Senseless - Page 6

I understand completely the history behind the crisis, which no one wants to call it, in the inner cities. My point is that in order to move forward we need to cure the symptoms of that history. Slavery is gone. Civil rights laws have been passed. Yes, there are still racists out there and the effects of systemic and legal racism and discrimination are still felt, but what's the plan? Let's "cure" all the racists then move forward with a plan to fix the inner cities? Just providing free food, welfare, shelter, education and medical care are not enough, that's obvious. People in the inner cities need to change how they think. There needs to be a moral and cultural change.

The question I have is how do you keep the many, and it is many, black males from shooting one another? How do you keep that individual from deciding that owning a gun and using it is something he should do? How do you keep him from squeezing that trigger and killing someone who is in the same circumstances as he is? There is a moral choice being made there and that morality that justifies killing over the stupidest things needs to be changed. The morality that tells a kid he should kill another for his Air Jordans needs to change. That is a change on the level of the individual in question. White people don't need to change in order for that kid to be brought up differently. If the cops stopped killing black people, rightly or wrongly, it won't change much in the inner city. Kids will still shoot each other. Kids will go to school so far behind when it comes to literacy that they will never catch up to their peers in more affluent communities. They will go to school unable to behave themselves in a way that an environment that is conducive to learning can be maintained. How do you change that? Who needs to change? The kid who can't behave and function in a classroom or some racist somewhere out there?

Why do black immigrants outperform African-Americans? They are the same race yet they are different. What is different? Culture and values. Around half of the black students admitted to Ivy League colleges are from Africa. The minority within the minority is moving ahead. Henry Gates stated that 75% of the black students at Harvard were of (recent) African or Caribbean descent or of mixed race. Again, we see that the main difference is cultural. Someone from the West Indies or Africa grew up in poverty and violence in a place with a history of slavery. They came to the US with its racial issues. Yet, they were able to outperform an African-American is spite of the effects of racial bias and discrimination.

@dhslerner, what is your point? Whites are the majority so they commit the majority of crimes? Wow, that is so incredibly...obvious. What about the numbers of murders and violent crime? Hmmm...How about the numbers for black on black murder vs white on white murder? How about the numbers of black on white crime vs white on black? Here's something we don't hear: 25% of those killed by cops are black but, about 50% of the cops killed are killed by blacks. So blacks kill cops at at a higher rate than cops kill blacks. And common sense would tell us that at the very least most of those killed by cops were justifiably killed but we can't say that about the cops who were killed. Keep in mind the recent shooting in Dallas which only adds to the number of cops killed by blacks.

You mention how the media avoids telling these horrific stories of out of control soccer moms who are killing one another but what about avoiding mentioning that cops kill more whites than blacks? What about a recent study that showed that cops are more likely to shoot a white suspect than a black one? The media protects soccer moms but also pushes a narrative of cops solely out to get minorities. And given that the inner cities are worse off than the suburbs, in spite of these coked up soccer moms, which narrative is more harmful?

And yes, laws were changed that criminalized crack more than cocaine but that doesn't explain, or excuse, having any amount of crack on your person. If sentences were shorter it wouldn't change the fact that a person was either a crack user or dealer. Keeping people from using or selling should be the goal. The sentence didn't create the crime. So you have a choice, keep it illegal and reduce sentences (which doesn't reduce crime) or make it legal. Does either choice make the ghetto a better place to live? Will it reduce violence? Will it teach kids to read? And the idea that these men can't be fathers because they are in prison ignores a simple reality; they obviously should not have been fathers in the first place. How do you stop those men and boys, who clearly are not equipped to be parents, from making babies? Make crack legal? Make murder legal? "I would have been a great father if dealing crack were legal so I would not be in prison right now." Really? You don't stop someone from making poor judgements by fixing someone else.