NEW YORK, NY Aug. 23 (DPI) – The ongoing gun violence on Chicago’s South Side attracted the attention of The New York Times earlier this month, with the coverage leaning hard on bad policing as a primary cause.

But that criticism seemed to annoy many readers, who instead articulated the less-popular view that the African American inner-city has a cultural problem and must fix itself, through new leadership and through difficult changes in behavior, including a willingness to cooperate with the police.

Every one of the top-recommended comments reflected a view that the problem of inner-city gun violence has gone on – and been largely ignored by the broader society – for decades, and  no amount of money, new gun laws, modified policing  or intervention by a majority of a city’s population will stop the gun violence. As one poster rather insensitively put it: “Yeah, nobody cares, nobody is going to save them, and if they are waiting to be saved it’ll be a long wait. They have to save themselves and that means working with the cops.”  The urban violence seems to peak each year in the late-summer months.

The top comment linked to the Times report:

Lived on the West Side of Chicago for a decade and worked in Englewood on the South, right upside the old Robert Taylor Homes. Remember driving by with my African-American boss one dark night and watching an old woman with groceries struggle through a clutch of dealers. “Why don’t they fix the lights?” I asked rhetorically, to which my companion replied, “oh, they do. The dealers bust them out again as soon as the maintenance crews leave”.
Chicago has relatively high sales and property taxes and already spends massively for remedial school programs, after school programs and lots and lots of subsidized housing. Sure, all these could be improved, but the problem at its core is a cultural one. I know for a fact the people who live in these communities are desperate and contrary to what many think speak out and march against violence on a regular basis. My question is: where is BLM while this is going on? A national coalition with a giant megaphone, that instigated a national conversation over a half dozen police shootings, has remained utterly silent regarding this cancer of violence which a couple of years ago killed almost 800 young men and women in Chicago alone. Time for the African-American intellectual class to step up, irrespective how uncomfortable the resultant conversation.

Here’s a news story that points to why we on the Left are losing many to Team Trump. The sickening scourge of death running rampant through the black inner cities prompts little outrage, little organizing and no marching – at least not insofar as can be told from the front pages of newspapers across the country, the story an exception. Yet, when a cop shoots a black man and contributes to a relative handful of cop-driven deaths annually, there is no end of outrage. We on the Left are prepared to dismiss black on black crime from our bucket list of political concerns (indeed, the phrase black on black crime is taboo) because it doesn’t quite fit the prevailing narrative.

This is so illustrative of the progressive mindset. People are enraged to the point of psychosis when President Trump takes a hard line on illegal immigration, but 66 people are shot in one weekend in a sanctuary city and the thousands who marched all weekend to protest the detention of migrants shrug their soldiers at this carnage and the city’s complete inability to stop it or even apprehend one shooter.

Gun laws in Chicago or surrounding states have nothing to do with it. Cities like Los Angeles and New York City face the same dynamics and both have largely solved the problems that have belied Chicago politicians for years.  There is no real penalty for being caught with an illegal weapon in Chicago. In New York, the penalty is swift and harsh, and the criminals know it. It is not that difficult to figure out.

Black Lives Matter not to Black People who shoot Black People. Anyone care to estimate how many of these shootings were by white people.
Yep, you guessed it.
We have a dysfunctional culture that rules black urban neighborhoods. It is the result of two forces: One, the “war on drugs” has resulted in mass incarceration of young black men and has contributed directly to the dysfunctional culture. Whether the resulting arrests, incarceration, parole and subsequent shunning from job opportunities was the result of racist legislators or not, the impact has been disastrous. This “tough on crime” social attitude has destroyed generations of Americans.  Second, the breakdown of family structure and middle class values, juxtaposed against the gangbanger wannabe culture has proven Moynihan right. Villages and communities do not raise children to be anything other than reflections of the prevailing village culture. In Chicago, the prevailing village culture was demonstrated over the weekend.
The problem is not the cops any more than the problem is the black male population.
The problem is that small percentages of men, rogue cops or thugs, exert disproportionate impact on the populations at large. Their actions poison any attempt to have problem solving conversations, let alone actions.
Its not a whites versus blacks issue. But one truism is inescapable:
If Black Lives Matter, then Black People must stop the insanity in their culture.

I moved to Chicago for several years beginning in 1979, and basically, things haven’t changed where these crimes have been taking place for 40 years. Gangs and random gunfire were problems then. Poverty and a strong distrust for the police were already in place. Welfare and drugs were the norm for many residents.
The mindset of teenage girls having babies, dropping out of high school and getting onto welfare perpetuates this. These girls were raised in single parent homes, with poor training, see very little hope in getting out, and continue the life cycle they know. They’re street smart and need something to love. They’re not trained to be good moms who read to their kids, hold a job, and respect themselves, so how can you possibly expect a child to act differently?
It’s not the fault of the police, or Chicago gun laws, which are the toughest in the country.
The community of people here have no intention of ‘snitching’ on a cousin, neighbor, or son.

The truth is is that in the U.S., especially in cities like Chicago, the majority of violent crimes are committed by African-Americans and the majority of victims of violent crimes are African-Americans. This is the real problem in the African-American community that the Democrats want to ignore. The Democrats have cleverly convinced the black community that the problem is elsewhere, lbut less than a fraction of 1% percent of deaths of African-Americans are at the hands of a policeman, and, even then, many of those killed were engaging in some sort of criminal behavior or one could argue that the police had a reasonable fear of danger.
Because of all the protests against these police-related deaths, the police are now more reluctant to actively police African-American neighborhoods for fear of being branded racists, to the detriment of law-abiding blacks. See the work of Heather Mac Donald. Again, Democrats’ supposedly good intentions are harming those they supposedly are meant to help, like welfare (causing a breakdown of the African-American family) and affirmative action (increasing the rates of dropouts among African-Americans).
And it doesn’t appear that gun control is the answer. States like Vermont have some of the most permissive gun laws and highest rates of gun ownership in the U.S. but lowest levels of violent crimes. And South Africa has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world without the permissive gun laws that the U.S. has.

I lived in Chicago in the ’80s. These neighborhoods were combat zones then and they’re still combat zones. If you were any color but black and went in, there was a 99% chance you’d be mugged or worse, and for blacks, it was a 95% chance. The people who live there blame everyone but themselves. The rest of the city has gotten better, but these folks still complain about the cops, refuse to cooperate, and wonder why shooting is risk free. How about if these neighborhoods step up to their responsibilities and figure out how to partner with police even if they don’t like them. Yeah, nobody cares, nobody is going to save them, and if they are waiting to be saved it’ll be a long wait. They have to save themselves and that means working with the cops.