An old family friend of ours used to tell me a story from back in the 1950s. He was a small, skinny white kid in a mostly-black school in New York City, and a couple of black thugs who had no business even being in the school (they were 15+ and were "students" in his 7th-grade class) used to bully him every day. His father had died at a young age and his mother was doing her best to raise him by herself, and there wasn't much she could do at all. The school administration was no help, either.
It got to the point where he would leave home in the morning to walk to school, but he'd wander around the neighborhood for a while and then walk back home after his mother had left for work. He was locked out of the house, so he'd hang around in his garage all day until school was out.
One day his older brother came home -- unexpectedly -- from the Army on leave. He had a friend with him from the Army . . . the guy was a redneck from Alabama or Mississippi. At first his older brother was mad at him for playing hooky, but when the young kid told him what was happening he was more understanding. The other guy, though, had a rather strange reaction.
"You gawt a couple a n!##ers beatin' ya up at school?" he asked -- almost delighted.
The two older guys grabbed bats from the family's pile of sports equipment in the garage, and the three of them marched over to the school. They walked right down the hallway to the kid's classroom and went in. The teacher got mad and tried to tell them to leave, but the older guys would have none of it. The older brother shoved the teacher across the room and locked him in the supply closet.
"Which are the n!##ers that have been beatin' you up?!" the redneck yelled.
The kid didn't even have time to answer, because the two thugs jumped up out of their seats and tried to climb out the window. The redneck Army dude beat the sh!t out of both of them with the bat he was carrying, and left them lying on the floor all bruised and battered as the three of them walked calmly out of the school building.
Nobody ever saw those two thugs again. And that kid never had a problem for the rest of his life in public school, either.
That’s just it. There’s no reason NOT to beat a kid to death in these communities.
Another time when my oldest brother was about 13 he was selling flowers at the elevated train station. ( My uncle owned green houses.) Two gay men made advances to my brother. When my uncle learned about it, he and another uncle had a talk with these guys. Again...The same story. These guys never approached my brother again.
When my oldest brother was married with a family, drug dealers set up shop on a neighborhood corner. The police did nothing. So...My brother and a neighbor had a quiet and friendly talk with the low level dealers. They pointed out the various roofs where a sniper could easily hide himself. They reminded the dealers that police wouldn't be very interested in investigating the death or injury of a dealer, and maybe they would be better off finding another neighborhood. The next day they were permanently gone.
I often wonder about these bullying stories. When are the men with balls in the family?
And they lived happily ever after... Let me tell you how it goes in the 'Hood in the 4th largest school district in the nation, today. I've taught in the inner city for the last 15 years. Last year a teacher was jumped outside his classroom after school when he was tutoring kids on his own time to help them prep for the state mandated exams. He was jumped by an entire family of sorts: Crack addict mother, daughter and brother by different fathers. Brother was a golden gloves champ. They busted the teacher's jaw in three places. Happened right across from my room. I was out with the flu that day.
Another time I was out I got a frantic call on my cell from a buddy in another part of the building asking if I had a clear view of the bullet riddled body lying in the street outside my second floor class. They were on a code red lockdown and he wanted to know what I saw. He didn't know I was at home.
Then about three years ago, right across the street from school, one of my former students was ambling along the sidewalk with an AK47 (stock folded) when he caught sight of a member of an opposition gang headed his way. He dove into a barbershop. The Off Duty Cop in plainclothes thought the gang banger was there for HIM and as he tried to simultaneously dive to the floor from the chair AND draw from an ankle holster he got tangled up in the barber's sheet. The kid realized the weird customer was probably a cop and he darted out of the store. He was nabbed a block away with two full 30 rd mags in his ultra deep rear pockets and a round chambered in the AK.
I have a list of former students that I got from an article in the news. I had it laminated. They belonged to one of the most savage Haitian gangs in the area. It says which ones are dead, which are in prison and which of those are on death row. Before I laminated the article I put the results of MY interactions with them on each pic. Which ones I had expelled, or failed or in one rare case, which one got a decent grade in my class.
Most of the real hard cases still circle the school perimeter like sharks, looking for victims upon which to feed.
The ones I teach are for the most part smart, capable and really want to learn. They REALLY want to escape the 'Hood. Some of them are struggling with frightening situations at home. Alcoholic parents. One of my brightest just learned his dad is being sentenced to sixty five years in prison for drug dealing. This kid is so filled with grief and RAGE that he couldn't comprehend why. He said it in class, kind of yowling scream: It's not like he killed anybody! I had to get him to the TRUST counselor for some serious therapy.
I teach A.P. American Government. You should see the anger and RAGE that bubbles to the surface when the name Bush is raised. You should then see the angelic looks that Obama's name then engenders. He does more than walk on water for these kids. Nothing he does will ever cause them to turn on HIM. Nothing. To them he really is the Saviour. EXCEPT.... when you bring up his record on some certain issues. Most of these kids are also very devout Christians. They go to Bible studies and church dinners and they're involved in the youth groups. But they're also pretty well schooled in what goes and doesn't go when it comes to certain behaviors. For example, Gay marriage, adoption, or gay anything doesn't "go" for them. Same thing for abortion. None of them had ever heard of partial birth abortion. EVER. One kid went so far as to ask his own doctor about the procedure who denied it EVER was done. I went online and found a bunch of sources and a sequential series of hand drawn illustrations as to what happens and how often and I gave it to the kid to take to the doc with the admonition that I would promise to never practice medicine if the Doc promised to stay the Hell AWAY from social studies. I never heard another word from that kid or the Doc.
Every year, it's part of my job to sign kids who are eligible to vote. Universally, they choose democrat. Yet about 35% often will choose INDEPENDENT. To me that means they have really listened and not only learned but actually gone so far as to actually do that which I continually exhort them to do: CHECK IT ALL OUT ON THEIR OWN!
I make it clear at the start of the year that while I might have called myself a "Republican" since 1975, I'm a conservative that is about to resign from that party because it seems to have "UP" and left me! I affirm to them my own personal bottom line: I'm a Christian first and a conservative thereafter. That seems to resonate. I could go on and on, but this seems to be a good place to stop so I will. Here endeth the lesson.