Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/364208
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS By Eugene Robinson WASHINGTON Thekillingof 18-year-old Michael Brown has rightly provoked widespread outrage, drawing international media attention and prompt- ing a comment from President Obama. The same should be true -- but tragically is not -- of the killing of 3-year-old Knijah Amore Bibb. Brown was killed Saturday in Ferguson, Mo.; Knijah died the following day in Lando- ver, Md. Both victims were Af- rican-American. Both had their whole lives before them. The salient difference is that Brown was shot to death by a white police officer, according to witnesses, while the fugi- tive suspect in Bibb's killing is a 25-year-old black man with a long criminal record. I want to be clear: From what we know so far, the an- ger over Brown's death is un- derstandable and appears jus- tified. Absent a full narrative from the police officer's side, we are left with witness ac- counts alleging that the fatal encounter was triggered when Brown committed the unpar- donable crime of "walking while black." We've been through this so many times. Brown, from all reports, was a good kid who had just graduated from high school and was about to en- roll in college. But young black men are automatically as- sumed to be dangerous thugs -- and not given the benefit of the doubt that young white men would be accorded. This is racist and wrong, and must change. But we should be just as outraged over Knijah's death -- and just as determined that this kind of killing should never happen again. According to police, Knijah's family was visiting friends at a house in Land- over on Sunday afternoon. Among the people who lived at the address was a young woman whose boyfriend, Da- von Antwan Wallace, had also dropped by. Wallace got into a heated argument with the girlfriend's teenaged brother, police and family members told The Washington Post. At issue was clothing that belonged to Wal- lace -- and that the brother had apparently been wearing. Wallace allegedly left, went to his car, got a gun and fired about six shots at the second floor of the house, apparently aiming for the brother's room. One of those bullets struck Knijah and killed her. "She liked to wear silver boots in the summer," Knijah's grandmother, Brenda Bibb, told the Post. "She had a Hello Kitty sticker on one boot and a Dora [the Explorer] on the other." The entire Prince George's County police force -- not just the homicide division -- has been working long hours to try to find Wallace, and is moti- vated by what a police spokes- man called a "sense of moral outrage." That feeling should be uni- versal. The near-constant background noise of black- on-black violence is too of- ten ignored. Yet it contin- ues to claim victims at a rate that our society should con- sider outrageous and unac- ceptable. Landover is adjacent to Washington, D.C., where it has been a particularly bloody week: a total of 21 people struck by gunfire since last Friday. Among them were an off-duty D.C. police detective who was shot in an attempted carjack- ing. Most of the victims fortu- nately do not have life-threaten- ing injuries, but at least one is reported in grave condition and one other has died. I've written about the sad customs that have developed in neighborhoods plagued by this senseless violence -- the makeshift memorials of teddy bears and balloons, the speed with which T-shirts bearing the victim's likeness are pro- duced. This kind of death should never be thought of as ordinary. The phrase "black-on-black violence" is more often used to distort rather than clar- ify. Crime depends largely on proximity and thus reflects patterns of racial segrega- tion; the overwhelming ma- jority of white murder vic- tims are killed by whites, just as the overwhelming major- ity of black victims are killed by blacks. By the standards of most other developed coun- tries, "white-on-white vio- lence" in the United States is also of crisis proportions. But it is disingenuous to pre- tend that a shocking dispar- ity does not exist. According to FBI statistics, in 2012, the last year for which figures are avail- able, 2,614 whites were killed by white offenders and 2,412 blacks were killed by black of- fenders -- similar numbers. But the non-Hispanic white pop- ulation is almost five times as large as the African-American population, meaning the homi- cide rate in black communities is staggeringly higher. Treating every young black man as a criminal -- as may have happened to Michael Brown -- is not the solution. We can understand the so- cioeconomic causes of violent crime without surrendering to them. We need to get angry -- before we have to mourn the next Knijah Bibb. Commentary Our selective outrage about race, killings Cartoonist's take Last week's col- umns were not very en- lightening… though they should have been at least familiar. The Wednesday "Passing Parade" and the Fri- day "I Say" were repeats from an earlier time and I was in no condi- tion to write of dogs and cats. I had taken a fall in one of the stalls in our horse barn. Some would call it a "spill", others a pratfall. Anyhow, I was down briefly for the count. I had just loaded a wheelbarrow of horse droppings and was about to move it when the next I knew I was on my back and in great discomfort. The fall knocked the wind out of my sails and it was some time before I could get my bearings, get to my feet and stagger to an invit- ing chair. I recount this event be- cause of the severity of the pain and the absolute shock of my crashing to earth. It is meant to be a cautionary tale related by a senior person who is daily warned by his spouse to "watch where you are go- ing", "pick up your feet" and so forth. As one approaches an advanced age, it is best not to climb ladders, get on roof tops, step off high curbs or vault over parking meters. In my day in the 4th Di- vision Artillery Medical De- tachment at Ft. Benning, Ga, we treated soldiers suffering from bruised or broken ribs by wrapping them tightly with adhesive tape. Unfortunately this did little to relieve the pa- tient's pain, but when the tape was removed, often skin be- came detached as well. We were not popular with our pa- tients. I suspect the older one gets, the more likely he or she will come a cropper from a fall rather than an encounter with cancer or a heart attack. We lose our balance or try to per- form a simple act as we did 30 or 40 years ago…and we hit the deck. Even if we survive the fall with a broken bone or two, we can succumb to pneu- monia never to rise again. So there you have it. A mis- step can lead to an early de- mise. Remember the old adage: "Stop look and listen, before you cross the street. Use your eyes, use your ears…and then use your feet." … Actor/ comedian Robin Williams went to his reward and gar- nered news coverage befitting of royalty. His passing recalled an encounter with the clever fellow and our daughter Mel- ody a few years ago. He lived in Tiburon and she in Marin. He performed all over the world in charita- ble events. Melody was work- ing for the Marin Independent Journal as a sales manager with a side bar in public rela- tions for the paper. As such, she attended film festivals and managed to get her photo taken with the greats and near greats. Billie Jean King, Glen Close and Mort Saul come to mind…and Robin Williams. Last Saturday Melody was in Red Bluff, and while in our office, rearranged pho- tos of her and notables. One such was one with Robin. And then she called Monday with the news that Robin Williams had demised, possibly as a re- sult of recent bouts of depres- sion. She concluded her call to me with, "…and Dad, it was only a few months ago that I passed him in the parking lot of Goodman's Building Supply in Mill Valley. I was walking back to my car when I heard a "hey don't I know you?" I was going to blow the guy off until I turned and saw who it was! We had our pictures taken at a film festival the prior year. As I was in work dress attire he quickly sized me up and said, "You missed your exit!", mean- ing Nordstrom, which was nearby. I was flattered that he had remembered my name. What a great guy was Robin Williams!" … Speaking of suicides, it is in- comprehensible to us common folks that a person can be so much in the grip of depression that he or she would take their own life. I have known only a few such people in my lifetime, and am left with the thought that if only I could have sat down with them for a moment and explained that the end will come all too soon without their aiding and abetting their own demise, that they might have called off their wild pur- suit. But as writer and talk show host Dick Cavett put it, "When in the clutches of de- pression, even the act of tak- ing one's life seems too much of an effort to contemplate." …. Last week we did not have a quiz. However, amid the sound, the fury and the indig- nation, we hereby get back in the groove. Herb Caen created a game in which participants were challenged to complete sentences via puns: "I could have been a proctologist but I could never get to the …… of …….". "I could have been a nun but I had sworn .. …. ……". "I could have been Bill Buck- ley's assistant but I wasn't ….. … … …". … A Priest was being honored at his retirement dinner after 25 years in the parish. A leading local politician and member of the congrega- tion was chosen to make the presentation. However, he was delayed, so the Priest decided to say his own few words while they waited. "I got my first impression of the parish from the first confes- sion I heard here. The very first person who entered my confes- sional told me he had stolen a television set and, when ques- tioned by the police, was able to lie his way out of it. He had stolen money from his parents; embezzled from his employer; taken illegal drugs, was ar- rested several times for public nudity. I was appalled that one person could do so many aw- ful things, but as time went on, I learned that my flock was not at all like that." Just as the Priest finished his talk, the politician arrived full of apologies at being late. He immediately began to make the presentation "I'll never forget the first day our parish Priest arrived, in fact; I had the honor of be- ing the first person to go to him for confession." I Say Back a er recent spill that put this writer down for the count We are left with witness accounts alleging that the fatal encounter was triggered when Brown committed the unpardonable crime of 'walking while black.' Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. What a wonderful thing you do Kim. Thank you Todd Miller: Online comment about Back to School project Good...maybe they will learn to obey the law sooner than later!! Patricia Drum: Facebook comment on Red Bluff police sting of DUI drivers Assemblyman Dan Logue, 150 Amber Grove Drive, Ste. 154, Chico 95928, 530 895-4217 Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, senator.nielsen@senate. ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sac- ramento 95814, 916 445- 2841, fax 916 558-3160, gov- ernor@governor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug LaMalfa, 507 Can- non House Office Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202 225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415 393-0707, fax 415 393- 0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, 1700 Montgomery St., San Francisco 94111, 510 286-8537, fax 202 224-0454 YOUR OFFICIALS Robert Minch OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Friday, August 15, 2014 MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6