Too Many People with Short Fuses
And it’s adding to homicide rates © 2017



Nearly everyday, you read or hear about people getting into an argument. But too often, those arguments don’t end until someone is killed. Detroit’s Chief of Police, James Craig, said recently there has been a stark increase in these type of homicides.




Scenario 1: Two men are engaged in an argument. A drink is accidentally spilled. One man is so angry he takes out a gun and fires at the other man. He missed the other man, but the bullet struck the man’s young daughter. The daughter died. Was the argument so important a child had to die?


Scenario 2: Two women were on a city bus. One woman made the mistake of bumping into the other woman. Seconds later, the woman who was bumped into stabbed to death the other woman. Two lives have been ruined over a bump. Was it worth it?



These type of incidents are not rare. They happen everyday.Too often, one person is all too willing to curse out, punch, stab, or shoot another person over things many reasonable people would ignore. The trigger could be over a parking spot, a stare, a place in line, a perceived insult, or some other dumb stuff.



Psychiatrists have explanations for people who are easily provoked to anger and are willing to kill another person as a result of that anger.


In the book, “Make Peace With Anyone,” David Lieberman, offered some insights into anger. He wrote:



“When we do not get respect from others, we get angry because it hurts how we need to see ourselves. This disrupts our ability to feel in control. The emotional response to this loss of control is fear. The response to fear is anger. At the root of all negative emotions—envy, lust, jealousy, and anger—is fear.



“At the root of fear is low self-esteem. This is why angry people have low self-esteem. This is why they argue, are stubborn and don’t forgive. Anger makes us feel powerful. It gives us the illusion we are in control, free and independent. But in reality, it makes us lose control.”




“When someone is rude or embarrasses us--does anything that is disrespectful—if we have low self-esteem, it causes us to question our own self-worth and lash out with anger. This is why a person with low self-esteem is highly sensitive—because his opinion of himself fluctuates with his ability to impress others. The greater our self-esteem, the less hurt we feel when someone is disrespectful.”


Uncontrolled anger has many unintended and negative consequences. It could cause you your job, your life, friendships, love, money, or your freedom. So before you let anger get the best of you, try to control it, and ask yourself if it’s worth it.




Our community, the black community, seems to have more of these incidents over trivial matters than other communities. Self-hate could be another trigger that could cause our people to be so eager to harm each other.




In the book, “Why Blacks Kill Blacks?, “ written years ago by Dr. Alvin Poussaint. In part, Dr. Poussaint wrote:



“Programs focused on crime and violence prevention must do more than alleviate socioeconomic ills in the black community. Intervention programs must concentrate on activities that support black self-respect and non-violent cooperative lifestyles.


“In addition to the obvious need for jobs and decent housing, we must focus on programs to strengthen black family life and child rearing practices, and to reduce the abuse of drugs and alcohol.



“Black children need to be indoctrinated with values which oppose violent confrontations and which foster non-macho behavior that will help them avoid becoming victim-precipitated homicide statistics”




Poussaint further insisted that the black community in in dire need of homicide provention centers.


So, we cannot expect others to come to our rescue, these are things we must do. Here’s the thing.The point has been made over and over that so many of our issues start in the home; not outside the home. Things will not get better for us until we embrace this truth.