Men Without Faith

When considering the issue of crime in Jackson and other areas, a lot of people see a lot of things; what I see are young men who don't believe the American dream applies to them, so they take what they can get.  They may not believe they can work hard, obey the rules, and get anywhere in life, but they know they can be a thug and get an iPhone and maybe some gold chains, and it becomes a bird in the hand situation.

Doing the work and making the dream happen is on them, but this country spent generations making sure the American Dream didn't apply to people like them, so now it's our job to somehow make sure they believe things are different.  Making them believe is on us.  Reparations and transfer socialism won't solve anything long term.  If you can't change a man's heart, you won't change anything.  

I'm probably the worst person to be talking about this.  I had every advantage in the world, but I still didn't believe in myself or in the system.  That doesn't mean I'm giving up.  Having been there myself, I know men can change.  A young man can be the most powerful creative force in the world if he believes.  He can be the most destructive if he does not.  

There's nowhere you can run from this.  There's no suburb you can move to, there's no gated community you can hide behind, America is split in two, and one half doesn't believe there's any hope and doesn't believe in themselves or us, the other half believes they can outrun the problem, and it'll go away, so they move further and further away from their home.

The answer to me is quite clear.  We can only take these two broken halves and somehow meld them together.  I don't exactly know how to do that.  I wish I did.  I know they will have to give up a bit of their culture, and we'll have to give up a bit of ours, and together we'll have to forge a new culture, a new history, and a new future.  Two broken cultures must become one whole one.

I hate having this conversation because it always comes out as the same bullshit people have been trying to sell us since the sixties, and however we've been trying to make it happen, it obviously hasn't been working.  I do, though.  I do.  I do.  I do believe.  I just don't know how to do it. 
It is the only way.  I know that.  I don't want to leave this problem to my grandchildren or great-grandchildren or great-great-grandchildren like it was left to me.