This is madness!

"This is Madness!!!!!!!!" screams Umar Bin Hassan of the legendary group the Last Poets. His words still echo and linger in my brain. He uttered these words many years ago on the album release "Stolen Moments:Red Hot + cool. He speaks of many topics among which the atrocities suffered by Blacks in America! I speak of one in particular...Trayvon Martin. The senseless murder of this young Black man is seemingly yet another in the long line of slain Black youths across the USA . This nonsense goes back to the murder of Emmett Till! Is it an epidemic? Is it a sport? Perhaps it's the nouveaux chiche hip thing... metro negro hunting? Whatever it is, it needs to stop! Black on Black crime is bad enough! Yes, we must stop killing ourselves! But hunting down young un-armed teens is not a right and it's definitely not an option! Because of the familiarity of the case, I shall skip the details and speak more to

the core issue. Race is always the issue! No matter how look at it, it comes down to a non-Black man vs. a Black man; mono y mono. To paraphrase "Rodney King's infamous question, "Why can't we really just all get along?" Is it so difficult to let people be themselves and not give in to the stereotypically hyped fears that often seem to manifest themselves with the worst case scenario usually occurring. This is an excerpt from a recent NPR story. "According to a study released Monday by researchers at Northeastern University, The study showed that the number of black murder victims rose by more than 31 percent from 2000 to 2007. The number of murders involving young, black perpetrators rose by 43 percent over the same period, according to the study by criminal justice professors James Alan Fox and Marc Swatt. The report also noted that guns were the weapon of choice in most of the killings. Last year, 426 black males ages 14-17 died in gun crimes — 40 percent more than in 2000; nearly 1,000 young black males used guns to kill someone in 2007 — 38 percent higher than in 2000." These are statistics released by the F.B.I. for the year 2006: hate crime statistics •Offenders: Of the 7,330 known offenders, 58.6 percent were white and 20.6 percent were black. •Victims: A total of 9,652 victims were identified. More than half—52.0 percent—were targeted because of their race. It's quite clear, that young black men are being targeted by assortment of potential assailants. My question is, "Why?" Is this form of ethnic cleansing really necessary here too? It's unsettling to think that a group of people can be victimized for their style of dress,their diction and "Ebonic slang", their flamboyant & unabashedly, brash behavior at times. What else can it possibly be? If you're between the ages of 12-17, for the most part, unless one is extremely gifted, these beings haven't been on the planet long enough to make a stain on it. Unless the person has done some horribly, heinous act for which he must atone, then here is no reason to exterminate another's life. Last time I checked, the USA had a legal court system to handle most crimes and many other issues. There is never a need to ever take matters into our own hands. Yes, it is a primal response to want to seek justice or revenge, but that usually means that some type of harm was done to initiate the situation. In Trayvon's case, there is no such evidence to show that he did anything to provoke or elicit the type of life ending reaction from his alleged killer. In the end, I'm left with the words of Umar Bin Hassan, "Please Stop all this madness!"