The Red Shoes, Redux

I find it astonishing that the editors of the Washington Post can draft an editorial about the increasing number of homicides in the last year or so in the U. S. with elephant in the room. Here’s their prescription:

There has been too much finger-pointing focused on law enforcement — including, on the extremes, by activists who want to abolish police or those who fault progressive policies for reform — and not enough attention to other, evidence-based programs that can address the problem. Among efforts that show promise, as Vox has reported, are providing summer jobs; raising the age at which students can legally drop out of school; making physical improvements to neighborhoods such as installing more streetlights and greening vacant lots; and providing more drug addiction treatment.

That elephant, of course, is how gang-related so much of the violence is. I don’t see much in their prescriptions that would actually reach the source of the problem.

With respect to their proposal to raise the age at which students may legally drop out of school, what good will raising the truancy rate do? Also the editors should be prepared for the charges of racism that such an approach would provoke. The most truant students are either black or Native American; the least truant are Asian.