The recent spate of gun violence in black communities has threatened to shift the singular focus of Black Lives Matter (BLM) away from police killings. Its fear is that a serious inquiry would undermine the facile belief that the violence stems from intergenerational black poverty. When the black actor, Terry Crews criticized BLM for ignoring the gun violence, he was condemned. Typical was the response of Don Lemon:
But that’s not what the Black Lives Matter movement is about Terry. Black Lives Matter is about police brutality and about criminal justice. It's not about what happens in communities when it comes to crime, Black-on-Black crime. People who live near each other, Black people, kill each other. Same as whites.
If Crews wanted to stem community violence, Lemon concluded, “Form your own movement.”
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