Michael Scott's Death and The Death of Disbelief in Suicide

The shocking and untimely death of the well-respected and visible Chicago School Board President Michael Scott has unveiled another gulf in what African Americans and white people believe. Like we really need that in Chicago.

By and large, many African Americans believe that our race simply doesn't commit suicide. That, of course, is not true. Those who believe that myth point to the resiliency and defiance that is necessarily is a part of blacks' DNA in light of our surviving slavery. Make it through such an atrocity, goes the thinking, and lawsuits, overdue bills and foreclosure are nothing. We can handle it. We'll make ends meet. We'll beg borrow and steal to keep our families in tact and keep our affairs at least remotely in order.

However, we won't kill ourselves.

Although the rate of suicide in the black community is and has trailed that of whites for years, African Americans have taken their lives. Distraught, mentally ill, at the end of their proverbial rope, embarrassed, broke, ashamed and guilty.

Did Scott kill himself - or did the mob rub him out, as I've heard more than once?  Did he know too much about secret political and real estate deals or did he anger the wrong people at the wrong time?

We don't know yet although almost all signs at this point indicate suicide. What should be killed, however, is the near-universal notion in the black community that blacks don't kill themselves.

What do you think?