A grandmother was shot and killed on her porch in Dorchester. A barber was killed in his shop in Four Corners in Dorchester. On a sunny Sunday morning as parishioners worshipped only feet away, a 13-year-old boy was senselessly slain in Mattapan. Just a few weeks ago, shots rang out midday on a crowded street in Roxbury as pedestrians fled for their lives, leaving a Haverhill pastor dead.
A flare-up of concern usually ensues and quickly fades until there’s a new act of violence. Soon we read or hear about another episode in the random cycle of homicide and maiming, one that has become seen as almost routine in Black communities in Boston.
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It’s normalized because it’s tolerated.
Rarely are we openly and intensely alarmed about violence as a persistently onerous and systemic problem that has had an impact on generations of Black Bostonians. Too many of us are numb to the profoundly traumatic implications within individual, familial, and civic life in the broadest sense. Rather than appropriately describing this mayhem as a state of emergency, violence in Black Boston has become the status quo.
We have to ask ourselves how we can effectively approach the tragedy of Black death in our city. The answers aren’t simple, and despite a variety of dedicated and effective efforts, much more needs to be done. It comes down to collective responsibility and greater awareness and engagement from the whole of Boston. Then we can have comprehensive discussion and groundbreaking policy proposals to address the problem with tenacity and ongoing work.
In the communities that experience the most violence, the vast majority of residents follow the law, work hard, and care for each other. More than anything, they want safe streets.
And yet the streets many Black and brown residents live on are in what we call the “murder triangle” that spans from the South End through Roxbury, Dorchester, Hyde Park, and Mattapan. This area is like an isosceles triangle with its top located in the South End and its base stretching southward into Dorchester, Mattapan, and Hyde Park. Dorchester was — and remains — the epicenter of this death triangle.
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The fatality data that The New Democracy Coalition, a civic policy organization, has gathered over the last 6 months make it clear that the term “murder triangle” is anything but rhetorical. The numbers are staggering:
▪ In the past three years, more than 90 percent of homicides in Boston were committed on Black people within the murder triangle — even though Black people make up less than 25 percent of the city’s population.
▪ More than 94 percent of the homicide victims were Black or brown males.
▪ Residents of Back Bay have a life expectancy rate that is a shocking 23 years longer than people in Roxbury’s Nubian Square — even though the neighborhoods are only two miles apart.
Addressing the plight of the triangle is something for all of us to rally around as a comprehensive civic and community-building project that requires elastic thinking, tinkering, and peer-powered resolve. All sectors of Boston’s otherwise resourceful culture can contribute — ranging from the media to health care to the life sciences to universities and to clergy of all faith perspectives.
The “murder triangle” needs to be treated like a public health crisis that requires more resources and strategic coordination. Public health crises aren’t quelled without intensive treatment and abundant preventative care.
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It must start with a deeper level of engagement — across-the-board buy-in — and must build a sustained urgency that shouldn’t be allowed to dissipate. A few years ago, The Boston Foundation started a Boston By Night program that organized visits to various parts of Boston’s neighborhoods. People who would otherwise never go to these neighborhoods saw with their own eyes what was working and what the needs were. It’s always helpful for people from all corners of the city — bankers, brokers, teachers, scientists, programmers — to visit with stakeholders and others in the community and hear the pride, hope, and concern in their voices.
Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston, which has five clubs in the triangle and prides itself on being a safe place for kids, is taking the lead in convening meetings in these neighborhoods. The goal is to listen, learn, strategize, and mobilize. It’s time to reverse the tragic pattern of violence in the “murder triangle” — who will join us?
The Rev. Kevin C. Peterson is founder of The New Democracy Coalition and an adjunct faculty member at Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research. Robert Lewis Jr. is Nicholas president and CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston.
