Houston Mayor Bill White (pictured above) asks black leaders to provide solutions for alarming rise in youth homicide
Mayor Bill White declined Wednesday to appoint a violence commission or task force to examine a startling jump in homicides by young black men in Houston the past few years.
Local black pastors had called Tuesday for city officials to create a task force or expert panel during an emotional meeting in Sunnyside. But White said he would wait to hear ideas from black community leaders, casting himself as their "servant." Police Chief Harold Hurtt will meet with the ministers next week.
White said solutions to black-on-black violence had to come from the community itself: "I don't want to be a distraction for people thinking the mayor or the governor or the president-elect can be a substitute for people next door, in the church, or in the classroom."
The Rev. Robert Jefferson, of the Houston Ministers Against Crime, said he was surprised by the mayor's response.
"We need someone to study the problem. It's getting worse. It's unacceptable," said Jefferson, the pastor of Cullen Missionary Baptist Church. "He helped the victims in Katrina, I guess, because it was a popular thing at the time, but we have victims on a daily basis. We're a Katrina every day. Our boys are getting killed."
Houston leads nation
The Rev. James Nash said he was OK with the mayor putting the onus back onto community members.
"What the mayor would like us to do was put something together and bring it to him," Nash said. "The mayor's going to back us, whatever we do."
The study found that Houston topped a list of 28 cities, with a 139 percent increase in the number of young black men (ages 14-24) suspected in killings between 2000-01 and 2006-07. The number of young black men who were murdered in Houston during those periods also jumped, from 42 to 129.
Nationally, violent crime dropped between 2006 and 2007, with murders down 1.3 percent, according to the analysis of FBI statistics by two criminologists at Northeastern University in Boston.
On Wednesday, Houston officials touted a two-year drop in homicides here, from 376 in 2006 to 347 in 2007. The final homicide tally for 2008 probably will be around 292, Hurtt said.
The Rev. Robert Gilmore called the mayor's response "pretty insensitive."
"He needs to make more of a commitment," said Gilmore, founder of Real Urban Ministry Inc.
"We are preachers. We preach on Sundays. We're saying it's over our heads. He's the mayor; he needs to do something."
6 comments:
Hmmmm... Is the pastor hypocrital or what? We ask as black people take of our problems and handeling our own situation. but, the pastor said "it's over our head!" WTF! This really get my blood flowing.I'm really starting to get with some of our people.
www.nola.com/crime
PLEASE GO IMMEDIATELY!
I'm on a similar track as the first respondent. The black community should have gotten organized for the upsurge in the black population due to the Katrina crisis. What were they thinking...that nothing different would happen??
I applaud what Mayor White did; he put the onus on black leaders to propose recommendations to deal with the homicide problem. It's a pitiful thought to assume that homicides are a black problem but that's I'm increasingly seeing.
Also, leave white people (police powers) to jump into a fray like this usually results in nothing but MORE dead black youths (at their hands). So I recommend that the organization of ministers for Houston reach out to other civic organizations and come up with some recommendations that will work....even if that includes unloading their Katrina burden altogether if determined that's where the problem lies.
The problem is that the pastor want white people do the work... But, if the police take the matter into there hands... it will be very ugly and the racism chaser will be in full effect. Nevermind, that we need to check ourselves and value our own life and other will respect us.
Conservative Feedback, what is your opinion on this? Hmmmm...
I'm really happy that mayor finally called us out on the black on black crime. Hmmmm... I need Senator Chambliss in Georgia to do the same.
Senator Boxer in California
Do you see it... we only do something if white people call us out
[quote] Conservative Feedback, what is your opinion on this? Hmmmm...
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My opinions are easily extracted from my continued agitation of this entrenched power Within The Black Community.
They live upon the fact that a significant portion of Black folks think as the one guy in the video does: "An oppressed people will act out in hatred against people who look like them".
To bottom line it for you - EVEN IF THIS IS TRUE - this only will ever be a comment in the spirit of "We know who DID THIS TO US!!!"
This perspective does not do a DAMNED THING!!!! in regards to imposing a certain order upon the BLACK COMMUNITY so that our people are not KILLED so frequently and/or the people who KILLED THEM walk away with impunity for their actions.
The bottom line of it all is that this is in fact a complex situation. It is NOT going to be solved in any short order. The solution will come when there are more forces WITHIN THE BLACK COMMUNITY who are willing to both REPUDIATE the killing & the underlying criminal activity that fortifies it AND are willing to preemptively indoctrinate our children into avoiding the death spiral that leads into this certain death.
If people make the case that these are "oppressed people" acting out (derivative behavior) then where are the new models for raising Black kids so that their exposure to the SYSTEM that is seeking to kill and oppress them are kept to the minimum - as they are strengthened for a different battle?
I keep referring to Barack Obama and his upbringing to advance my point. This is the ONE BLACK MAN who many agree is the reference model of a BLACK MAN who has "made it" through a lions den of RACISM and OPPRESSION.
What these same people don't want to admit is that this same B.O. was not raised in a normal BLACK AMERICAN COMMUNITY nor was he raised by Black people. (This is NOT a slight against his White mother in any way). It is focused on forwarding my argument that one of the most corrosive forces that stand against the progress of Black folks is the current orientation of OUR OWN COMMUNITY!!! Who more than OUR OWN snatches the dreams of our young people out of their minds than does the forces within?
Why can't those who are smitten by Obama also study his upbringing and attempt to bring the same MESSAGES to the young American Blacks who won't live overseas?
I guarantee you that had Barack Obama grown up in Chicago, gone to a school that is poorly rated in the GreatSchools.net index and had to deal with much of the backbiting that is present within our community that he would not be President today.
The greatest form of CHANGE is to
* Realize that staying as you are proves too costly
* Commit to doing all that is necessary for CHANGE
* Enforcing the elements for change to take place
* MEASURE THE EFFECTIVENESS of your works
* Pitch those policies which have FAILED and support those which have worked.
* Rinse and Repeat.
In summary we have a MANAGEMENT problem that for too long has been patched over by a MARKETING organization which is able to sculpt public sentiment WITHIN THE BLACK COMMUNITY.
NO MORE!!!
Deliver or GET GONE!!!
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