My Daddy, The Youth Center

Kathy Shaidle;

When I worked for United Way, some group was always coming up with a new “solution” to the problem of Jamaican/Somali violence. Each brilliant new innovative program featured: a) basketball, b) rap music or c) basketball & rap music.
Yep, just what these kids need: more false hopes about making it big in ball, and more immersion in degraded black pop culture!
And this is a cultural problem. US blacks make up 8% of the population, but commit almost half the violent crime [We don’t keep race based stats up here]. Black kids from upper class families score lower on standardized tests than white lower class kids. Being a “baby momma” is now a badge of honour, (and I still love Fantasia, ok?) not something to be ashamed of and discouraged.
Blaming this stuff on “slavery” is like a Canadian kid of Irish descent saying he dropped out of school because of the Orange Lodge and the Potato Famine.
Earlier this year, a 26-year-old black mother of four was shot at a club at 3 in the morning. What is a 26-year-old doing with four kids, and why is at a speakeasy when decent people are home in bed?

She quotes Kateland on the “elephants in the room”;

Let me tell you a fact of life living in black community in the downtown east side of the inner city. There are a multitude of programs for youth to keep them off the streets. There are probably more community centers and not-for-profit programs run in this area than in any other part of the city. They are all easily accessible to all youths � even for those whose families are on welfare or have very limited financial means. Guess what? The children, on a whole, don�t show up. To participate and take advantage of any of these programs requires a certain amount of discipline to show up every Monday or Wednesday or Friday or Sunday and that is what these children lack because their families are so fractured and their parents have failed in their first duties to their children.”

But be warned – whether discussing cultural and parental failure at the root of black gang warfare in Toronto or aboriginal gang violence in Western Canada, lancing the purulent��pachyderm will rouse the wrath of the parasite class that fattens both ego and wallet in a victimization industry fueled by blaming everyone but.