EVERY TIME I read about some new craziness involving young people in our city, one of the first thoughts that comes to mind is that they need their asses whupped - and so do some of their parents.
The most basic truth that we all have to understand is this:
Home is the first teacher and parents head these homes. But when we look at the number of troubled youths flash-mobbing or running into people's homes and attacking them, it shows exactly what their homes are - teaching.
Black parents too often are giving their children everything, and ask nothing in return. When anything bad happens to their kids, it's always somebody else's fault. And you the neighbor, you the teacher, you the policeman or you the aunt or uncle, had better not say "nothin to Meeka or Rah-Rah 'cause I had them."
The result is a growing number of young people who have no respect for themselves, their parents, their teachers, property, the law, even life itself. They have a sense of entitlement, fear nothing, have no conscience, do whatever they want.
And when the kids get into trouble with the law, their parents talk the talk about the white man as if he's somehow responsible for the mess they're in.
Oddly enough, the white man is the least of our worries in black communities because it isn't the white man who's killing us at alarming rates. We're doing that all by ourselves over he-said/she-said on Facebook, sneakers, cellphones, drugs, money, a look, a bump on the sidewalk, you name it.
As this senseless violence plays out in our communities week after week, we can count on seeing an outraged Mayor Nutter or Police Commissioner Ramsey on the news. And that's it.
There's all too little outrage among the people who live in these communities - people too frightened to speak up, walk down the street at night or sit on their front steps when the weather gets warm. All too little outrage from church leaders or civil-rights groups - folks who'd march on Washington if the Klan was terrorizing our neighborhoods and killing black folks at the rate in which these black clans are doing the same thing.
