Stopping the Slaughter

by Michael Nutter, Mayor of Philadelphia,

Why is it that African-American males are so disproportionately both the victims and the perpetrators of violence, more often than not against one another? In Philadelphia, where I am mayor, 75% of our homicide victims are black men. About 80% of the people we arrest for homicide are black men. Black men across the country are killing one another, yet that epidemic is rarely part of any national conversation.

32 Americans are killed by gun violence every day, on average, a disproportionate number of whom are black men. That’s apparently not breaking news. That cannot be acceptable in the United States of America.

Our priorities are askew. I often talk about domestic terrorists, by which I mean not foreign nationals plotting violence on these shores but the day-to-day crime that is even more devastating to our cities than the episodic threats from overseas.

What’s missing are the fundamentals. It’s about jobs. It’s about education. It’s about economic investment and job retraining. It’s about getting benefits to people who need them. We know clearly that there are a few things that work: investing more in Head Start programs, summer jobs and programs for teens and community-development block grants for cities to put people to work. Those three areas have been cut significantly over the past few years.

What are some programs and services we can provide?

If we get this right, everyone would be involved. We need a partnership among cities, states and federal agencies; the corporate community; the philanthropic community; the religious community; the social-advocacy community–all working toward helping African-American men and boys.

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