Ashes. She disappeared like ashes upon a menacing swirling wind.
The current situation that black women find themselves in globally is quite alarming. They lead in most categories involving being victims, cancer deaths being one that the numbers are quite staggering when compared to those of white women or men. In the city of Chicago there has been violent crimes committed against women on the south and west sides for decades that has been unreported or under-reported by the media. In the nineteen nineties there was attention drawn to the fact that the bodies of women who had been raped then murdered and sometimes mutilated discovered in abandoned buildings and legislation was passed to force owners of vacant property to board up the buildings to prevent ease of access. Little was done in the way of a thorough investigation and the murders went unsolved. Fast forward to the present day and we are again presented with the disturbing trend of black women on the south and west side of the city being killed. Many of the victims are believed to be sex workers and have all been strangled leading some to suggest that these are the victims of a serial killer operating in Chicago. Going back into the nineteen nineties again there were three women who I went to school with that had spiraled down into the world of addiction and all three of them would turn dates for money. Within the period of a few months all three of them were killed. All in the same manner, strangulation and all were mutilated having their breasts cut off and entrails removed. They were all found in abandoned properties seemingly having gone into the property willingly to perform a sex act or for the promise of some drugs and were killed. Presently there are bodies turning up in the south and west side communities that bear the same method of death that being strangulation. The authorities mention that this could be the work of a serial killer but fall short of coming out and saying it. Why when it comes to the lives of our precious women are not all attempts made to make the community aware that there may be a dangerous individual lurking about so people can take precautions to avoid being victimized and policing in high risk areas increased and some type of sting operation set forth in attempts to capture someone. It is distressing to think about how vulnerable black women are in society. No one is their vanguard, no one especially not the black man wishes to serve and protect them in an altruistic fashion. If a blackman offers his help to a black woman she has to worry about him expecting some compensation later and most of the time all a black man will do if he sees a black woman in a situation is pull out his phone and record the drama hoping to get something entertaining enough to post on social media. The police don’t take black women's issues as a top priority and even in heath care black women receive sub par treatment most of the time. There are 65,000-75,000 black women and girls missing in the United States today. How can we begin to calculate the totality of the losses suffered when so many of our women, the vessels by which new life is brought into existence are disappeared as if they never existed? The facts don’t lie. Black women are murdered at twice the rate of women of other races in the United States. That is an extraordinary trend when black women are a fraction of the number of white women. In closing I would like to tell you a story from personal experience. I was in the county jail in Michigan and I was talking to a guy who had been arrested for severely beating prostitutes. He would drop his wife and kids off at school and work respectively then go to the hoe stroll and pick up a woman. After she would perform a sex act on him he would beat her nearly to death for their services. The police set up a sting to capture him after he did the is repeatedly. He conveyed his story to me kinda asking me what did I think the courts would do to him. I will never for get his attitude toward these women, he felt that because he had a higher education and worked in the private sector his value as a human was greater and these women were essentially worthless. He said and I quote “ What are they going to do to me all I did was beat up some whores”. I shook my head and walked away thinking, I hope they throw the book at this fool.
