I'm going to go out on a limb and posit that Steve Sinclair didn't grow up in a traditional, married family. Steve is a black man who attacked a white dude in Aurora, Colorado. He's been arrested and booked on a variety of charges including a hate crime.
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| Steve. This was not one of his better days. |
What a waste.
Where would Steve be today if he'd grown up with his dad married to his mom? Where would Steve be today if he grew up in a country where his teachers and the media didn't tell him over and over that white people hated him?
Maybe he'd be an artist. Maybe he'd be a tradesman. Maybe he'd be an accountant who was being groomed by a Fortune 500 company to be their CFO.
Maybe he'd be an oil field worker with a wife and kids and he'd coach their soccer teams even though he'd never played soccer, but he loved them so much that he wanted to enjoy the sport with them.
Nope. Not gonna happen. We told him that all families were equal. We told him his country was racist. Most likely, he didn't have the guidance of a loving dad and he grew up convinced that trying to improve himself was a total waste of time since whitey was going to keep him down no matter what.
Yes, it was Steve's fault that he stabbed the dude. Your circumstances don't remove responsibility. But for the love of God, would it kill us to try to produce fewer Steves?
2 comments:
"Where would Steve be today if he'd grown up with his dad married to his mom?"
Well, in a perfect world where dads all wanted their children and cared about their sons and were in happy relationships with their wives, you are probably correct.
But what if his dad wasn't like that? What if he never wanted kids, neglected or abused his son, and either avoided his wife or fought with her constantly? Do you really think that such a father would be an improvement over one who wasn't there?
And don't try to say that these guys are rare. When I was in high school, divorce was still extremely rare in our community. But couples that no longer cared for (or even hated) each other, and where the father obviously disliked their kids, were very common. These kids were the ones who got into trouble with the law, who got mixed up with drugs, and in general were pretty messed up. These are also the kind of couples that these days get divorced, or maybe never get married in the first place. Their kids still are messed up, but I am not convinced that they are any more messed up than they were in the old days when they had a dad around that wasn't doing his job, and was more of a hazard than an asset.
The thing is, I am pretty sure that a substantial fraction of men hate kids, and these are also the men that are impossible to live with in the long run. Based on my experiences with various housemates over the years, I would put that as high as 30-40 percent. And when I have been out and about with my kids for the last 15 years, that is about the same proportion as the men I see pointedly change course to avoid my kids while looking annoyed about their presence. These men are not going to make good fathers, I don't care whether you force them to marry a woman and stay with her or not.
So I've mentioned them before. Garage Logic Podcast. It's on all the usual suspects.
Listen to the first 8 minutes of the podcast of 8/28. There is a letter from a Police Officer detailing the pursuit and arrest of an "unarmed black man" fleeing from a shooting.
A convicted felon, and only unarmed because he threw his stolen gun in the bushes as he ran away.
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