We want our poor kids to be better than us

On Nov. 27th, the first school day back after Thanksgiving, anger turned to rage as a 14-year old teen at Southeast Raleigh Magnet High School brandished a knife, and allegedly stabbed two fellow students, one of them fatally.

Press reports suggest that the 14-year-old may have been acting defensively. His mother had reportedly called the school earlier, warning that her son might be targeted that day because of an earlier altercation his sister allegedly had with another Southeast Raleigh High female student, resulting in that student going to the home of the sister and mother with a gang, assaulting them.

Whatever the sad, sad story truly is, it will no doubt  be sorted out in a court of law, where the 14 year-old assailant is likely to be tried as an adult for murder.

As shocking as this story is, especially when it involves our young people, it is nothing new. Our young folks have been nurtured to believe that effective conflict resolution involves deadly violence.

Oh yes, we can pontificate all we want about how it all starts in the home, but conveniently forget the level of domestic violence in our own homes, or violence we tolerate as news or entertainment under our own  roofs for the entire family to see, and  how we proudly display firearms  in the name of Second Amendment rights in front of our kids.

In short, don’t hand me that ‘it’s just those poor black kids” stuff.

Don’t saddle them with the onus of playing deadly cowboy games with one another just because of the color of their skin or their low level of social status.

Not when they have to survive in a cesspool of tolerance for violence on the lowest end of our societal scale.

Would it be a shock to you that everything you and I have - a decent home, car, bank account, relative freedom to go anywhere we want at anytime we want - is exactly what these impoverished American citizens want too? 

Yes, I bring up their citizenship and social status because they’re tired of being punished for being poor, and being targeted for being considered less than full citizens (police brutality, social stigmatization, etc.)

Growing up poor to them is not the same as growing up poor for many of us. Most of them aren’t growing up in farm country, where either you work hard or you don’t eat.

They’re growing up in hardened inner cities that have been deliberately isolated, deprived of vital resources and opportunities, and made to become target grounds for over-policing and the crappiest standard for education known to man. 

It’ s “kill or be killed.” Unless you’ve served in the military, ever live that way yourself?

They’re growing up where the once proud structure of the family has been decimated by welfare, the lack of opportunity, limited access to affordable housing and healthcare, almost no access to fresh food, and a proliferation of illegal drugs and guns.

Indeed, it doesn’t help that many of your children are getting into cars, and driving over to poor neighborhoods of color to purchase drugs and guns. Ask law enforcement what they see on drug bust stakeouts.

Oh, I’m making excuses for violent wolves who prey on the rest of us “decent” folks, am I? And just how long would you and your family literally survive under those conditions?

And that’s the operative word here - survive. These kids have to grow up and make a way under incredible conditions, and have had to do so for generations in this country.

Oh sure, many of us were able to still find a way out despite the odds, thanks to, in many cases, a strong, GOD fearing mother and supportive church and community. But not everyone has that.

I’m an only child of a single mother, and came up blessed during the sixties and seventies, because of Mom, education, and community unity That’s what saved my little black behind.

But we were about empowering communities back then. Not so much today. 

I conclude this missive by suggesting we take a page from the New Testament, and provide our impoverished families with the vital tools they need to substantively provide for themselves ( how to fish), instead of teaching them our bad middle and upper class lessons on how and why to tolerate violence.

Oh, I forgot, we do that because we feel the need to survive, don’t we? Hmmm!