The gruesome incident I’ve described has more to do with you and me than you might think.
Yesterday, I spoke with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has screamed extensively about the fact that dozens of young people in Chicago are dying in the streets every month. The same is true for nearly every other urban center across America. The kids are killing one another and risk being killed, primarily because we don’t care about them. We’ve chosen not to mentor them. We’ve chosen to leave them without jobs, recreational activities or the love and support they need in order to become productive members of our society. In other words, we’ve completely abandoned them.
The most recent unemployment data tells part of the story about the state of black teens in America. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, black teens have the highest unemployment rate of any recorded statistical demographic. The rate of unemployment among black teens rose from 40 percent to 45 percent, which is nearly double that of white teens, and over six times greater than the unemployment rate for white females. So, our kids are out in the streets with nothing to do, and we know that the idle mind is the devil’s workshop.
We’ve got to do something for these children.
First, they need to be protected. Government resources should be put in place to ensure that every child has a safe and productive place to go after school, to get help with their homework and to get the safety that young lives deserve.
Secondly, we need to mentor the hell out of them. We must all find that child in our family or our community who is not getting what he/she needs and take it upon ourselves to do what is right.
You don’t have to have a child in order to become a parent. It’s easy to love a child to whom we’ve given life. It’s a true act of God to love the child of someone else.
When it comes to the 13-year old accused of pouring acid on the other children, events like this shouldn’t just alarm us, they should also inform us. This episode was certainly startling and unusual, but the reality is that without adults around to teach kids right from wrong, they are not likely to understand the impact of their actions. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and we’ve got to rebuild that village.
