Apr. 8, 2020

Race is not the problem! Acquired lifestyle is!

Just about every evening I watch what I call the Montgomery Body Count on WSFA Channel 12.  Almost every report consists of mostly black–on-black shootings. I also notice that there is a great gripe amongst those who keep score of these things that more black people get arrested than white people.  And these people feel that somehow this statistic is an indicator of racism.  Could it be that black people commit more crimes than white people? 

 It seems to me that a factor other than race is lurking in this almost nightly slaughter.  I don’t believe that the skin pigmentation of a person causes that person to commit a crime.  The propensity to commit a crime would have to be the value system and life style that has been assimilated by the crime perpetrator up to the time of the crime’s commission and would have nothing to do with the color of their skin.

 It is a given around the world that the family is the essential building block for society.  When, in a society, the family structure is allowed to deteriorate, that society will suffer deterioration as well.  Somehow our society has begun to think that the government can be the family.  This thinking is beginning to take a toll on our society, and especially with the black families.  It seems a terrible fate for a woman to be left alone to give birth to a child, and then to raise that child on her own.  With no father, the young boy becomes a young man.  The street becomes his home and the gang becomes his family. 

 The gang becomes the source of the moral structure of the young man and shapes his value system.  Very soon he finds himself involved in activities that will result in his incarceration.  Soon, unless there is a major intervention in his life, he is a crime statistic.  One of those statistics is that he is black.  But the more important statistic is that he is essentially fatherless.  And that statistic is the main reason for his incarceration, not because he is black.

 Many studies show that the more fatherless family units there are in a neigborhood, the higher the crime rate for that neighborhood.  Our society should begin to encourage, promote and demand fatherly responsibility. Many women do an admirable job parenting their children alone.  But so many more do not have the finances or organizational skills to keep children in a safe environment. As a child grows up, influences from beyond the household began to override any attempt on the part of the single parent to have much input into the lifestyle of the child.  So it is not the child's skin color that is the problem.  It is almost entirely due to the environment and lifestyle of the child.