Yesterday afternoon, as I was getting ready to attend my niece's graduation from Case Law School (we are so proud), I heard a pretty disturbing report on NPR...
It was about this feature that the LA Times puts on it's Blog called The Homicide Report...
The person who runs the show was talking about giving a face to the people who die at the hands of their fellow man...
There are so many murders in LA now that they really don't have the space to cover them all in the daily paper. They talked about the largest segment of the population at risk for murder. Turns out to be what you would expect; Black men in the age group from 25-45. This is the demographic where where most of the murders happen.
They talked about what could be done. I thought it was weird that they would try to go into the high risk neighborhoods and try to educate those at risk in the art of conflict mediation. This is the kind of response that evokes sniggering from the right. The hand wringing on the left is no better. The only difference is a little empathy.
The real problem is that for so many years wide swaths of the African American community has been shut off in the de facto guarded areas of the inner city. The folks in the burbs and the Urban Islands of wealth and prosperity are relatively safe from harm. The men in these "at risk" neighborhoods take their frustrations out on each other...
Conflict resolution is the least of their worries.
Perhaps if someone in a position of power actually cared to educate and then give a little glimmer of hope that the American Dream is something these isolated "at-risk" men had a shot at, some of the need for conflict resolution would evaporate.
I don't have any idea if this is the problem or if there is some kind of conspiracy or even if there is a cultural proclivity to violence. But I do know this; that even when I was in my darkest hours, when life was happening all around me while I sucked down enough liquor to drown a small city, I always knew in the back of my mind that I could change my life if I decided too. I had family and friends who would be there for me if I just swallowed my pride and asked for help.
AA was there, my family was there and I was able to salvage my life.
I can't even fathom what it would be like to have no hope at all, not even a glimmer. I wonder what would have happened if the testosterone that was surging my through my veins met a mind that was filled with nothing but cynical despair, with no hope at all for the life I saw everyday on TV, what would I have done? Would I have been able to save my life?
I don't think so. I'm not that strong. Hell most people aren't that strong. So why do so many people in this self-proclaimed "compassionate" country of ours expect people raised in such despair to pick themselves up by their bootstraps?
It sickens me that we are so cavalier about lives that most of us will never see.
I guess these men are expendable.
The trouble it they will be until someway somehow we can throw a life preserver of hope into those neighborhoods marked with red lines in the police precincts of not just LA but in every city of size in this country of ours.
In case you didn't catch my drift, I was really upset all through a night that I should have been been filled with happiness. I tried all night but that story kept coming back to haunt me. Welcome to the 21st century.
Take a peek for yourself...
http://projects.latimes.com/homicide-report/blog/page/1/