Violent America makes for violent youth
OPINION - We should abhor the actions of the young men who killed 16-year-old Chicago student Derrion Albert, but we should not be so quick to label it just another "black-on-black" inner city crime...
“To guard ourselves from bitterness, we need the vision to see in this generation’s ordeals the opportunity to transfigure ourselves and American society”
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Watching the videotaped beating to death of 16-year-old Derrion Albert, a Chicago honor student on his way home from school, left me both shocked and saddened. I was shocked by the level of mob violence by students (in school uniforms no less) and the disregard for human life and human promise. I was also saddened to see a young man, being kicked and pummeled, his lifeless body lying on bloodstained concrete. Before my eyes, a school fight was transformed into an urban-style lynching. I rapidly went through the stages of grieving in the time it took the video to elapse.
More troubling is that the four young men charged in the killing are under the age of 20, barely into adulthood. Chicago has been reeling from youth violence recently; more than 30 students were killed in school-related violence last year. Although a number of community groups have been working hard to curb youth violence in Chicago and in other communities throughout the country, the escalation in violence is nonetheless still troubling.
But while we should abhor the actions of these young men, we should not be so quick to label this just another “black-on-black” inner city crime or dismiss it as representative of a pervasive “youth culture of failure.” Black youth do not live in isolation, away from a violent America. The sickness of violence affects everyone and permeates our society.
According to Human Rights First, since President Obama’s election, we have witnessed a rise of racial threats and hate crimes against Latino immigrants, citizens of Middle Eastern background, gays and blacks, to name a few, in cities across the country. Last week in Baltimore, a black elderly man was brutally beaten by three white supremacists while he fished from a pier. Two of the accomplices are under the age of 18, and they stated that they would not have attacked a white person.
On any given night you can turn on the television or Internet and get news that reveals plots to kill the president. You’ll see images of wailing mothers in front of bombed-out targets from U.S. wars in distance lands and grimace at cases of excessive force by police in inner cities. Yet, other types of violence take place daily in the guise of inadequate housing, health care and schools, chronic unemployment and Wall Street theft. Violence saturates our lives. It’s used to sell merchandise, and it is also the language invoked when civility breaks down.
I am not advocating that violent acts by young people be explained away as the result of the “system”. The young men who killed Derrion should be punished for taking his life. However, we must not also treat youth violence as a unique species. It’s going to take the moral and political will of communities and an entire nation to learn a new language of peace.
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