Someone like ‪Rudy Giuliani‬ doesn’t pay attention to this sort of thing, but black groups have been focused on so-called “black-on-black” crime since Martin Luther King started to concentrate on the problem of poverty in black communities. Violence is rooted in poverty, and no “black-on-black” crime is ever committed simply because the victim was black. It’s not a hate crime. It’s an economic issue, just as the drugs in those neighborhoods is an economic issue. People like #Giuliani have little interest in resolving those issues or improving overall quality of life for people in those communities but in “containing” a potential threat to the communities he does care about. The style of policing and governance is distinctly different with the latter than the former, and the latter is what we saw during his much-hailed-by-the-middle-class administration. But #Giuliani does black people a favor when he dismisses violence against blacks by telling us to “clean up our neighborhoods” or “you’re killing each other,” which is why “white officers” have to police those neighborhoods as they do. He is at least being honest that these communities aren’t considered part of the America in which he resides. I’ve been telling people this for years. America’s leaders view ‪Ferguson‬ through the same lens as they view ‪Iraq‬ and ‪Afghanistan‬. It’s been the loudest American message to the black community since blacks stopped being an American commodity and became, through America’s perception, as an American burden.