Please allow me to introduce you to 16-year-old Blair Holt. He’s the handsome kid in the picture below, who is described by the Chicago Tribune as a “sharp dresser…popular among his classmates” and as having the “ability to make friends across social boundaries.”
It seems that everyone’s talking about the murder of Jessie Davis and her 9 month-old fetus or how wrestler Chris Benoit murdered his wife and seven-year-old son before committing suicide this weekend. And these tragedies deserve a certain amount of media coverage because they are criminal, horrible and senseless.
But there are tragic crimes going on all around us that never get talked about. Do you know what happened to Blair Holt just a few months ago?
BLAIR WAS JUST ONE OF THIRTY FOUR KIDZ IN THE CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM WHO HAVE BEEN MURDERED SINCE SEPTEMBER. THIS COMES OUT TO APPROXIMATELY ONE CHILD KILLED EVERY TEN DAYS!!!!
(of course, this is not counting the students who were shot, stabbed, raped, robbed etc. but managed to get out alive)
Google their names or do a search on the New York Times website, and you won’t find much about them.
I can tell you this, though: not all of them were “gang members,” which is a sick label we put on murdered 12-year-olds that sometimes means “you deserve to die.” Blair Holt, for example, was an honors students with no gang involvement whatsoever and every plan to go to college. He was the only son of a police officer and a firefighter–two Chicago city public servants. He was riding the city bus to his after-school job at his grandparents’ store when a random gunman opened fire. Blair threw himself over one of his classmates and saved her life.
Blair did not survive. He died just a few weeks before his seventeenth birthday.
The list of innocent lives lost goes on and on. Here is a very brief selection from the Chicago Tribune
Lazarus Jones, 13, an 8th grader at Budlong Elementary School, was fatally beaten Feb. 19 near his Albany Park home.
Laura Joslin, 12, was fatally stabbed on Thanksgiving night during a quarrel with other girls.
Quinton Jackson, 14, was the older of two brothers found stabbed to death in their home on April 26.
Marquise Jackson, 11, was found slain April 26 in his home along with his older brother, Quinton.
Jelisa Baker, 15, was shot to death Sept. 27, 2006. She skipped classes at Robeson High School that day with three other girls and went to an apartment, where she was fatally shot. Police say it might have been an accident.
Schanna Gayden, 13, died after she was shot in the head in a Northwes Side playground about 6:45 p.m. on June 25. She was an innocent bystander, apparently caught in gang crossfire, police said.
Take a good hard look at the young faces of some of these 34 MURDERED KIDZ and then answer the following question:
WHY HAVEN’T THEIR DEATHS BEEN COVERED BY THE NATIONAL MEDIA???
Arnie Duncan, the Chicago City Public Schools chief executive told Anderson Cooper a few weeks ago (back when the number killed was “only” 28 kidz):
“If these kids were dying in wealthy white suburbs, the world would hear about it.”
Perhaps the darkest side of being black today is that you live in a society that is killing your children and no one seems to care.
What a tragedy.
At least Anderson Cooper picked up the story, maybe the national media will follow.
Yeah, but he had a show about it back in May, and I haven’t seen anything on it since then. The Chicago Tribune article that I pulled some of this information from was even in their “local” section.
I think this may be my favorite of your posts yet. Really interesting and so, so sad.
Thank you Bloomie. I think it says so much about our society that not only do we not keep our kidz safe but we don’t even bother to tell people when they are killed–if they’re black or Hispanic, that is.
I’m almost not sure which is more sad–all this needless killing or the fact that it goes on unnoticed.
Thank you for writing this important piece and for drawing attention to the this horrific trend. In writing about these children whose murders are tragically ignored, you are honoring their memories.
I’ve always been bugged by the racial lines that seem to rule the pop media’s sympathy towards tragic events. Even more so because the stories work so well in garnering the attention of everyone watching.
Who wasn’t enthralled by (or at least aware of) the Jon Benet “mystery” or the case of that other blond girl who disappeared in Aruba. And our hearts went out to them… the newsies could play such a helpful role in shifting this nation’s awareness towards all the other kids in need, as opposed to the episodic [blond] damsel in distress stories.
Not that this ends with the media… it seems to me that even our nation’s Amber Alert system is biased. Just try to guess the color of the boy who was awarded a medal for being rescued from his crazy mom. Or for that matter, the color of the child on the special Amber Alert stamp!!! http://www.amberalert.gov/stories/photos/nmcday052006p4.htm
Great post, Joie… see, this is why I never comment!
Tim, THANK YOU for commenting.
I didn’t even know about the whole “Amber Alert” thing but it looks like you can add that to the list of ways in which black kidz get blacked out of media coverage.
I think this exposes a basic short coming of media as a business. The problem is supply and demand– the shocking thing about black children being killed is the frequency of it. The public’s hide is thick and the media doesn’t consider it a story anymore. It’s hard to trust the news in a country that worships the free-market. There is always an angle.
I am not sure I understand how the color of the child on the Amber Alert stamp reflects any bias.
Thank you for writing this piece. The news, especially the 24 hour tv model is always looking for the popular sensationalist angle. I am afraid that Theo’s comment is right on. The frequency of these killings makes the public numb to them. The cities don’t want them made public because they fear that people will not visit if they are afraid for their own lives. These real children’s deaths become statistics. As good old Stalin once said “The death of of one person is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic.” Thank you for putting a face and a real story onto this tragic deaths.
I mean no disrespect to any of these children, I have often felt the same way Joie does when I see a national story and there are so many local ones that are just the same. But I think we need to recall the principle of “news-media”, to report things that are infrequent and noteworthy. I live in the inner-city of Baltimore, and the vast majority of our nation-leading number of murders occur in very isolated pockets of the city. It is simply not news when something happens 250 or 300 times a year. Unfortunately that is the number of times a murder does happen in Baltimore city, and when a murder happens in the suburbs, where it might be one of two or five for the year, that’s a far more infrequent event.
Blair was like my cuz and people to sstop kilin us children we wont to live to see 18
[...] A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about Blair Holt and the 34 Chicago Kidz who have been murdered this school year. [...]
[...] Chicago is a war zone that’s actually worse than a real war zone [...]
[...] and an article from the local section of the Chicago Tribune to piece together a column about the 34 murders for Kidz [...]
[...] and an article from the local section of the Chicago Tribune to piece together a column about the 34 murders for Kidz [...]
This info is so sad i thinks something should be done!!!!!!!!!!!!!
its fucked up u mufuckas writin don’t know half the story i knew blair and he didn’t deserve that bullet by that fuckin crack baby ass nigga everyone know he was tryin to kill jerome and not blair. it makes me fuckin diguested in how the try and say its a tragedy its more than that its a fuckin shame how we fight in that school every day security whoop our asses and niggas bring guns to school through metal detectors that weren’t plugged in all the time and when we always needed the security the wait till they kill my nigga before anyone does somethin.!!!!!!!!!!! i hate this city and even the way the world works on that note i love u blair fuck that nigga rio god will do him justice for his sins
omg….this is all redicules okay yes i knew lazarus like a brother. i loved him he was only 13 omg thatZ not fair he was such a great friend!!!!!!!!!! =[[ i miss him so much! i meanjust cause there black dont mean there in a gang! he was such a good boy!!! man……i also no blair da i meat him at the 20th district police station…i think people should understand this sittin i myself am white!! an i agrEE!! =[
thank yOU,
samar kullab budlong school ‘08
ma mista jonez i miss u..n alwayz will
uz da shyt
u wer lik a brother n alwayz had ma bak lil boy
….we wer gunna liv 2gethor too lil boy..
wit paul n sahar
..we wus finna b rich..n we gon do it in honor of u
Dude
i think it is pretty sick how stereotypes lead to death. Lazarus
o man… dude ur my friggin bro. Haha u had a bright future ahead of you to man. Fastest kids in Diakatos’s class of 2003-2004. It pains me to hear about your death. And how (and i mean NO disrespect) black kids are stereotyped to be some gangster that has lived a hard life. Just kuz ur black doesnt mean ur all that. doesnt mean ur a blood or a crypt or a king or none of those retarded gangs. U know its sad kuz i heard bout this after his murder. The media didnt post this. AND IT WAS IN CHICAGO! FOX or ABC or NBC or WGN shoodve posted something bout this. But hey i guess to them its just another day in Chicago.
It has NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE, it has everything to do with your local polititans, check with your senator, etc….they DO control what is aired on the news. If they don’t want to look “bad” they will refuse to show it.
As far as this comment goes:
“it seems to me that even our nation’s Amber Alert system is biased. Just try to guess the color of the boy who was awarded a medal for being rescued from his crazy mom. Or for that matter, the color of the child on the special Amber Alert stamp!!!”
It’s no conspiracy, the little white girl that represents the A.A.System, she’s a real little girl named Amber, and when she went missing, her mother founded the alert system, just as you could do- instead of trying really hard to see racism in everything.
I’m white, please DO NOT LABEL me a racist, as I DO NOT LABEL YOU.
We’re not all out to get anyone and I’m so burnt out on the race card being thrown into everything. It will never ever stop unless the “ASSUMED” racism lines are erased- and that goes for everyone.