The term “black on black crime” is a particularly pernicious trope. It is a ruse used to absolve the systemic racism which kills Black people in a plethora of ways. It invalidates Black people’s suffering and gives license to law enforcement and its many acts of brutality.
Ironically, it also describes what is happening among a group of Black officials in New York City. The new mayor and his police commissioner committed a brazen political mugging of the Manhattan District Attorney.
New York City mayor Eric Adams personifies the political imperative to perpetuate an unjust system. Adams was a police officer himself before he went into politics. He has promised to give the police everything they want, including those things that Black people do not want. His mayoralty is a classic case of the dangers of Black faces being in high and inherently corrupt places.
Adams uses fear of crime to gain support for stop and frisk procedures and bringing back the plain clothes units which killed men like Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo. New Yorkers are propagandized by the media into thinking that a police presence makes them safer and that criminal justice rules should never be questioned. Those who don’t believe in police state impunity are intimidated into changing their minds.
-- Margaret Kimberley, "Eric Adams' Black on Black Crime" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).
