Late one night last week I was channel surfing when I happened upon a station that was running a marathon of a reality show. Each hour-long program took the viewers through the real-time aftermath of two violent murders. Sometimes each murder was solved, with the perpetrator being arrested and imprisoned. Other times, the crimes went unsolved by the conclusion of the program.
What caught my attention was the complete disregard for life that was so graphically on display. The other fact that could not be escaped was the number of people who were killing one another for literally no rationally explicable reason.
During the three hours that I watched, I was stunned by the sheer brutality and the immediate leap to resolve even the most minor offense — real or perceived — by deadly force.
As background for one episode, it was revealed that the New Orleans homicide detective investigating a senseless, brutal murder had lost his brother who was gunned down and murdered years earlier when thugs drove by indiscriminately spraying bullets into a crowd of children. Who the intended victim was had remained unsolved at that point for several years.

In the aforementioned episode a woman was walking home (three blocks from the bus stop) after the middle shift at the drug rehabilitation center where she was employed. Three young males on bicycles were seen fighting with her shortly before shots were heard. She was found dead with her purse missing. The crime remained unsolved even though it was clear some people had witnessed it.

In another episode, a 22-year-old male chased and gunned down a 20-year-old male in a throng of people because the shooter felt the victim had disrespected him. In another episode, a 20-something young man strangled his girlfriend to death before cutting up her body and setting it afire. The reason? She wanted to break up with him.

In still another episode, a young man in his early 20’s gunned down another young male over $200. Another episode was of two young men who broke into the apartment of their mutual friend expecting to find no one home. But their friends were at home playing videos with the lights out.

The end result? Two young men guilty only of playing videos with the lights out were gunned and murdered.

The reason? An attempted robbery gone tragically wrong. In another, two young men brutally gunned down a teenage woman and two young men walking with her.

The reason? The one young murderer was jealous and angry that the girl he liked was “messing around with someone else,” even though he had no legitimate relationship with her (not that that would have justified his actions). The one teenage male who survived the senseless attack will have the bullet that struck him lodged in his brain for the rest of his life because surgery was deemed too risky.

Episode after episode it was the same thing. Black person after black person killing another black person without a moment’s thought pursuant to respect for life. The other thing that stood out was the refusal by so many blacks to assist the police who were trying to protect them.

These murders weren’t about drug turf wars or gangs being in the wrong neighborhoods. These were senseless murders as a means of conflict resolution. There were no whites to blame.

Taking guns from innocent people would have made no difference. The guns used were a clear case of: “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”

Black race-mongers can decry the reality of the pandemic of black-on-black crime, but hour after hour, city after city, the one constant was that blacks were ruthlessly murdering one another. Black race-mongers can argue that the series only showed black people; it didn’t show white people. Even if that were true, what difference would it make?

Blacks are killing one another and they are doing so on a level commensurate with wild animals. That cannot be blamed on white people; it cannot be blamed on slavery; it can only be blamed on a total disregard for life based on a disregard for modernity.

It cannot be eradicated by filling the heads of these young people by teaching them that they are black and thus expected to “keep it real,” but rather by teaching them that they are human beings; and in civilized societies color of skin isn’t commensurate with animalism.

Mychal S. Massie is the former National Chairman of the conservative black think tank, Project 21-The National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives; and a member of its parent think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research. You can find more at mychal-massie.com.