It is way past time that we learn to walk and chew gum at the same time. How many times can we endure witnessing the irony of “Black Lives Matter” signs being raised in protest every time a white police officer kills a black American while a few pitiful candles are lit on a street corner when a black person murders another black person?

The statistics are painfully eloquent on the matter. The homicide rate in the American white community is 2.2 per 100,000. The homicide rate in the American black community is 17 per 100,000. Further, 93% of the killers of black Americans are black Americans. The most useful FBI statistics indicate that white police officers kill black Americans about 100 times a year.

It is time that we must walk and chew gum simultaneously. In order to establish any hope of shared public safety and faith in the criminal justice system that every unlawful incident of murder by cop be prosecuted with appropriate punishment being part of the expected protocol.

But it is also just as important that the national black community respond with similar vigor and anger and energy every time that a black person kills another black person. Rationalizing these murders as being cause families does little or nothing to comfort the orphan or widow or parent who has to witness their loved one being placed six feet underground.

The glorification and glamorizing of murderous thug culture with entertainers running around with names like “Murdah” and “Al Capone” and “Young Thug” create a logical connection between destructive culture and destructive behavior. Accepting black people murdering black people as inevitable will doom the national black community to an existence of pervasive fear, violence and hopelessness.

Why is it that “Black Lives Matter” only when the killer is a white policeman? If black police officers were killing 5000 black people a year there would be daily marches and appeals to the United Nations to stop the obvious institutional genocide. But the facts are that black people are killing over 5000 black people every year and the protest and outrage is muted in comparison to the hue and cry over Ferguson and Staten Island and Cleveland and now North Charleston.

This is not to give a pass to state-sanctioned violence against black Americans. As has been noted in prior columns, the history of this country is stained by the racist murder of black Americans dating back to slavery and Jim Crow and lynching and the continuation of Murder by Cop. Every time a black person is killed under the color of law, the law itself is undermined and compromised. Every time a black person is killed by a police officer or vigilante (see George Zimmerman) the spirit of this country is diminished.

There can be no explanation, no rationalization and no justification for the carnage suffered by black Americans at the hands of officers of the law. But the carnage suffered by black Americans at the hands of black Americans is also horrible and the sheer number of deaths involved should arouse Americans of every hue to rise in opposition to this self-inflicted genocide.

It makes no sense to focus solely on Murder by Cop when the Lurking Monster continues to rampage through the national black community devouring men, women and children literally on a daily basis. It is possible; indeed it is imperative, that we rise up in protest to both categories of killings. After all, the victims of both outrages are just as dead and our voices of protest should be just a loud.

We simply must walk and chew gum at the same time.