Posted on 06/28/2011 5:32:34 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
WHEN I FIRST heard about the senseless, brutal beating that 18-year-old Carter Strange was subjected to last week at the hands of a group of boys in Five Points, I was angry.
When I saw the pictures of him at the hospital, I tried with all I could to control my emotions. I lost that battle.
While Carter is expected to recover physically, no one can measure the emotional and mental trauma that he and his family have endured. Pray for Carter. Pray for his family.
His parents and family have rightly expressed anger, hurt and disbelief over this callous, mean-spirited criminal act that required him to have brain surgery as well as reconstructive face surgery. They shouldn’t have to stand alone. We all must condemn it.
Enough is enough. Ours must be a safe, civil community that doesn’t tolerate such wanton lawlessness. Those responsible for this brutality must be tried and punished.
That said, we should also pray for the perpetrators, even as we ensure they face justified punishment. Anyone who would do such a deed — whether driven by pure meanness, hate, a lack of love for self and others, or whatever it may be — clearly needs divine intervention.
Ultimately, we must collectively acknowledge — and address — the deeper questions prompted by this disdainful act.
Why would a 19-year-old and seven other boys between 13 and 16 wander the streets of Five Points (or anywhere else) looking for an opportunity to exact harm? (While only four are suspected of participating in the beating, all eight are charged.) Columbia police said Carter was the unfortunate victim of a group that had unsuccessfully targeted others.
This is the latest in a string of violent and high-profile crimes in Five Points. Things have gotten so bad that the police have had to increase their presence. City Council has instituted a 2 a.m. bar closing (although with lots of exceptions) and is considering a teen curfew.
I’d have no problem with a citywide curfew. There’s no reason for kids 17 and younger to be hanging out in Five Points or even on the street corner near their homes late at night. Last week’s beating is a call for City Council to move swiftly to at least enact a teen curfew in bar districts.
Even then, we still have an 800-pound gorilla in the room that must be dealt with: Was this a racially motivated beating? That’s not a discussion many people feel comfortable having. But let’s be real. When eight black boys jump on a lone white boy — or if it were the other way around — the question of race will be raised in private circles, if not publicly. Our nation’s and state’s unfortunate racial history and the seen and unseen vestiges that remain today have laid that upon us. If we don’t confront it, it’ll destroy us.
Police Chief Randy Scott has said he isn’t sure if race or even gang activity is involved in this, as he aptly termed it, “heinous” crime.
I don’t know whether these boys attacked Carter because of his race. But I do know this: There is an element of race here — although not in the way some might think.
The fact that the attackers were black raises that all-too familiar specter of black boys committing a disproportionate amount of crime in our community. I’ve written about it many times. Just weeks ago, I lamented what I’ve termed the “terrible toos.” Too many black boys are committing crime. Too many are dropping out of school. Too many are without fathers or strong men in their lives. Too many are joining gangs. Too many are strung out on drugs or alcohol. Too many are in jails and prisons. And the list goes on; there are too many too manys.
State staff writer Noelle Phillips noted these disconcerting details about Tyheem Jaqui Henrey, the 19-year-old charged in the beating, at his bond hearing: He told the judge that he never graduated from high school, did not have a job because of previous criminal charges and only shrugged when asked if his mom knew about his bond hearing.
I can’t speak to that young man’s particular circumstance. But too many black boys face similar circumstances. And what happened in Five Points last week will happen again and again in other parts of this community if something isn’t done.
All crime is unacceptable, regardless of who commits it. But the fact is that black people are committing crimes at a high rate in our community, irrespective of the victims’ race. I don’t have statistics from within Columbia’s city limits, but I can’t imagine that they’d be starkly different from those in unincorporated Richland County: In 2010, 71 percent of all violent crimes were committed by African-Americans, according to Sheriff’s Department statistics. Eighty-eight percent of all violent crimes committed by blacks that year were against other black citizens; 97 percent of all violent crimes against blacks were committed by blacks. Most of these crimes are committed by male perpetrators.
If we’re to even begin confronting this problem, parents must be intimately involved in the rearing and education of their children. While most black parents and children, like most white parents and white children, are law-abiding, respectful and desirous of success, far too many black parents fail their children. Black fathers and other men must engage black boys. Not only must they embrace and support those boys, but they must tell them when they’re wrong and that enough is enough. They must be willing to tell them that coming from an abusive, poor or single-parent home isn’t an excuse to hurt, harm, maim and murder. It’s no excuse to rob and pillage. It’s no excuse to drop out, get high or join a gang.
While I single out black boys, it’s important to note — and a number of readers have called or emailed to share this — that many white, Hispanic and other boys are getting caught up in similar problems and need help. It’s just that the problem is more acute among black boys.
This isn’t a problem that can be solved by any one individual, group or institution. It’s a problem we must solve collectively from our own house to our house of worship to the school house to City Hall to the State House.
And we can’t delay. The crime and the carnage must end.
Well, this man is obviously a racist....and we need millions more like him (since “racism” is now simply a matter of telling the truth)....
This won’t end in this generation, in fact, it will only get worse.
If it is ever to get better, we need to change governmental/societal policies that reward “single motherhood”.
The author is calling for fathers to step up and control their boys, but government policy makes it unlikely to impossible to do that.
I agree that we should pray for the perps, then hang them all.
Good essay.
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Someone finally has the courage to speak the truth.
FTA: Tyheem Jaqui Henrey
The author should have had at least a paragraph on how the AA community is dooming its children at birth by giving such names. I notice the author is not similarly hampered.
In what way does government policy cause this? Does government policy cause the same problems for whites?
This article will give Rev. Al apoplexy.
Which is a good thing.
Having been in urban areas for many years, this is as obvious as the nose on your face.
Kudos to Mr. Bolton for stating the obvious.
The incoming will be the worst from members of his own race.
They can’t handle the truth.
-——Why would a 19-year-old and seven other boys-——
Because they are a pack of feral hyenas. They are urban detritus, unfit to breathe American air.
Good article, but the lesson will be lost as long as race hustlers like Jackson and Sharpton are oozing around, whining about how it is all whitey’s fault for the condition of black America.
(there is a Five Points in Denver, CO, also. Same problems there. Run by the local race hustlers)
“unsuccessfully targeted others”...were they white? This is a hate crime.
You have to be being intentionally obtuse about the policies that promote this.
And “whites” do fall into the same trap, but not at the same rate, as can be seen in the illegitimacy rates.
I blame the left for infantilizing the black culture into a perpetually aggrieved victim-minded voting block.
This is very similar to that “typical democrat” stating that “radical Christians” should be looked at with the same scrutiny as radical Muslims.
No, the thuggery problem lies in the black culture,
just as the terrorism problem lies in Islam.
I don’t know if it is government policy or not. I see a similar, although not as violent issue with white boys who are of vile temperament, no jobs because employers won’t hire them due to their CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS for what would have been characterized as “teenage behavior” when I was a teen and they are living at home.
So, yes, government policy criminalized the teenage behavior, but the attack on marriage and the family carried on by the communist element masquerading as “progressives” is undoubtedly implicated.
This old saw about “cut them off after the first illegitimate child” doesn’t get it. There has been a sustained brutal attack on marriage and the family by the leftist communists in this country.
No fault divorce, no support for being faithful to a spouse, the environment that smells of sex all over the place has made a mockery of civilized life. These young people are angry about the lack of a plan or a future which their parents and grandparents have passed on to them. That is it, plain and simple. When nothing matters, nothing matters.
Forty years later, evidently, “A Clockwork Orange” was only off by the color.
“We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged” — Rilke.
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