly those working at the neighborhood level–have always been vocally against crime. Though Butts, for instance, questions the wisdom of asking school kids to turn in armed peers (“You’re asking them to take a high risk because there’s a ruthlessness that could take their lives”), he long ago asked his parishioners to eschew weapons–including toy guns.
With his blunt assaults on the “BBB,” his crusade for a renewal of values and his call to churches to find mentors for young delinquents, Jackson is, in effect, trying to reclaim the sense of “moral rightness” that has been co-opted by conservatives. Whether, in the process, he can also come up with some workable solutions is the urgent–but as vet unanswered–question.
Blacks make up only 12 percent of the U.S. population-but were nearly half of those murdered in 1992.
HOMICIDE VICTIMS Black 11,175 White 10,645 All races 23,760 Blacks slain by blacks* 94% Whites slain by whites* 83%
*CRIMES WITH SINGLE VICTIM AND OFFENDER.
BASED ON CASES WHERE RACE IS KNOWN, SOURCE: FBI
