dishonor after death

"When someone wants to give you “words of wisdom”, make sure you always consider the source."

The old saying goes, death before dishonor. This is a commitment to a cause. But some people have it way backwards.

I recently heard of a gang member being gunned down. This was sad but not unexpected considering his lifestyle. What was worse?

How the fellow gang members paid tribute to his loss. Lined up and posing for pictures after the funeral, dressed in gang colors, and wearing a memorial t-shirt they “celebrated” this guy’s life.

Funny how they didn’t have enough sense to realize that they were truly celebrating this guy’s death.

Promoting the very thing that put him in the ground. The very thing that resulted in his having his brains blown out. They were not honoring him. They were paying homage to death.

I wonder where is Al Sharpton on this one? Its easy to carry out symbolic protests burying the so called “N word” but not so easy to actually get into a community and make changes that can actually be effective. Comedian DL Hugely agrees with this.

While it is a nice gesture to “bury” the N word, it would be a much nicer gesture to get into communities where young black men are the ones being buried. It is not the N word that kills. It is the bullet. DL also makes a profound statement that really hits, “it’s not what they call you, it’s what you answer to.”

Folks like Al Sharpton claim to be focused on changing things. But nothing is changing. You want to honor the dead? Then Al, maybe you should spend more time working in the community rather than in the TV spotlight. Kids murdering each other over “territory” they don’t own in the first place don’t give a crap about the N word. They sure don’t give a crap about people ranting on TV about how “concerned” they are about their communities. While doing the ranting on a sound stage in Hollywood.

I don’t care whether you think what Don Imus said was racist or not. Don Imus didn’t murder anyone. Too bad such protest wasn’t raised over the blood shed in Los Angeles that day. Or New York, or St. Louis, or every other gang territory in between.

I am pretty sure Al Sharpton doesn’t live in a community where he has to duck bullets.

It’s easy to make public stands about how much you care about this or that. Marches with signs that say “stop the violence” usually occur after someone has been killed. Does anyone actually think that marching around with signs will make gang member stop and say, “Oh I never thought of stopping the violence, maybe these people are on to something, maybe I’ll change.”

That’s idiocy.

I also heard another person, who supposedly has some qualifications to teach others about how to curtail violence and specifically gang activity make a speech. Wait to you hear this one.

She proposed a situation, where a father and son were both active in gangs. She then asked her audience to come up with some so called interventions to help this kid. When she asked, “What can be done to get this kid out of a gang?” One of the audience members replied, “nothing.” As it turns out, he was alot closer to reality than she was.

Her response was a borderline arrogant, “oh no” “What you need to do is get the kid involved with positive peers.”

You gotta be kidding me right? Has she ever stepped foot out of her precious little fantasy land bordered by white picket fences and into a gang riddle community? No of course not. She obviously likes to read books though, written by others who have never worked with gang kids in some of these decaying neighborhoods. Written by others who have never stepped across pools of blood to get to work.

It is this kind of one size fits all naivety that keeps the cycle of death going. People who don’t have guts enough to actually get out there and do something. No, this kind of work isn’t for everyone. But at least educate yourself before you make stupid statements. Then again, her motive? Well it was to promote some counseling program. Money being highly involved.

Whether it is TV time or money or some other motive too many people with little or no experience in matters of death like to promote their answers. But when their answers to the problem have no basis in reality and no effect on the problem it is useless.

Kids keep on getting buried. The death toll keeps on rising. To do nothing is tragic but to do something that is meaningless is a dishonor.

In this case dishonor after death.