Our Democratic Party of Craighead County committee members are often featured in the Jonesboro Sun!

Renay Williams wrote a Letter to the Editor for the April 26 edition:

“In a recent issue, Clay Gardner trotted out a racist dog whistle: ‘Black on Black crime’.

‘Black on Black crime” isn’t a thing. Yes, Black people kill other Black people. White people are often murdered by other white people, but there’s rarely hand-wringing over ‘white on white crime.’ Instead, the concept of ‘Black on Black crime’ is deployed as an excuse to stoke racial fear and division and put in place even more aggressive policing policies, which drives up the criminalization within Black communities.

Murder is violence within a community. A reminder for people who haven’t studied systemic racism, maybe ever: the U.S. is segregated by race. Victims will often be the same race as the person who targets them.

When we’re discussing the murder of Black people by police, ‘but Black on Black crime!’ isn’t a serious argument. It is negligent ignorance of our country’s racial history. When a Black person kills another Black person, they aren’t doing it because they’re Black. They’re engaging in that crime for the same reasons someone of another race would engage in that crime: anger, resentment, domestic disputes, desperation or fear.

The Black community is over-policed by a highly militarized, authoritarian organization that has its roots in slave patrols within a country founded on the enslavement, commodification and destruction of Black bodies.

I’m begging white people: Please read at least two books on race by Black authors before speaking about race in public.”

We share Letters to Editor by our members to promote their activism; these are not endorsements. We encourage all members of the community to write letters to the editor about issues, local or national, that they’re passionate about, and let us know so we can share them at long as they align with the Democratic Party values. You can submit letters online.