I knew that when I wrote this post yesterday, I would end up revisiting the topic today after Eugene Kane wrote his column about it.  It was inevitable.  And as Fred said earlier today, it couldn't have been more predictable.  But that's ok, as being predictable isn't always a bad thing.  As anyone could have predicted, he's taken his usual stance that the real tragedy here is that this same sort of anger doesn't arise when the victim of a heinous crime is black:

I also realized upon hearing the story that since Huggins was white, it would be a bigger deal than most crime in our city.

That's how I view all this overheated talk about an allegedly deadlier Milwaukee all of a sudden, described by doomsayers as a fearsome place with streets so violent, it's time to call in the National Guard. It makes me wonder if the routine police blotter of death in the central city simply never registered until the victim was a white suburbanite.

Yes, I know. That's a tough question for all of us.

It also suggests a troublesome, but understandable, double standard when some become outraged about central city violence only when it happens to someone who looks like them.

Sadly, there was a brief opportunity to extract some hope out of Huggins' death. Police reported unprecedented support from African-American witnesses to help find the culprits, including two young bystanders who stayed by Huggins' side during his final minutes. Daniel Carter, the black Milwaukee County sheriff's deputy who caught the 16-year-old suspect, also deserves praise. But few have gotten around to it, seeing how they were too busy proclaiming Milwaukee a new murder capital.

But is this a black and white issue as Kane would always lead us to believe?  I think not.  What's sad about his article is that his headline almost get's it exactly right.  Where is the anger when the victim is black?  Not from people like me, but from people inside those communities.

You see, this isn't a black and white issue.  It's a community issue.  The Huggins' murder wasn't garnering so much attention from many of us because it was a white guy murdered by a black punk, but because it was someone from another community who was killed in Milwaukee.  He was from Waukesha, and was killed in Milwaukee.  Not surprisingly, people who live in and near Waukesha (like Jessica McBride) have had a lot to say about it.  That was their neighbor who was killed.  It was someone from their community.  They reacted as they should... they reacted as someone from the inner city should be reacting if something awful should happen to their neighbor.

Maybe I'm just not hearing it, but when there is murder and mayhem in the inner city of Milwaukee, I just don't hear the same outrage from people in that community who are most affected.  Why is that?  Why aren't they outraged when members of their community are victims... or are perpetrators to a crime?  That's their community!  Why aren't they trying to fix it?

It's also one of the reasons why I've been so vehemently against the idea of sending in the National Guard when it was suggested.  You send in the National Guard when a situation is so out of control that you basically want to surround it, and contain it, not fix it.  It has the feeling of setting up road blocks, and keeping the bad people inside, which I find rather disturbing.  Of course when you're scared to even go to a gas station lest you get shot, one can hardly be blamed for thinking that containment is the only option.

But when considering this idea of "sending in the Guard", it should immediately beg the question, is "containment" the only option left to us?  I'm sure many will say yes, which is sad in and of itself.  But it should also serve as a warning to the attitudes that exist whether right or not.  There is that much fear.  It's time for people on the inside to start working on their own problem, lest people from the outside decide it's time to do something more severe.