It’s true that crimes and violence near people’s homes motivate them to help end it. However, they are not people with different values living on residential islands within a city.

A section in Vallejo, CA known as Millersville has a reputation for crime, mostly drug sales and shootings. However, even the police acknowledge it is mostly outsiders who bring the crime and violence into this area. I doubt if community policing suggestions that residents have barbecues, 6 p.m. walks and block parties will change the crime pattern much.

The problem results from law enforcement policy that drives crime into this area or one that fails to protect it from outsiders. This is proved by a change in enforcement policy some months back that reduced drug sales and violence in this area.

It is just as unfair to characterize certain neighborhoods as islands of criminality even when some residents do sell drug and commit violent acts. Usually, they are only a small percent of residents.

It bothers me when people describe street violence and killing as black on black crime. This characterization treats drug sales and street violence as an island of black crime caused only by them and conditions in their neighborhoods. It implies that only residents on this racial black island and their different moral values are responsible. 

Physical islands are the high points of earth’s landmass and not large unattached pieces of land floating at sea. The same is true for the presumed islands of crime and violence. They are part of greater society and crime conditions result from its policies. Except for racism, American society could reduce in a few years the violence that plagues neighborhoods in so many cities across the nation.

There is no question that most of the people engaged in street violence are males between 15 and 29 that American society labels black. They were not born with this violent disposition. Their violent ways—seemingly as a life’s philosophy—testify to their victimization somewhere between birth and adulthood.

Their rage results from the hopelessness of poverty, the frustration of an inadequate education and the belief they cannot support themselves by conventional means. This is an explanation and not an excuse for their actions. Many others in their situation do make it.  Nevertheless, the social policy that labels and isolates them for discrimination also helps to create the conditions that produce their frustration and rage.  

A high percentage of young American males labeled black drop out of school. Most perpetrators of street violence and their victims come from this group. It is no coincidence that for the first 200 years the United States society blocked the education for people it labeled black or it intentionally undereducated them. The Civil Rights movement supposedly ended this policy. However, thirty years later the schools they attend still are below standard.

Traumatized, oppressed people need help to recover. America spent about $13 billion under the four year Marshall Plan to help some European nations recover economically from five years of World War Two destruction.  It has spent about $500 billion direct cost in four years to help stabilize Iraq with about $1.5 trillion residual costs pending. 

America did not set up a financed recovery plan in the 1970s to help Americans it labels black recover from two centuries of education and economic deprivation. Nevertheless, most of them remained law-abiding and gained some success anyway.  However, America still isolates them on a social island and presumes a black group responsibility for the drug sales and violence in neighborhoods. Talk about a self-serving shift of blame.

This is an American social problem that Americans must fix it. Arresting violent young criminals, educating them and providing counseling while incarcerated will help. States and the federal governments need to spend the amount needed to bring all schools up to standard as a crime and violence deterrent. They must hire enough teachers, helpers and counselors to correct the dropout problem.

Schools must enforce academic and discipline standards uniformly without consideration for students’ home life. Counselors can help students adjust family values with school requirements. This is how young people develop traits of restraint and self-discipline that help them shun crime and violence. 

However, I expect America will continue the same old methods no matter the human and money costs. They create the bad outcomes that support the negative black stereotype America promoted for centuries.  

 

Contact Kenneth Brooks at P.O. Box 882, Vallejo, CA 94590.