Perhaps These Things Are Related?

A smoldering pile of ash contains few mysteries, while a somewhat functional country harbors the unfathomable. As the USA clings to life, experts remain confounded as to why our vibrant African American communities are becoming infected with COVID-19 at substantially higher rates than the general population.

After all, these are dynamic areas that furnish our nation with some of its finest minds. For example, our esteemed Surgeon General. “Do it for your big momma”, he implored last week during a press conference to address the unfolding crisis. “But let me be crystal clear, we do not think people of color are biologically or genetically predisposed to get COVID-19, there is nothing inherently wrong with you”, he added.

There’s another health affliction that plagues these communities as well: GETTING SHOT. It’s almost as if their skin has magnetic properties which cause bullets to fly towards them at high velocities. My hypothesis seems far-fetched, but can anybody come up with a better explanation?

My cretinous brain grappled with this conundrum all weekend. The only aspect to which I’m satisfied beyond a certainty is that there isn’t anything “inherently wrong” with them. My surety stems from the fact that contentions to the contrary would be racist, and things that are racist hold no logical or factual validity whatsoever.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the lesbian daughter of an African American mother and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, has imposed a 9:00 pm curfew on liquor sales in response to a bloodbath last week that set the new record for 2020. From Sunday, April 5th to her Thursday announcement, 19 of them were killed and an additional 47 wounded. I’m not quite convinced her late night liquor theory provides an adequate explanatory model for these dual medical emergencies.

“These actions place additional and unnecessary burden on our hospitals and ICU units. Violence of any kind is never acceptable but the fact that this is especially urgent now as our ability to protect all Chicagoans is being stretched to the breaking point. We cannot allow that to happen and we will not allow that to happen,” she solemnly intoned.

That’s another thing that I’ve never been able to figure out about our African American communities. All sorts of actions that are “never acceptable” and “we cannot allow” transpire with alarming frequency. How can events that are so intolerable be so prevalent? Just sitting in a parked car at night is one of the most perilous endeavors that an African American resident of Chicago can dare to undertake.

I had a first-rate public education in a facility that appeared to serve some kind of warehouse function for my African American classmates. It was very strange, but they seemed possessed of a powerful disinclination towards anything academic whatsoever. They were often preoccupied with subjecting each other to some bizarre form of gladiator training and spouting various obscenities. I was even told that there was a pipeline straight from the school to prison, although I never laid eyes on it myself.

I can’t shake this funny feeling that there’s some sort of connection between all of this, a common thread that my simple mind can’t tie down. Somebody must have the answer.