When Brother Kills Brother

By Richard Stengel.

Delfonic McCray, 13, was big for his age, 6 ft. tall. He liked basketball and girls, and kept love letters carefully folded in his Michael Jackson wallet. He and a friend were on their way to a Chicago Bulls basketball game and stopped at a housing project on the west side of Chicago to see a girlfriend. As they approached the back entrance of a graffiti-scarred tenement, a group of youths taunted them. Delfonic approached tentatively, then turned and ran. One of the youths casually drew a .22-cal. handgun and shot him. "We had a good kid coming along," said Delfonic's grandmother. Now that he was becoming a man, she had gone out and bought him a new suit. "I had no way of knowing he would be buried in it," she said.

Four-year-old Demont Beans was playing on his tricycle in front of his home in south-central Los Angeles. In the front yard of a neighboring house, James Barnett, 23, was arguing with his girlfriend and her brother. Police say Barnett drew a .22-cal. revolver. The bullet he fired struck De- mont in the head. The boy was rushed to Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center, where the average daily admissions to the trauma center include four gunshot wounds, three stabbings and three cases of "blunt assault" to the head. Demont died on the operating table. For Dr. Arthur W. Fleming, the chief of surgery, it was nothing new. "This is the closest thing to a combat hospital that you'll find in peacetime," he says.

Colin Fowles, 32, was once known as the fastest man in the North American Soccer League. He was a star player on the Fort Lauderdale Strikers from the team's founding in 1977 until its dissolution two years ago. Fowles kept in shape by playing in amateur leagues, as he was doing one night two weeks ago during a pickup game in Dade County's Bunche Park, outside Miami. As half time neared in the scoreless match, a noisy squabble several hundred feet from the game erupted in gunfire. The gunmen charged onto the playing field, firing wildly at wit- nesses to their fight and anyone else who got in the way. Fowles, who once outran a quarter horse for 80 yards, could not outrun the bullets flying at him. Said Charles Benedict, an eyewitness: "What happened to Colin was cold-blooded murder."

Every murder is different in its own way. Each has its own perverse logic, its own cast of mourners, its own sad finality. But a staggering number these days have something in common, something that has become part of a frighteningly familiar but largely unspoken national scourge: the epidemic of violence by young blacks against other young blacks.

The leading cause of death among black males ages 15 to 24 in the U.S. is not heart disease, not cancer, not any natural cause. It is murder by other blacks. More than 1 out of every 3 blacks who die in that age group is the victim of a homicide. Across America, particularly among the underclass in the nation's urban ghettos, brother is killing brother in a kind of racial fratricide. More than 40% of all the nation's murder victims are black, and 94% of those who commit these murders are black. The 6,000 or so Americans who lost their lives because of black-on-black violence in 1981 alone rivals the number of black servicemen killed during the twelve years of the Viet Nam conflict.

The statistics add up to a horrify- ing equation. In America today, a white female has 1 chance in 606 of becoming a murder victim. A white male has 1 chance in 186. A black female has 1 chance in 124. A black male has 1 chance in 29.

The problem is particularly acute in major cities where black gangs proliferate. In Chicago in 1983, 412 of the 729 homicides were blacks killing blacks. Between July and November last year in Detroit, more than 100 children --they cannot be called anything else, they were under 17--were shot. All but four were black. The Watts riots of 1965 caused 34 deaths. That figure is currently equaled every 38 days among blacks in Los Angeles.

"The uncomfortable fact," writes Charles Silberman, author of Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice, "is that black offenders account for a dis- proportionate number of the crimes that evoke the most fear." This fear is felt by all Americans, but the anxiety felt by blacks is more intense, more pervasive, more real, for they are the ones who suffer most from violence. The white fear of black violence, recently personified by Subway Vigilante Bernhard Goetz, does not reflect reality: only 5% of the nation's 11,300 one-on-one slayings in 1983 involved whites killed by blacks.

The issue of black-on-black violence is a disquieting and sensitive subject, one that is often left in silence by the growing number of blacks who have made it into the middle class and by traditional civil rights leaders who prefer to speak out on other issues. "Today we are faced with a new American dilemma, one that is especially difficult for black leaders and members of the black middle class," says Glenn Loury, a professor of public policy at Harvard. "The bottom stratum of the black community has compelling problems that can no longer be blamed solely on white racism, and which force us to confront fundamental failures in black society."

The violence of today seems divorced from rationale and motive. The murders are mindless, random, indiscriminate. Young black men seem to be murdering one another with a malign indifference, killing with the casual air of Bruce Lee dispatching men in a kung fu movie. For some, it seems as if murder has become a kind of noxious fashion or wanton recreation. "Members of the new generation kill, maim and injure without reason or remorse," writes Silberman.

The psychology that seems to underlie the epidemic is as numbing as the statistics. Many of these young killers display an absence of what psychiatrists call affect. They show no discernible emotional reaction to what they have done. Some seem incapable even of regarding their victims as human beings. The senseless nature of it all baffles Paul Maurice, a retired black homicide detective from New York. "It appears that they don't have any idea of the consequences of taking someone's life," he says. "When you get a guy to 'fess up as to why he did it, you get very shoddy answers: 'He took my coat.' 'He took my dollar.' 'He stepped on my girlfriend's foot.' "

The stories told by those who have emerged from this world have the ring of tales by escaped adventurers from a savage land. Danny Sanders of Brooklyn has spent 13 of his 35 years behind bars. Now he works for the Fortune Society, a group that helps ex-convicts. "When we were robbing people, the trick was to get the money without hurting anybody. Now the kids brag about hurting their victims." Danny claims that he has never backed down from a fight in his life, but he is skittish about this new generation. A group of teenagers recently demanded money from him while he waited for the subway. He forked it over. "I ain't scared," he says. "But I ain't crazy either."

Marvin Brinston, 19, was once a mean walker of Oakland's mean streets. One day, he experienced a sidewalk epiphany. "Two men were arguing," he recalls. "One just straight up and shot the other. It dawned on me how they got killed by just talking. And that scared me. I just had to get away from that." Now Brinston is doing landscaping and maintenance work for A.C. Transit, the East Bay bus system.

Gil Johnson, 24, of the Bronx, N.Y., is uneasy about the younger generation. "They don't take no talking. They just come out shooting." He had a friend who was killed after stepping on someone else's foot. "If he had said, 'I'm sorry' or 'Scuse me' or something like that, he'd be alive today."

What is the explanation for this murderousness? Why are blacks disproportionately represented as victims and victimizers, as predators and prey? One partial explanation, some experts contend, is the hopelessness that pervades the urban ghetto, which fosters a kind of street-corner nihilism, a feeling that nothing is worth anything. Says James M. Evans Jr., a social worker who organized a workshop last year in Washington on the subject of black-on-black violence: "They believe they have nothing to lose. Even if they should lose their own lives, they feel they will not have lost very much. Besides, why should they be good, they ask. There is no reward for good behavior." Paul Hubbard, vice president of an independent urban planning agency called New Detroit Inc., is struck by the sense of detachment and despair among violent young blacks. "They have a value system much different from ours, and they don't have a reason for adopting our value system because we haven't been able to show them why they should."

Dr. Mark L. Rosenberg of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and Sociologist Evan Stark of Rutgers University have written that three broad themes emerge from the literature about violence: "The importance of unacceptable levels of poverty, racial discrimination and gender inequality; the cultural acceptance of violence as a way to manage dilemmas these and other situations pose; and the ready availability of lethal agents that can be used in violence against others or self." Social scientists see additional reasons: high unemployment, drugs, gangs, and the rise in female-headed households and births out of wedlock. The rate of black teenage unemployment in the nation's cities is more than 50% in some areas. The future is not cheering either. In those same cities, more than half the black children are born out of wedlock.

All of this breeds a shadow society where traditional values are scarce and violence is promiscuous. For young black men, violence can become a warped form of self-assertion, a kind of "I kill, therefore I am." Snuffing out another life perversely affirms their own. Almost 40 years ago, Ralph Ellison wrote in Invisible Man about violence as a way for black men to assert their existence to themselves: "You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish."

But why are blacks killing other blacks? That is the one question on which there is almost universal agreement: proximity. "You pick on what's close," says Social Worker Evans. Harvard Psychiatry Professor Alvin Poussaint suggests in his book Why Blacks Kill Blacks that such violence is a manifestation of self-hatred and repressed rage, which he says are a legacy of racism. Killing someone who mirrors oneself is a reflection of hating oneself. "Violence can be a potent drug for the oppressed person," Poussaint says. "Reacting to the futility of his life, the individual derives an ultimate sense of power when he holds the fate of another human being in his hands." Poussaint goes so far as to suggest that ultimately the victims may bring their fate upon themselves, subconsciously provoking the murder and making it a kind of willed suicide. Poussaint notes, as do many others, that the easy availability of handguns gives power to the powerless. What the Colt six- shooter was to the Wild West is what the "Saturday-night special" is to the ghetto: the great equalizer.

Some suggest that for blacks in the ghetto, crime and a life of violence are an occupational choice, like becoming a doctor or lawyer is for a child from the suburbs. In the ghetto, suggests Benjamin Carmichael in an article in Black Perspectives on Crime and the Criminal Justice System, the successful criminal cuts a glamorous figure and projects an enviable life-style, becoming a role model for youngsters whose only glimpse of wealth is on Dynasty or Dallas. Says Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C.): "You cannot ignore the fact that a poor black guy has little chance of succeeding, except in the seedy world of crime."

One legacy of segregation is that blacks have long viewed the police and the criminal justice system as tools of oppression rather than remedies for it. Even today, some experts argue, the criminal justice system spurs black-on- black violence by practicing a double standard. R. Eugene Pincham, a black Illinois Appellate Court judge, lists the four tiers of crime: white on white, white on black, black on white, and black on black. "The punishment is most severe for black-on-white crime," he says, more severe than either white on white or white on black. The punishment is mildest for black on black. Notes Pincham: "It thereby gives tacit approval of black-on-black crime."

Examples of the double standard are not hard to find. In Georgia, a person is eleven times as likely to receive the death penalty for killing a white as for killing a black. About 70% of the black men on death row in the U.S. killed whites. Retired Detective Paul Maurice sees the issue from a more personal perspective: "A homicide detective gets no Brownie points for solving a black-on-black killing, and no extra help." A vicious circle ensues: blacks are less likely to report crimes against them because they do not expect the police to attempt to solve them.

Programs for dealing with black-on-black violence cannot begin to cope with the problem. A few imaginative efforts are being made at the local or community level. In Oakland, officials have persuaded some youths to exchange guns and knives for brooms and brushes. Four years ago, Robert J. Shamoon, the tough-talking assistant operations manager of the East Bay Area transit system, had had enough of local gangs who defaced his buses on the outside and turned them into anxious prisons on the inside. He announced that if there was a reduction in vandalism and graffiti, he would use the money saved to create jobs for those who had been doing the damage. The community responded. The transit system is saving about $500,000 a year, and has helped create 175 jobs, many of which are held by youths who once used the buses as a mobile drug supermarket. Vernon Lewis, 22, formerly defaced the buses he now works to keep clean. Says he: "The reason we were out there destroying buses is that we didn't have nothing to do. We were the problem." In Atlanta, the police are looking to the citizens for help. George Napper, the city's black public safety commissioner, helped create Partnership Against Crime, a program in which citizens and police identify safety problems in communities and work out ways to deal with them. So far, that has involved shifting police patrol hours, setting up neighborhood-watch programs and business-watch groups.

This month in Savannah, which ranks fourth among U.S. cities in homicide rates, a 31-member, N.A.A.C.P.-sponsored citizens task force on black-vs.- black violence was created. Curtis Cooper, president of the Savannah N.A.A.C.P., noted that blacks are usually both perpetrator and victim in Chatham County. The task force, he says, was designed "to wake people up about the seriousness of this problem." Eugene H. Gadsden, a black superior court judge and a member of the task force, asserted that community involvement was essential. "We're the ones being affected most," said Gadsden, "and we ought to be able to do something about it."

In other cities, individuals, many of them wounded by violence, have tried to make a difference. Rita Smith is a Harlem legend. Her son David was shot in 1979, an act that moved her to mobilize her neighborhood to protest the violence that was undoing it. She and her neighbors lobbied for increased police protection of their area, set up neighborhood-watch groups and a special crime hot line.

In Chicago, Paul Hall started a boys' club that offers tutoring, karate courses and music lessons. He has also set up a hot line for gang members who need help. During its first three weeks, he received more than 300 calls. Two years ago, Edward G. Gardner, founder and board chairman of Soft Sheen Products Co. in Chicago, started a "Black-on-Black Love Campaign," which was designed to reduce crime in the black community by promoting discipline and self-esteem. With a budget of $200,000 and 140 volunteers, the campaign uses posters and bumper stickers, radio and newspaper spots to send out the message "Replace black-on-black crime with black love." The program is also being sponsored in six other cities by the American Health and Beauty Aids Institute, a consortium of minority-owned companies.

Many young blacks feel that the traditional black leadership has shied away from confronting the question of black-on-black violence. "They are not in tune or touch with the streets," says Willie Mathews as he leans against his convenience store in Miami's Coconut Grove section. "They have moved away. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just that they don't see what happens on the corners. The real leaders are people who live here and are trying to help these kids."

Black leaders fear, perhaps with good reason, that too much public discussion of the black crime problem would serve only to provide ammunition to bigots and undermine the support of the white community. "It's a dangerous area," says the S.C.L.C.'s Lowery, "and it's unfair to focus on crime so people think it is synonymous with the black community."

Yet some black leaders have begun to speak out, arguing that the reality can no longer be discussed only in whispers or totally ignored. "To admit these failures is likely to be personally costly for black leaders," says Harvard Professor Loury, "and may also play into the hands of lingering racist sentiments. Not to admit them, however, is to forestall their resolution and to allow the racial polarization of the country to worsen." Earl T. Shinhoster, 35, executive director of the Southeastern district of the N.A.A.C.P., is among a new generation of rising black activists. "Leaders have to put themselves on the line," he says. "Unless black people address the problem, it won't be addressed by the nation."

One emerging theme is that of the black victim. Blacks are beginning to shift their perspective, seeing themselves not just as victims of white oppression but as victims of crime. While some are still denouncing the police for abusing criminals, many are condemning police for not being more vigilant. ( Robert Farrell, a city councilman from the black south-central section of Los Angeles, says the No. 1 priority of his constituents is not jobs, housing or education but putting a stop to violent crime. "We want an integrated police force," says Farrell, "but when the time comes when we need the police, we don't care whether they're black, white, brown or yellow."

As black Author Stanley Crouch wrote in the Village Voice in the wake of the Goetz shootings, some black perceptions nourished by the civil rights movement are changing. In automatically defending the black teenage criminal, suggested Crouch, blacks were also hurting themselves. "Race was one thing, crime another. It was no longer second nature for black people to take the side of the impoverished colored teenager who created so many of their own problems." There is a realization, compelled by force of circumstance, that blacks must look at themselves first as victims of crime and only second as victims of racism. To understand the crime is not to condone the criminal, suggests Silberman. "To excuse violence because black offenders are the victims of poverty and discrimination is racism of the most virulent sort; it is to continue to treat black people as if they were children incapable of making moral decisions or of assuming responsibility for their own actions and choices."

At the funeral of Ben Wilson, a promising young basketball player who was gunned down for no apparent reason in Chicago last year, Jesse Jackson took up the issue of black-on-black violence. "All of the murders that we didn't react to set the stage for this one," said Jackson in his eulogy. "We are losing more lives in the streets of America than we lost in the jungles of Viet Nam. We must be as serious about ending the war at home as the war abroad." Yes, black-on-black violence is a black problem. But above all it is an American problem. Segregating it from the rest of American life, treating it as an ill-kept secret that can be either ignored or rationalized away, is as damaging and insidious as segregation itself. "Crime is the same for all of us," says the noted black playwright Charles Fuller, author of A Soldier's Play. "We cannot abrogate our role as participants in American life."

With reporting by Jack E. White/New York, with other bureaus