Richard Sherman Says He Supports Black Lives Matter, But ‘Black-On-Black’ Crime Needs To Stop First

By Matt Ferner, National Reporter, The Huffington Post

Seattle Seahawks’ star cornerback Richard Sherman says he supports the Black Lives Matter movement, but believes that the issue of “black-on-black” crime needs to be resolved first.

Sherman made the impromptu remarks before reporters Wednesday in response to a controversial website comment about the Black Lives Matter movement that many had incorrectly attributed to him. And while Sherman denied that he wrote the post Wednesday, he did take several minutes to offer a heartfelt statement on his thoughts regarding Black Lives Matter and police-community relations in the inner-city.

“As a black man I do understand that black lives matter,” Sherman said. “I stand for that, I believe in that wholeheartedly. I also think there’s a way to go about things and there’s a way to do things.”

Sherman, a Stanford graduate who was born and raised in Compton, California, suggested that the black community needs to address “internal” issues like “black-on-black crime” before police are blamed. He shared a personal story from his past about a “best friend” who, Sherman says, was killed by two 35-year-old black men…

“If black lives matter, then they should matter all the time,” Sherman said.

The concept of black-on-black crime is a controversial one. And while it has existed in American culture for decades, Jamelle Bouie detailed in The Daily Beast that there is a huge problem with the phenomena: It does not actually exist. The issue of black-on-black crime is no more real than the one of “white-on-white crime.” Bouie writes:

Yes, from 1976 to 2005, 94 percent of black victims were killed by black offenders, but that racial exclusivity was also true for white victims of violent crime—86 percent were killed by white offenders. Indeed, for the large majority of crimes, you’ll find that victims and offenders share a racial identity, or have some prior relationship to each other.

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