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The real question Vice should be asking themselves is why are so many mass shootings committed by young atheist men? They love to praise atheism on that site so I'm surprised they didn't catch on to their own hypocrisy.
Because it is the ghetto. People expect to get killed in the ghetto. Places like that, it is nothing new and if the news was covered there every single time, there would be little time to report other things. A mass shooting, however, is shocking to everyone. Few people expect to getting shot and killed in a suburban school that has very few minorities. Very few people expect to be shot to death in church. Those things shock people. Getting murdered in the ghetto, as sad and tragic as it is, is expected. It doesn't really shock anyone that it happens there.
Actually that's not entirely true. I take it you're speaking of national news, but here in Philly where there's been two incidents involving kids in the past couple of weeks, it's been the number one local news item. People are appalled. They want these dudes caught.
Also, there are reports of any shooting no matter what neighborhood. There are also numerous events set up to protest senseless violence in all neighborhoods. By people of all races.
The issue as I see it is that there's a system in place in the super poor hoods that exists outside the law and is how kids are brought up to survive. The schools are terrible, education is nil, the residents barely go beyond their own block so they don't aspire to anything much other than their own neighborhood hierachy. That's the way to family, money and survival. It's an incredibly harsh and stressful environment that young children live under on a daily basis. When you have a drug addicted, gang driven, all beefs solved with violence lifestyle you're going to have to adapt or die. Unfortunately there are few people that escape the cycle. There are a lot of inherently good people that are stuck there. There are older generations that have lived in one house their family has owned for multiple generations that have seen their block go to hell over drug turf and disrespect violence. But it's their home. They don't want the stress and crap any more than anyone else would.
I believe the answer is not necessarily money, it's mentoring and education for the kids before they get sucked into the whole vicious merry go round.
The issue as I see it is that there's a system in place in the super poor hoods that exists outside the law and is how kids are brought up to survive. The schools are terrible, education is nil, the residents barely go beyond their own block so they don't aspire to anything much other than their own neighborhood hierachy. That's the way to family, money and survival. It's an incredibly harsh and stressful environment that young children live under on a daily basis. When you have a drug addicted, gang driven, all beefs solved with violence lifestyle you're going to have to adapt or die. Unfortunately there are few people that escape the cycle. There are a lot of inherently good people that are stuck there. There are older generations that have lived in one house their family has owned for multiple generations that have seen their block go to hell over drug turf and disrespect violence. But it's their home. They don't want the stress and crap any more than anyone else would.
Despite being a black kid in a time and area of segregation, I was also an Army brat. That means even though we lived off the installation "in the 'ville," it was still always in whatever the "middle class" area was for blacks, where black military families and other employed, two-parent black families lived. In other words, I had a very ordered life as a child. After a full career in the military myself, even my adult life has been well-ordered. My kids have mostly lived on-base--100% employment and the tightest "HOA" rules you'll ever see--so their lives have been well-ordered. "Sergeant Jones, if you can't control your children, I order you off base by Friday."
So to me, the black urban experience is actually as alien as life on Mars. Yet, as I see even in these City-Data threads I'll always be painted with the same brush as any other black person, so it has behooved me to apply the same intelligence analysis skills to urban areas as I've learned to apply to foreign countries. "You have to look at the game from the other side of the board."
Of course, I've known black people who grew up in those areas and made it out and up. I listen to their horror stories and mainly think, "Dang, you're a better man than I am." Those are people who are more exceptional than we want to think a person must be--more exceptional than they may even realize themselves.
Quote:
I believe the answer is not necessarily money, it's mentoring and education for the kids before they get sucked into the whole vicious merry go round.
It starts too early and is too absolutely pervasive. You made the point yourself: " It's an incredibly harsh and stressful environment that young children live under on a daily basis. When you have a drug addicted, gang driven, all beefs solved with violence lifestyle you're going to have to adapt or die."
I don't know how that can be reversed except to remove them from the environment entirely--otherwise, the average kid sees the rest of the world as alien to him as life on Mars. The average kid cannot conceive in his gut, in the ancient reptilian part of his brain, I don't think, of the well-ordered world I knew as anything other than science fiction, as anything truly attainable for him.
Not unless you get him out of that culture of chaos and into a culture of order.
Last edited by Ralph_Kirk; 06-26-2015 at 09:03 AM..
American churches specialize in teaching young males that violence is an option. There are a couple of current threads in this forum in which someone has suggested that maybe Christians should practice non-violence...and the bulk of American Christians say "Jesus told us to buy guns!"
Not true. Nowhere does Christians say this. You are a better person than to post this nonsense.
Just a suggestion. Stop trying to turn everything in life into a struggle between the "good guys" (in your mind, conservative libertarians) and the "bad guys" (liberals and progressives). I know children in grade school who realize the world isn't quite that simple.
My libertarian (small 'l', please) don't involve using the government's legal monopoly on the use of coercion to force my views on anyone else. That's something that can't be said about most of the so-called "progressive" agenda.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 06-26-2015 at 10:17 AM..
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