An apartment complex in Roanoke, Virginia has become a battleground for a clash between African immigrants and their black American neighbors.

The primarily Somalian refugee population at Maple Grove Apartments says African Americans have been shattering their windows with rocks and covering building walls with graffiti like, "Americans Only!" The black American residents of Maple Grove claim the Africans incite the violence, especially Somali children who allegedly bully American kids. "I have a gun," said one American-born black woman. "If they hurt my kids, I'll use it."

Tracy Reyes, one of the few whites living at Maple Grove, told The Roanoke Times, "This is America; there's supposed to be a place for all of us." Scrawled in the laundry room of the building, there's a piece of graffiti that would be funny were it not so ironic and ignorant: "Go back to Africa where you belong free loaders."

As nice as this year's "highs" were in the black community (that list is coming next), the good stories got significantly less press than the following incidents, which will hereby be known as "lowlights." And there were more than a few of them to choose from this year, when it seemed like we took two steps back for every step we took forward. I compiled this list of lows not to be negative, but to put all of 2007's ridiculousness behind us so that we can have a more positive, productive 2008. Deal? Deal.*

*Yeah, right.

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We all know the stats, right? Fifty percent of U.S. homicide victims are black, and 9 out of 10 of them were killed by other blacks. Black people are consistently criticized — often by white people who think blacks aren't allowed to comment on white racism as long as there is such a problem with black-on-black crime** — for not stepping up to do something about this problem. No where is "this problem" more prevalent than in Philadelphia, which has the highest murder rate out of all the major American cities. But guess what, critics! Philadelphians, black Philadelphians, are stepping up and making actual attempts to save their city.

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Black people make up nearly 50 percent of homicide victims in the United States, according to a Justice Department study. The vast majority of these homicides are black-on-black, and they happen every single day, although Oakland's recent high profile case has recently (and briefly) brought the issue to the national news.

The study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics also found that from 2001 to 2005, more than nine out of 10 black murder victims were killed by other blacks, and three out of four were slain with a gun. Blacks, who make up 13 percent of the population, were victims in 15 percent of nonfatal violent crimes.

The new findings underscore the enduring problem of crime that plagues many African American communities, even during a period when the incidence of violent crime dropped or held steady overall, according to criminologists and other experts.

The "good news" is that black victimization rates are down in proportion to victimization rates for whites. I can't see anything good about either the number of black people whose lives are cut short or the number of black people flooding our prisons for committing the crimes. Meanwhile, an update on our "black leaders:" the NAACP has buried the n-word from coast to coast and Al Sharpton has successfully criticized TMZ for making up the word "roboho."

[WP]