As we wind down to the end of the year, Chicago has a bit of good news. The number of homicides has declined since last year from just under 800 in 2016 to nearly 700 in 2017. Most of those killed were young black men, killed by other young black men. As just about everybody knows, the underlying fact behind those homicides is gangs.
Everybody, presumably, except Tamar Manasseh, whose slanderous op-ed in the New York Times complains about “racial profiling” by the Chicago police:
CHICAGO — On his first day of kindergarten, my son came home and told me that his classmates should be punished because all they did was run around and play instead of listen to the teacher. As he grew up, he played basketball at the Jewish Community Center, was a farmer in the musical “Oklahoma!†and celebrated his Bar Mitzvah at age 13. In the summer, he can be found at a grill, making hot dogs and hamburgers for kids in the neighborhood.
But my son is a teenager and he is black. So he must be in a gang. At least that’s what a white woman wrote in the comment section of a newspaper article that mentioned him. And unfortunately, that’s how Chicago police officers see my son and so many other children like him.
Let’s stop right there. Note the leap of logic. Since a “white woman” made a dumb comment in the comments section of a newspaper article, the Chicago police necessarily assume that all black kids are in gangs.
The problem is the dumb comment may be right. We just don’t know. According to the kids themselves, they’re drafted into gangs with no choice in the matter:
In the police district, for instance, where this school sits, there are – the police record more than 22 gangs operating and they’re – you know, not everyone would call these gangs. They’re factions of what used to be called the gangster disciples, a big gang with a structure and a hierarchy. This is sort of now a block by block situation where sometimes the oldest kids in charge are actually just in high school and the one common denominator they have is they’ve got guns and, you know, they’re shooting, and kids find themselves very caught up in this.
You know, one of the key things we found that comes across in that first hour of “This American Life” is that, you know, kids are essentially assigned a gang affiliation. One boy told me a very – a serious kid, a serious athlete, serious about school, he told me, look, I can’t do anything about that. It’s based on where I live. He said I do everything I can to try to minimize it, but I know that I can’t get rid of it. And when that kid goes to get a donut or a hot chocolate at the store, that confronts him. When he goes to school, it confronts him.
or, in other words, even a kid from “a good home, with loving parents” may be in a gang because that’s the way the gangs operate.
According to FBI statistics, in Chicago alone there are about 150,000 gang members, mostly between the ages of 14 and 18. If Chicago is consistent with the national statistics, three quarters of those gang members are either black or Hispanic. Now just because three-quarters of gang members are black or Hispanic doesn’t mean that three-quarters of black or Hispanic kids are gang members. What percentage are? Again, we don’t know. But let’s make a guess.
According to the Chicago Public Schools about 90,000 of the kids between the ages 14 and 18 enrolled in school are either black or Hispanic. If the truancy statistics for Chicago are any gauge, there are probably another 20,000 black and Hispanic kids in the target age group who don’t attend school at all.
None of that tells us what percentage of black or Hispanic Chicago kids are gang members but it does suggest that the percentage is very high.
Let’s consider another statistics. According to the Chicago Office of Police Accountability, 11 Chicagoans were shot and killed by Chicago Police Officers. In other words Chicago’s homicide problem isn’t because the police are going around shooting up the joint. Gang violence is by far a greater problem.
I don’t know how to end gang violence in the handful of Chicago neighborhoods afflicted by it. However, if the first step on the road to recovery is acknowledging that there’s a problem, maybe acknowledging that gang violence is a major problem might be a good way to start.
When it comes to reading newspaper stories on-line, I go straight to the comments, because I want to see how freaking insane the country is becoming.
In a Springfield, Illinois comments section, an African-American woman defended removing statues of Abraham Lincoln because he was a slave-owner. This woman is a certified teacher who wants state funding to start Black empowerment schools. Of course, I would never assume she is representative of the charter school movement.
“in other words, even a kid from “a good home, with loving parents†may be in a gang because that’s the way the gangs operate.”
That is very troubling because it’s how gangs in the third world operate. They become so big and powerful that they really are no longer gangs, but distinct political communities. “Gang wars” are, therefore, actually wars and no mere criminal conflicts.
If Chicago is on the cusp of dropping off that cliff edge, then the only solution is to reassert governance into to those communities.