YankeeFan
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From his speech this week in Chicago:
When I worked in Richmond, Virginia, in the 1990s, that city, like so much of America, was experiencing horrific levels of violence. But to describe it just that way obscures an important truth. For the most part white people weren’t dying, black people were dying.
Most white people could drive around the problems of Richmond and so many other cities in America. If you were white in Richmond, and not involved in the drug trade, as either a buyer or a seller, you could escape the violence, you could avoid the problem. But if you were black and poor, it didn’t matter whether you were a player in the trade or not, because violent crime dominated your life, your neighborhood, your world.
Like so many in law enforcement in the 1980s and ‘90s, we worked hard to save lives in those neighborhoods in Richmond, by rooting out drug dealers, and gangbangers, and predators, and killers. And of course we also worked up the chains to the foreign sources of the drugs that were poisoning Richmond. But we felt a tremendous urgency to try to save the good people of those poor neighborhoods in Richmond. We worked in part through a program called “Weed and Seed” that some of you may remember. We worked hard to weed those neighborhoods by removing those who were strangling it. But we did that so that seeds could be planted to grow something that would be good and that would fill the space and prevent further weeds. The dream was that someday maybe kids could play in the parks and old folks could sit on the porch and watch those kids play.
And I remember doing that work and being asked at the time, “Why are you doing so much prosecuting in black neighborhoods? And locking up so many black men?” “After all,” folks would say, “Richmond is surrounded by large suburban counties with large white populations and surely there are drug dealers in those suburbs?” And my answer was simple: “We are there in those neighborhoods because that’s where people are dying. These are the people we lock up because they are the predators, choking off the life of a community that deserves better.”
We did this work because we cared deeply about the people trying to make a life in these neighborhoods. But here’s the thing, the people asking me these questions were not the black ministers and community leaders in the poorest neighborhoods. Those good people in those bad neighborhoods already knew why we were there, locking up felons with guns and drug dealers and drug dealers with guns. They supported it because they shared the dream of a neighborhood with freedom and life. Those people, those ministers, those leaders—they were the seeders working like crazy to grow something healthy in the space that we created. And how far we have come thanks to their work.
Over the last two decades in most places in America, what was only a dream 25 years ago has come true. Kids of all colors went to school in 2014 in an America with historically low crime. Just that term historically low doesn’t quite capture it. To illustrate what I’m talking about, I was born in 1960 into a more violent America than those children enjoyed last year.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/k...ed-perspectives-information-and-understanding
When I worked in Richmond, Virginia, in the 1990s, that city, like so much of America, was experiencing horrific levels of violence. But to describe it just that way obscures an important truth. For the most part white people weren’t dying, black people were dying.
Most white people could drive around the problems of Richmond and so many other cities in America. If you were white in Richmond, and not involved in the drug trade, as either a buyer or a seller, you could escape the violence, you could avoid the problem. But if you were black and poor, it didn’t matter whether you were a player in the trade or not, because violent crime dominated your life, your neighborhood, your world.
Like so many in law enforcement in the 1980s and ‘90s, we worked hard to save lives in those neighborhoods in Richmond, by rooting out drug dealers, and gangbangers, and predators, and killers. And of course we also worked up the chains to the foreign sources of the drugs that were poisoning Richmond. But we felt a tremendous urgency to try to save the good people of those poor neighborhoods in Richmond. We worked in part through a program called “Weed and Seed” that some of you may remember. We worked hard to weed those neighborhoods by removing those who were strangling it. But we did that so that seeds could be planted to grow something that would be good and that would fill the space and prevent further weeds. The dream was that someday maybe kids could play in the parks and old folks could sit on the porch and watch those kids play.
And I remember doing that work and being asked at the time, “Why are you doing so much prosecuting in black neighborhoods? And locking up so many black men?” “After all,” folks would say, “Richmond is surrounded by large suburban counties with large white populations and surely there are drug dealers in those suburbs?” And my answer was simple: “We are there in those neighborhoods because that’s where people are dying. These are the people we lock up because they are the predators, choking off the life of a community that deserves better.”
We did this work because we cared deeply about the people trying to make a life in these neighborhoods. But here’s the thing, the people asking me these questions were not the black ministers and community leaders in the poorest neighborhoods. Those good people in those bad neighborhoods already knew why we were there, locking up felons with guns and drug dealers and drug dealers with guns. They supported it because they shared the dream of a neighborhood with freedom and life. Those people, those ministers, those leaders—they were the seeders working like crazy to grow something healthy in the space that we created. And how far we have come thanks to their work.
Over the last two decades in most places in America, what was only a dream 25 years ago has come true. Kids of all colors went to school in 2014 in an America with historically low crime. Just that term historically low doesn’t quite capture it. To illustrate what I’m talking about, I was born in 1960 into a more violent America than those children enjoyed last year.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/k...ed-perspectives-information-and-understanding
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