If the following seems like a big news story to you, you’re a racist.
Peter Nickeas, Alexandra Chachkevitch, and Jeremy Gorner, Chicago Tribune:
After a relatively quiet start to the Fourth of July weekend in Chicago, a burst of gun violence overnight left three dead and 27 people wounded in just eight hours, including a 7-year-old boy killed after returning from a celebration.
“It’s crazy,” said Vedia Hailey, the grandmother of the boy, Amari Brown. “Who would shoot a 7-year-old in the chest? Who would do that to a baby? When is it going to stop?”
From 9:20 p.m Saturday until 4:45 a.m. Sunday, 30 people were shot across Chicago, three of them fatally, including Amari.
That was published yesterday. The toll as of this morning is 9 dead, 53 wounded.
Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. We’ve effectively banned the Confederate flag from coast to coast. And, of course, we all now know that #BlackLivesMatter. So, how did this happen?
What did that little boy do to deserve that? What did any of them do to deserve it? And why doesn’t anybody care?
It’s almost as if Chicago is an unwelcome reminder that banning guns and flags and other inanimate objects doesn’t solve our problems, and that all the hashtags in the world won’t stop us from hurting each other. It’s almost as if the people who were wounded and killed in Chicago this weekend aren’t important because they can’t be used for the correct political purposes. It’s almost as if there’s no way to blame white people, Republicans, cops, or any other designated villains, so our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters just shrug, shake their heads, and turn away.
Almost.