long time guy wrote:
Nas wrote:
long time guy wrote:
Nas wrote:
LTG is the middle-class middle aged guy that pushed for Clinton Crime Bill and now he's wondering why the family structure is broken. Bullets and bars was the solution for guys like LTG when books and opportunity was the thing that was needed. I understand not wanting certain things in your neighborhood but sometimes "getting rid" of all of them creates bigger problems.
You have it wrong. The family wasn't destroyed by the crime bill. Drugs destroyed black families. The crime bill was a reaction to that. I came of age during that period. I also grew up in a part of Chicago that trafficked in a tremendous amount of it. Chicago and other urban areas were ravaged by violence back then. A large portion of it emanated from drugs both using and dealing. I grew up with a number of guys that never made it to their 18th birthday. Again much of it was drug related.
I laugh when people say non violent drug user. Violence is a by product of drugs in most cases. The things people do to acquire drugs can be deadly. I'm not suggesting that it (crime bill) isn't flawed. It is but at the time Inner cities were war zones. I can trace much of it to drugs.
Drugs have been hurting families of all groups of people since the beginning time. The Crime Bill destroyed the families of poor and minorities. It was nothing more than an overreaction to a government created problem.
I grew up on the right side of the viaduct as a kid but I still saw drugs and crime almost daily. I had a shoebox with too many obituaries in it before I turned 18. Most of them came AFTER the Crime Bill when the hierarchy of these organizations were removed. As a kid that spent a large chunk of my youth at Avalon Park I can't recall an innocent person being shot around there before 1995. Before 1995 the older heads wouldn't allow anyone to shoot up a park or would literally tap you on the shoulder and tell you to go home. After 1995 you had idiots shooting everywhere and nothing nut chaos. Before 1995 seeing a father and son was fairly common. By the middle of the next decade it was like seeing a unicorn. The men were removed from the family and even when released from prison they had very few opportunities outside of crime.
Black men were removed from the home years before the crime bill was conceived. Moynihan's study on the black family was written 30 years before that. Most sociologists attribute the desertion of black males to things that precede the crime bill. There was a steep decline in the number of homicides in Chicago shortly after that bill was enacted.
It wasn't just whites that were calling for govt to get tough on crime. Blacks were as well.
It wasn't just the black fathers that were removed, you had the same thing happening to poor and minorities everywhere. While there was a decline of the involvement of the black father prior to the Crime Bill, he was virtually eliminated a decade later.
You're rewriting history on the homicide numbers. In 1999 or 2000 (can’t remember and don't feel like looking it up) there were 1000 murders in Chicago. The decline didn't really happen until this decade and we are starting to see the numbers climb again.
I know there were MANY blacks that were at a similar points and status in life as you are that were pushing for the Crime Bill then. I pointed that out in this thread and others. Just like now there are MANY blacks that are pushing for the National Guard to come in. You all were out of touch and wrong then and the same is true now.
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