Pondering the acceptance of the unacceptable

Let’s jump right on in, shall we?

A bitch caught Good Morning America yesterday and…what?

Millions of people watch that shit and it often explains their confusion over all manner of news-based happenings. Watching is challenging (wink), but a bitch feels strongly that the NPR set should take a look at morning network news shows every now and then lest they find themselves digging out from another when the fuck did this happen outbreak of traditionally ig’nant so-called values.

Cough.

Anyhoo, a bitch watched GMA and I really watched the piece about a 14-year-old Maryland teen that was killed by a gang in a suburb.

And it is crucial to note that he was killed…by a gang…in an affluent suburb because that was the get it, get it, or they’ll hit you over the fucking head with it until you do get it point of the piece.

The piece covered the bullying of the teen…his mother’s attempts to protect him…and the shock his parents feel over gang violence taking their child’s life in a picturesque affluent Maryland suburb.

Get it…got it yet?

That’s not the way shit is supposed to go down.

Gang violence isn’t supposed to happen in neighborhoods where people pay $300,000 for a house and the color of the shutters is regulated by a neighborhood association…gang violence isn’t supposed to touch those people.

Didn’t they do everything right?

And c’mon…everyone knows those people who deal with violence in the hood have done something wrong.

Pause…roll eyes…continue.

The GMA piece could have covered the rise of gang related violence in suburbs…it could have explored the how and why of that…it could have provided details on the alleged gang members, their background and the nature of their “gang”…it could have broken down the many misconceptions people have of gangs and where they reside…and it could have served viewers by deconstructing the insulting assumption that inner city families deserve to live in neighborhoods that regularly erupt in gun fire and where children can not go outside to play because they did something wrong.

But why bother…everyone knows that not being able to purchase a house valued at $300,000 where the color of shutters is regulated by a neighborhood association is the result of having done something wrong and thus deserved of all the crime and violence and stress and inadequate services that result from that wrong.

So instead the GMA piece focused on the wrongness that a suburban teen was the victim of violence that jumped the border…left it’s acceptable zone of the hood to take a life that should have been protected by the bullet proof armor of money and those color coded shutters.

‘Cause just in case you don’t get it …people who live in neighborhoods plagued by violence have fucked up and earned that shit. Or they are a part of it. Or they don’t love their children the same way folks in the ‘burbs do or mourn their loss to violence or question why violence happens or wonder what they could have done to prevent it.

The message was about as subtle as fuchsia shutters on a lime green colonial. There are places where the violent murder of 14-year-olds is acceptable and expected…where that violence is the wage of poverty. And there are other places where the murder of 14-year-olds is shocking and unacceptable and a violation of the American dream.

And that message fuels fucked up from the floor up policies and stereotypes that perpetuate ig’nance and fear…it nurtures the notion of acceptable violence which nurtures the notion of acceptable victims which nurtures the belief that some people deserve that shit while other people do not…

…that our national apathy toward the young people who died this month in St. Louis city or Chicago or D.C. or New Orleans is more than understandable.

‘Tis, dare I say, acceptable.

Some people deserve police protect while other people deserve to be seen as parties to their own violence.

Some people deserve to bury their children…

…while other people, who did everything right, do not.

Yet the words of the victim’s father speak to where we need to be…

“Stop the violence. This is obviously, just look at this — no parent should go through what we are going through.”

No parent…no child…no neighborhood…no one.

Unacceptable, no matter where a family resides.

Crossposted from the Angry Black Bitch.

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