Spurred by community violence and local crime data, NAACP leaders said they no longer intend to treat “black-on-black” crime as a crisis for others to handle.
“It is no longer a police problem or a problem for our local government officials – it is a community problem,” said Kwame Asante, state director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“We can’t just sit in the back of the church anymore,” Asante later added.
He was flanked by current Baton Rouge chapter president Lamont Cole and past president Alvin Washington.
The news conference was prompted in part by a recent report ranking Louisiana second in the nation when it comes to black people being the victims of homicide.
Conducted by the Violence Policy Center, the report used crime statistics from a 2004 FBI report and concluded 442 black people were victims of homicide that year in Louisiana. The average victim was 28 years old.
“As a lawyer, I’ve sat down with these young men and they say, ‘I don’t care about dying, I don’t care about going to jail.’ I don’t think they know what they are doing. They don’t know the consequences. It’s like they are committing suicide.”