I received more than a few invitations to read an “eye-opening” piece about violence, in particular black on black violence in America.

“Playing the Violence Card,” is an op-ed piece published in the April 5, 2012 “Wall Street Journal,” by Khalil Gibran Muhammad. It is readily available on the Internet. 

I read it again and again. Then I thought, “Just when you think it’s safe to go back in, another toxin is released.”

The article condemns and disagrees with anyone who dare's to challenge the selective interest in rare white on black crime with the question, “What about the disproportionate number of black on black crimes?”  The author labels it “playing the violence card.” 

He further suggests that the epidemic of intra-racial violence is the result of “social and institutional roots,” and it should be addressed “through collective effort well beyond the boundaries of black communities.”  He also called the violence card “a cynical ploy that will only contribute to more fear, more black alienation and more violence.”

Muhammad, an American historian, cites a comparable period from the late 19^th to the early 20^th century when white on white crime amongst poor immigrants was rampant. The violence was remedied by an aggressive force of social workers, police, and community and labor activists creating a better social welfare net.

 After reading his piece almost a dozen times, it seemed poisonous. Putting his words into the hands and minds of those already looking for someone or somewhere else to blame for the self hatred in the black community is far more damaging than dumping tons of free crack cocaine in the middle of the hood.

The actions he referenced in the early 1900s to stop poor white immigrants from killing each other were duplicated in the early 1960s and even today. That operation was called the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  It provided black Americans with previously denied opportunities. And many blacks took advantage of it. Others didn’t.

Citing the poverty in black communities as a direct cause of violence is another misplaced diagnosis. There remains abject poverty in the Appalachian region, yet there are not daily murders of poor whites by poor whites.

There are roughly 27 million blacks in America. If we took the rule-of-thumb that ten-percent of most things could be bad or different, that would account for 2.7 million blacks involved in the perpetual violence. Of those, 1.5 million may be locked up at any given time. That leaves one-million creating and reproducing the havoc.

I would never say that racism is nonexistent. However, it doesn’t exist in its insurmountable form of a half century ago. Racism today is like little dog droppings in a public park. We all have the power to step over it. Yet, some choose to step in it or take a stick and stir it up while yelling, “See, I told you it is still here.”

It is also unreasonable for Muhammad to assume that other races and factions should go into the black community to effect change (known as the Blindside phenomenon). Although the Civil Rights Acts ended segregation, Blacks remain the most segregated group in America, separating from the rest of the country with Black-Only associations like Miss Black America, Mr. Black Olympia, Black McDonald’s Franchisees Association, Black Student Associations, Black Police Associations, Congressional Black Caucus, and hundreds of others. Black agitators can’t extend a challenge to “outsiders” or financially shake them down to help solve black problems while rejecting their participation in black achievements.

We see this approach fail in our foreign policy when stick our noses in other cultural fights and it changes nothing. America couldn’t make the Vietnamese or Koreans like each other.