Chittlin' Talk: The Beltway Sniper

Thursday, April 5, 2007

The Beltway Sniper

This was a letter to the editor of the Chicago Defender:

Dear Editor:

I’m very ashamed to admit this in public, but I have been guilty of self-hatred.

When I first saw the photograph of John Allen Muhammad, a clean-looking Black man, it was hard for me to believe he was the sniper. I mean it was just like looking in a mirror, and I’m not a cold-blooded killer, so why should he be? I guess I could not believe that he could pull of all of those killings with one shot. I guess I was a victim in thinking subconsciously that blacks still had a tendency for shoddy workmanship. I guess I did not want to believe that a black man was that good in killing people. I have to confess if I wanted to hire a sniper, I would not have done business with one of my own people. I would not have thought about buying black, finding a good sniper within my own community. I probably would have wanted to find a good white sniper with a good track record, I’m to sorry say. After all the evidence I have seen in Muhammad’s case, I have to admit it seems like the evidence is proving me wrong.

It seems like he is proving again to all of us that Black people are capable of being equal to or better in doing anything like any other race.

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Booker T. Washington said:

"There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs....There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who do not want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."