Most of the violence involves black men killing other black men. Out of the 161 homicide victims last year, 131 were black men. Most of the suspects were also black men.
When the pattern of black-on-black violence is occasionally broken, white fear and outrage are redoubled.
This happened earlier this month after the killing of a white filmmaker, when thousands of people marched on City Hall to demand change, a majority of them whites.
The small showing of black marchers saddened Mr. Raphael, the minister.
In the 2006 murders, he said, “99 percent of them were black-on-black, and we did not march. As a community, we could not bring ourselves to respond to that.”
