'Black-on-Black crime': A loaded and controversial phrase often heard amid calls for police reform
"Black-on-Black crime" is a phrase not only used by white people but also by some Black people calling out crime in their communities.
'Black-on-Black crime': A loaded and controversial phrase often heard amid calls for police reform
It's a retort sometimes heard in the context of the protests."But what about Black-on-Black crime?"
It's a retort sometimes heard in the context of the protests surrounding the death of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter -- often as the idea that there is a rampant crime problem within Black (and mainly urban) communities that some are choosing to ignore in favor of focusing on police brutality.
It's a question sometimes asked in the context of recent news stories such as the drive-by shooting of 15 funeral mourners in the predominately Black Chicago neighborhood of Auburn Gresham. The deceased, Donnie Weatherby, a Black man, was killed in an earlier gang-related shooting, police said.
It's a phrase or a concept that at times, recently, has been used by some conservatives to ask why the same activists and community members calling for police reform seemingly, in their view, don't express the same outrage when someone who is Black is killed or injured by another Black person.
In 2015, Donald Trump, when he was a candidate for president, tweeted a misleading graphic that claimed that 97% of Black people killed are killed by other Black people, and that 80% of white people killed are killed by Black people.
Fact checkers deemed the tweet as promoting false statistics. The tweet was "quickly revealed as erroneous" according to the Washington Post. From the FBI's Universal Crime Report in 2014; 90% of Black people killed were killed by other Black people and 14.8% of white people killed were killed by Black people.
The phrase is not only used by white people but also by some Black people calling out crime in their communities.
John Ayala reportedly used the phrase after his grandson, 11-year-old Davon McNeal, was fatally shot during a Fourth of July cookout in Washington, D.C., according to The Associated Press. The family is Black, as per Ayala's social media, as are the suspects in McNeal's death.
"We're protesting for months, for weeks, saying, 'Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.' Black lives matter it seems like, only when a police officer shoots a black person. What about all the Black-on-Black crime that's happening in the community?" asked Ayala, in a video posted to grabien.com.
ABC News reached out to Ayala to confirm his statement, but has yet to receive a response.
