Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be
Bob Herbert over at the NYT is writing about the violent deaths of school children in Chicago and asks why there is no outrage.
The column Herbert wrote this week sounds eerily familiar. In fact, education activist Jonathan Kozol could have been describing the same scene in 1991. There is a difference though. While Kozol blames racism and calls for more money for schools, the Reverend Autry Phillips, a leader in efforts to stem the violence, offers different causes and different solutions:
“We’ve got young people pulling out guns at 12 o’clock in the afternoon and shooting all over the place, no matter who’s around. So we’ve got to do something about that.
“These kids did not come from the suburbs. They did not get dropped off of some spaceship. These are our kids. And we’ve got to take responsibility for them. A lot of them are angry because their daddy’s not around and their mama’s on crack.
“Who was there to teach them how to behave? We have to deal with this. We have to change this behavior. This is not what we were supposed to be.”
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