The 2014 Fourth of July holiday weekend saw an explosion of violence in the Chicagoland area. Last year, more than 70 people were shot, 13 of whom were killed. This year, 82 people were shot with the death toll rising to 16. This included two young men ages 14 and 16 who reportedly refused to drop their weapons and were gunned down by police. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel declared the level of violence “unacceptable” in a news conference when just three months ago he and police superintendent Garry McCarthy trotted out statistics which declared that the city had experienced the “fewest murders for the first three months in more than half a century” Often asked the difference in fighting crime in New York and Chicago, McCarthy a former deputy commissioner responds “the proliferation of firearms”. Mayor Emanuel agreed, suggesting that it was the weaker gun laws in neighboring states that led to the proliferation of guns on Chicago city streets. I suggest that the answer to the violence question is not as simple as removing guns from our communities, although it should help. What is needed is reinvestment in our communities in the form of economic opportunity and educational support to address the underlying causes of the angst and frustration that people feel.
While stricter gun laws will keep guns out of the hands of certain individuals, determined criminals always seem to find the tools of their trade. Therefore, that would be, at best, a stopgap measure to address this problem. I would suggest that there are multiple solutions to addressing the violence in our communities and they do not begin with more police or military intervention. These communities need investment in the economic, educational, and human capital that has the potential to lift the standard of living of all the people in every community of this city.
We have to accept there is a systematic dynamic at play that is feeding the violence in our communities. One aspect of the recent spate of violence that no one seems to consider is that much of the violence took place in areas of the city that are hardest hit by unemployment with the accompanying disparities in wealth, health, educational opportunity and recreational resources.
If one considers these are also the same areas that were hardest hit in the riots that followed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, it is clear that individuals who make the financial decisions for the city have no interest in allocating resources for sustainable redevelopment those areas. There has been selective reinvestment, but who have been the true beneficiaries? Certainly, not the people that live in those communities. Why should someone invest in an area when the people that live there will simply tear it up? What benefit is there for those that invest in these areas? I suggest that there are real tangible benefits to be realized in all communities when we provide opportunities for the least of us. Those benefits include safer communities, better schools and increased economic opportunities.
Michelle Alexander points out in The New Jim Crow: the Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, men of color are taken into the criminal justice system, labeled as felons, have their rights stripped from them; and then are released into society unable to find gainful employment to provide for their families. The Center for Health and Justice reports that in 2009 Black men were 7 times more likely than Whites and 2.5 times more likely than Latinos to be incarcerated, mostly for drug crimes when studies have shown that Whites are more likely to actually possess drugs. Currently, “the U.S., with only 5% of the world’s population, has 25% of the world’s prison population.” This reality systematically emasculates men of color, demoralizes their spirit and breaks up the African American family unit. This statement does not discount the efforts of strong black and brown women who lead their households against incredible odds; it underscores how the removal of the man from the household has the potential to remove paternal discipline, financial support or the positive example that a working black or brown man brings to a family. Arresting the disproportionate incarceration rate of men of color would tremendously help families combined with reinvestment in education in targeted communities.
Many see education as the great equalizer. The adage goes “when one knows better, one will do better.” If the U.S. was providing the quality education that its citizens deserve then one might feel a bit more comfortable with the nation’s incarceration numbers. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently released its international rankings of countries, which took the Programme for International Assessment in 2012 found that of the 34 participating countries, the U. S. ranked 26th in math, 21st in science and 17th in reading, yet the “U.S. ranks fifth in spending per student. Only Austria, Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland send more per student. To put this in context: the Slovak Republic, which scores similarly to the U.S., spends $53,000 per student. The U.S. spends $115,000.” The U.S. spends money but do the teachers in classrooms in the south side of Chicago see any of that money is trickling into their communities where schools have been closed and consolidated because of funding shortages?
The time has come to reinvest in our greatest resource: our children. Only through education and the strengthening of families can we hope to change the conditions, which perpetuate the type of violence that we have seen in our communities to date. Our children need nurturing, both in and outside of the home, schools that are clean and offer recreational opportunities that include the arts to show young people a rich and vibrant world. The benefit to those who invest in education will be safer communities with more productive citizens that are free from violence; that is a reality worth fighting for.
This excerpt is by author James Wallace Jr., a student in the second cohort of the Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis Urban Education Doctoral Program.
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