Obama Tweets to Save Cities from the Carnage of Black-On-Black Violence

Weeks after gang members in Chicago lured 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee into an alley and slaughtered him, a community near Knoxville Tennessee is mourning Zeavion Dobson, who jumped in front of a barrage of bullets, saving three of his friends in the process.

In response to this destruction of black life, President Obama pushed out the following tweet:

Zaevion Dobson died saving three friends from getting shot. He was a hero at 15. What’s our excuse for not acting? https://t.co/hn98uGsjKZ

— President Obama (@POTUS) December 20, 2015

We are talking about a culture that produces people who kill children out of revenge. Does President Obama actually believe that can be fixed 140 characters at a time?

And what good, Mr. Obama, will new gun control laws do to save America’s cities from this level of violence?

About 77 percent of gun deaths among white Americans are ruled as suicides. Among black Americans, 82 percent of gun deaths are homicides, according The Brookings Institution’s Richard Reeves’ research.

So, again, Mr. President, most of black America’s wounds are self-inflicted. Black people kill other black people with terrifying regularity. A few social media screeds and a couple speeches about the importance of black fatherhood helps some. But if you really want to put an end to the scourge of black-on-black brutality, you need to address the problem at its core.

President Obama needs to talk openly about black America’s subculture of wanton disregard for human life that has consigned so many minority neighborhoods to a ceaseless state of despair.

This is not blaming the victim. We can do better than that.

Black people, and President Obama knows this, often avoid turning the spotlight on ourselves. Meanwhile, Tyshawn Lees and Zeavion Dobsons are taken from their families everyday.

If Mr. Obama really wants to honor Zeavion Dobson, then he needs to stop playing politics and address the culture of death in black America that thrives in our inner cities.