Paco, thanks for sharing that little nugget of advice from your coach. I'll have to put that one in my back pocket for future use.
Right now, there is a raging dispute going on on our neighborhood watch listserv. There has been a string of burglaries that eye witnesses have attributed to a team of kids and a young adult providing transportation from a nearby, lower income community. When ever the car is seen, 911 is contacted, and on several occasions, people have followed the suspects walking by car to keep 911 abreast of their location until the cops arrive. Understand that there has been 29 reported home burglaries and about a dozen cars stolen in just the last month. These bozos were seen on the property of 6-7 of those burglaries by eye witnesses. We want these guys
caught. Well, some egg head started a firestorm when he accused us of racial profiling and in general vilifying young black men in the neighborhood with our efforts to help apprehend the young, misguided youths in question. Mind you, I live in a inner-city neighborhood that has undergone significant property and people improvement over the last ten or twelve years. It is as diverse in racial background as by income, religion, age, and every other category you can think.
Here's a little bit of what he wrote, in that vein.
Quote:
...there has been no mention of reconciliation. i don't see any mention of attempts to understand the perspective of these "perps", as they have been referred to by some of you. i don't see any acknowledgment of the anger that is likely pent up among these largely poor, almost wholly unemployed young black boys as they watch the homes they've lived in knocked down or gutted and replaced by half million "in-town" homes invariably inhabited by young white families. i don't see any attempt at dialog, facilitated by community outreach, local civic leaders, the police or anyone. i don't see any introspection on your part, of the role that you might be playing in all of this.
you are not and cannot be simply hapless victims playing no role other than being attacked. no relationships and no neighborhoods as collections of relationships work that way. the gentry is almost always viewed as the enemy by the poor because rather than stealing tv's and lawn mowers, they "steal" whole communities.
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My head nearly exploded when I read this drivel last night. But even more astounding is the fact that some other households in the neighborhood agreed with this guy's point of view. Mind you neither I or many of my neighbors are
anything like this guy has assumed, and I certainly don't share his "outlook" of the world in which we live. It would appear that he needs to make a better effort at getting to know his neighbors before he makes a sweeping characterization of us all.
Thank goodness the majority of responders were as outraged as I about his insinuations. May be there is sanity left in the world after all.
Blue, sorry for the OT contribution all. I just had to get this one off my chest as it has been bugging me all morning.