City Councilman Frank Reddick is to be commended for his catalytic role in organizing the black-on-black crime forum last week at Middleton High.
It’s a super-sensitive, society-impacting subject that needs addressing–but can only be addressed with credibility by a black person. Arguably, if Reddick didn’t do it, it would remain undone–and the wagons that typically circle to suppress “dirty laundry” and limit the spread of minority stereotypes would continue to circle to no one’s benefit.
And obviously something needs to be done, taboo subject notwithstanding. The problem is national in scope–think Chicago–but Tampa is a disturbing microcosm. The Tampa Police Department has reported 15 homicides through the first eight months of the year–and the details are once again racially skewed. Eleven of the victims are black. In eight of them, the suspects are black.
Reddick’s epiphany, as we know, was the blatantly stark contrast in the local black community’s reactions to the killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford and the murder of Horsley Shorter in East Tampa. Martin’s death at the hands of the acquitted George Zimmerman produced visceral anger in the black community over racial profiling. Zimmerman is half Hispanic, half Caucasian.
In the case of Shorter, 49, a black U.S. Army veteran who managed a Family Dollar store, Tampa police arrested and charged a 23-year-old African-American male with a felony-riddled rap sheet in the fatal shooting. But Shorter’s death didn’t elicit outrage–just a communal response of sadness and mourning over a good man lost to family and friends. At the time, a clearly frustrated Reddick lamented that “No one is marching for black-on-black crime.” He didn’t have to say it, but, no, black-on-black crime is not a favored Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson crusade theme. Reddick emphasized the critical “need to make some changes.”
Then last Thursday at Middleton, some 200 concerned residents and community leaders showed up to air out related issues and symptoms–ranging from employment, education and “snitching” to drugs, prison sentences and single-parent homes. “We’re going to have to work together,” pointed out Hillsborough County Commissioner Les Miller. Government can’t do it by itself. These private groups can’t do it by themselves.”
The proof, of course, will lie in meaningful follow-up and serious self-policing. Elements of a dysfunctional sub-culture–from thuggish, misogynistic rap to the perception of academic achievement as “acting white”–critically need countering.
Ideally, this forum would have been held at least a generation ago. Time is of the essence, because living–the ultimate civil right–literally hangs in the balance in too many communities. It’s encouraging that another forum is already planned for West Tampa.
Darrell Daniels, executive director of Derrick Brooks Charities and program moderator, had an interesting take on the forum’s impact. “We are not going to solve all the problems tonight,” he said. “It’s the beginning of a dialogue.”
Actually, this depressing sense of 21st century ghetto rebranding is way past the well-intentioned, initial-dialogue state. What Frank Reddick sent out was a societal SOS–not a colloquy invite–in response to the unconscionably passive acceptance of the Horsley Shorter tragedy.