Dangermond.org

Murder in New Orleans

by Chuck Perkins on Tuesday, March 1, 2011 at 8:49pm

The phrase, “a lot of my friends are dead or in jail”, no longer evokes shock or horror”, its meaning has become tamed. Too many mentions in movies and songs; too much spotlight on the evening news. The masses have become desensitize; they quickly forget that human brains have been splattered on the façades of corner grocery stores and that red blood has stained sidewalks and street corners with the color of war? Even this sounds trite. Why beat a dead horse?

In one of my favorite Toni Morrison novels, I was forced to consider the generational implications of murder. One of the characters made a point about family blood lines. She explained that when our blood lines are carried forward, up to six future generations, our progeny will carry traces of our features and mannerisms. We will be present in the way they walk or scratch their backs. Subsequently, when you kill someone, you don’t kill only them; you kill six generations of people.

The men, women and children who are slaughtered everyday in our city are not numbers or statistics. They were not androids, or sub-human species either. They were human beings, mostly black, mostly male and mostly young, with the capacity to love, dream and imagine. Consider the tragedies that devoured them in this city’s unforgiving cycle of violence. Multiply it by two or three would be children; now, advance it to the sixth power. Pronounce their names; acknowledge the weight of their existence.