Making Excuses for Black Violence Does Black Kids No Favors

White people need to stop using "systemic racism" as an excuse

I rarely comment on the headline of the day. Usually others have said what I would say better than I would say it, so I let them have the last word. I prefer to stick to the things in which I have expertise and experience.

Unfortunately, today is one of those days when I have some experience that is relevant to the news of the day. I wish it weren’t.

A young black man was just convicted of killing a young white man. No one argues that he didn’t do it. I don’t think anyone has argued that he did it in self defense. He obviously didn’t. He stabbed another young man and killed him, in broad daylight, after a confrontation that should never have come to this.

I’m not surprised at all. I am a bit surprised that a jury sentenced him to a real penalty. If the victim and murderer in this case had both been white, I suspect the sentence would be exactly what it is. The excuse that he was black didn’t seem to fly.

The whole situation is extremely sad. There’s nothing to rejoice about in a young man throwing away his life, or taking the life of another young man, for one moment of rage or whatever it was. Nothing to be gained for anyone, except apparently for his parents who used the money from their GoFundMe to buy a home and cars instead of to get an expensive defense attorney.

Since I taught in the poor black schools of Philadelphia for quite some time, I am not in the slightest bit surprised by any of this. I got used to the culture of knee-jerk violence. I lived with the fear that I might get caught in the middle of it at any time and seriously injured. The first impulse of young black men in the ghetto is to resort to violence. It’s the default, not an exception. It’s what they see and what they are taught. The teachers and administrators in the black community who are trying to teach otherwise and model better behavior are fighting an uphill battle, one I tried to support them in until it became too dangerous for me.

I remember one day in class when the boys were chatting and ignoring me, as was common. One tenth grade boy told the others that when he was in sixth grade, a fellow student had called him the n word with the hard r. That is the sin in the black community, not the constant and annoying use of “nigga!” That’s just conversation, but if you use the hard r, it’s fighting words.

Quite literally. The young man told us that his mother said he had to go beat up with kid who had called him the word. His mom told him to beat up another kid, over a word. Stop and think about that.

It makes you realize that Chris Arnell is right. We don’t have to like the outcome, but it doesn’t do any good to lie about it. Pretending that black violence doesn’t exist, or excusing it by blaming systemic racism, doesn’t help anyone. Treating young black people as though they are not responsible for their actions does not help them learn to be adults who can build families and communities. It just speeds the day when they will end up in a jail cell, evicted or dead.

The schools I settled in were really, really trying. I miss my coworkers and I admire what they are trying to do. They tried to hold the kids accountable. Parents were called, discipline was issued. But imagine that the parent who was called was the same mom who just a few years earlier told her sixth grade son that he had to beat up another kid for calling him a bad word. How will she react? If her son threatened to bring a gun to school, what will be her reaction at home? Will she sit calmly and have a discussion with him about what he said and why he should not handle things that way? Will she yell at him because he embarrassed her in front of school officials? Or will she say it’s fine that he threatened another kid because the kid threatened him first?

Based on the statistics, we can guess that the kid’s father will not be the one to give the talking to because the father is not in the picture. Kids need fathers who both discipline them and who model how to be responsible grown men. How are boys supposed to grow into responsible adult men if they don’t see anyone else doing it? How are girls supposed to know how to relate to responsible grown men, or even how to identify them, if they don’t see one at home? The men in the neighborhood are hanging around the corner store smoking heaven knows what all day. The responsible men the kids see are truly amazing (a word that is overused but is actually valid in this context) men: the teachers, administrators and deans I worked with. Responsible, upstanding men who showed respect for teachers, education, and women with every action. But they are one small good influence in a see of terrible ones.

The children need more discipline, not less. More structure, not less. More accountability, fewer excuses. And everyone needs to learn how to use “less” and “fewer” properly. (I can’t stop teaching English, even on my off time.)

White people who don’t know how ghetto black culture works are in danger when they try to confront bad behavior in public. I have an acquaintance in the largely black neighborhood where I live who routinely confronts black people when they are doing things like leaving trash on the free tables. I warned her to stop - she may get hurt or killed. If you are white and you live in a place like this, you accept a certain amount of keeping your head down, having your movement circumscribed, and putting up with uncivil actors. I can assure my friends who are rightly worried about my safety that I was taught from a very young age, when I lived in a black neighborhood in the South, how to make myself as safe as possible. I am quiet. I bother no one. I ignore uncivil behavior. I detest it, but I keep walking quietly. Did I mention that I am very quiet?

In fact, I have many allies on these blocks. I know enough people from hanging out in various places that any time I go on a walk a few folks will say, “Hey, Miss Lady,” or address me in any number of ways that might prove a bit shocking to my Yale classmates.

I am probably safer than most, but I have no illusions. One step the wrong way and I could get hurt. The truly unwell haunt these blocks, and there is no telling what they might do. Just today I saw one of the owners of my favorite Ethiopian coffee shop and cafe anxiously wait while a severely drug addicted and mentally ill woman who regularly writhes on the sidewalk came into the shop and proceeded to ask people for money and do some incomprehensible shouting. The shop owner picked up the phone and was about to make a call when the woman left the shop. I hope the store owner was going to call the police, but my guess is the police wouldn’t come. If no one has removed this extremely ill woman from the streets yet, there’s no reason to think they’d remove her from a coffee shop. But maybe picking up the phone was what got her to leave.

A line has to be drawn, and sentencing people who commit cold blooded murder appropriately is one way to draw it. I’m not happy about it. I’m not happy that any young person’s life is destroyed by their own impulsive actions, however predictable those actions may be based on the culture in which they grew up. But I know it doesn’t help to excuse the violence. That only sends the message to other young people that murdering white people is okay. It may even be celebrated on social media as “resistance” or some such craziness.

Right is still right and wrong is still wrong. Our country has developed the most advanced system of justice ever known to humanity in an effort to settle disputes fairly, without violence, and with respect to all parties. When this system fails, as human systems invariably do, there are brave men and women who fight for what is right with words and reason, not with violence. It is these men and women that children should emulate, not heroes of violence and criminality that are celebrated on social media and in the “music” that the kids blast from their phones.

Let’s all call on the better angels of our nature and earnestly pray for the families of both the young men: the one who was murdered and the one who was just sentenced. Two lives destroyed. Perhaps the young man who threw away his life and took another will find some kind of redemption in prison. It happens.

I don’t want to see anyone suffer anymore. I know people who desperately want revenge, and I understand, but that’s not me. I do care about people. I want to do what I can to make things better, wherever I find them.

That’s why I won’t make excuses for culturally condoned and conditioned violence. That doesn’t do the young black kids any favors. It just keeps the cycle going

There are still beautiful things in the world and even in my chaotic neighborhood. These lilies just hit their peak today. Thanks be to God.