With God's help
I had an interesting discussion yesterday with a friend of mine following the first night of riots in Minneapolis. These resulting from the death of an African American while in the custody of 4 law enforcement officers. He kept bringing up black on black crime and the black community taking responsibility for themselves. I wonder, though, if there's a link between the amount of crime in black neighborhoods and the treatment that segment of the population receives from society. Systemic racism leads, IMHO, to systemic poverty and hopelessness. This inevitably causes some to turn to violence to achieve their goals of survival. My friend provided the statistics of population versus black prisoners. To state that 13% of a population make up 40% of those incarcerated presumes all circumstances are equal. The fact is that the 13% of the population are in living conditions that lead to a more, for lack of a better word, "uncivilized", behavior points ...