I had to attend a presentation on gangs. I can’t say where or why. I bet you didn’t know there are more gangs in Central Virginia than any other part of the state. What constitutes a gang, you may ask? It has to have three or more members, a name and/or symbol it uses to represent itself, and it’s members have to have committed at least two predicate criminal activities (which covers just about any crime). They are lured to rural areas and smaller cities because of the profitable drug market and the often understaffed police forces that have little knowledge of how to deal with gangs.
What amazes me is that in today’s America there are people who have absolutely no meaning or purpose in their lives. I understand young men in the Middle East living in poverty with no hope being lured in to blowing themselves up and taking as many people as they can with them. I don’t understand it here. Rather than try to get out, people in America tend to want to wallow in it (Not everyone. I know. I shouldn’t stereotype, but when the shoe fits…). These kids and twenty-somethings get sucked in by the “respect” (Which they define as causing fear in others with the potential to be randomly violent, although they are not articulate enough to put it into those words. The true definition has nothing to do with fear. Click the link.) and the purpose the gang gives them. They fight, kill, and die for a color, some intricate hand signals, and some “territory,” which is some run-down blocks of the neighborhood where they can sell drugs. Basically it is a reversion to a tribal system with no intelligent ideology or philosophy beyond selling drugs and being tough. Meanwhile, the old guys who started these little rural branches are buying $600,000 houses in the nice sections of the surrounding counties while the young thugs are living with their mamas slinging pot and rock on the corner, getting arrested, and killed. Seriously. I could give you some specific local examples, but let’s not name names. It’s a dangerous McDonald’s corporation. Read Freakonomics. The rich get richer. The poor gangsta gets shot and gets replaced. Flip burgers, man. It’s the same thing without the death, prison sex, handshakes, and nifty bandannas.
How do we keep these kids from joining? Well, just like ending poverty, it has to start in the originating community. It has to start with parents who raise their kids to think for themselves, parents who want their kids to have more than they had, a better life than they had. It starts with parents instilling values and hard work in their kids. Most people don’t want to hear that. People want to be handed a solution. People want someone to do it for them. People want to blame the schools, the government, or the majority who aren’t living in povety. Unfortunately, we live in a country where people feel entitled to whatever they want, and at the same time, they don’t want to be responsible for anything. If you talk to people from India and Asia about how to create a better life for themselves, they will tell you that the biggest difference between themselves and Americans is that they know that they personally have to work hard for a better life, and they are willing and wanting to actually do that work. They say they know no one is going to give them anything. They are competitive. They drive their kids to perform in school and go to college. They want to start legitimate businesses. They want to be doctors and engineers. They do what it takes to get there. They want to be smart. They want to have good families. Most of them believe in a specific system of morals and ethics. They want to be happy. That gives them purpose and meaning in their lives.
Collectively we lost that somewhere between the Boston Tea Party and the iPhone. In America .5 percent of the population is in a gang. That’s 1.5 million people, and it grows everyday when a poor kid is suckered in by the illusion of power and belonging. That’s a lot of people with no purpose or meaning in life living in the richest country in the world with the most opportunities anywhere. Damn.
