The Black Informant

I read the following in the Huffington Post this morning:

In Newark and New Orleans, the level of violence is rising as a result of the war here at home. Record numbers of people are being killed on the streets of these cities. One reason often attributed to the violence is drug killings. The most common response to violence, especially when it is related to drug dealing is to call for more police and often more jail cells. And despite how inviting, how sexy, a “tough on crime” approach sounds, it has yet to emerge as a policy that reduces violence and the suffering of everyday, hardworking people. Our skyrocketing prison population alone should signal that the way we are dealing with crime is a failure. If it were successful, there would be fewer, not more, incarcerated people; as we write this, the US now leads the entire world in the numbers of citizens it locks up. Why is this the case?

Our country has fought this war on drugs at home for 30 years, and for 30 years, drug prohibition and increased law enforcement have not made our streets safer nor rid our society of drugs. Rather, much like the days of Al Capone and alcohol prohibition, our policies on drugs have led to turf wars and murder.

So what should elected officials, community leaders and residents do to reduce the violence from the drug trade and reclaim their streets and families? We don’t have all the answers, but there are a number of factors to consider so that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past and instead create a better way to heal our families and communities.

We have to create jobs if we don’t want people to sell drugs. (more…)

I stopped reading this article after the last line I bolded above.

Before I comment on this issue, here is an excerpt from an article in Time magazine back in 2001.

The homeboys call him Frog. But as he swaggers through the Rancho San Pedro Housing Project in East Los Angeles, Frog is a cocky prince of the barrio. His mane of lustrous jeri curls, his freckled nose and innocent brown eyes belie his prodigious street smarts. Frog is happy to tell you that he rakes in $200 a week selling crack, known as rock in Los Angeles. He proudly advertises his fledgling membership in an ultra-violent street gang, the Crips. And he brags that he has used his drug money to rent a Nissan Z on weekends. He has not yet learned how to use a stick shift, however, and at 4 ft. 10 in., he sometimes has trouble seeing over the dashboard. Frog is 13 years old.

[...]

LIKE MOST YOUNG AMERICAN people, they are material girls and boys. They crave the glamorous clothes, cars and jewelry they see advertised on TV, the beautiful things that only big money can buy. But many have grown up in fatherless homes, watching their mothers labor at low-paying jobs or struggle to stretch a welfare check. With the unemployment rate for black teenagers at 37%, little work is available to unskilled, poorly educated youths. The handful of jobs that are open — flipping burgers, packing groceries — pay only minimum wages or “chump change,” in the street vernacular. So these youngsters turn to the most lucrative option they can find.

[...]

“They are drawn by the more enticing lure of fast money. “They can make $1,000 a week dealing,”

[...]

“In a hot market like New York City, an aggressive teenage dealer can make up to $3,000 a day.” (source)

There are other things in this article worth mentioning, but I will stop for now. While this article may be dated by 6 years or so, the fact that a kid can make more money selling drugs than flipping burgers is just as real today.

While the belief that job creation is the silver bullet needed to combat the trend of our young people’s involvement in the illegal drug trade, very few people are willing to face the reality of this matter. How many wherehouse workers do you know are paid $1,000/week? How many fast food workers out there are getting paid $2,000/week. How many 13 year olds out there are pulling an honest daily income of $100/day? The truth is, to many young people out there who may come from a low-income family with no breadwinner, minimum wage is a straight up joke. The key factor here is addressing the VALUES of this particular demographic. While getting a young person who is making big money selling drugs to work at Target (for example) may seem impossible, we must develop ways to get them to think long term. This is where a person’s values come into play. When values aren’t addressed, you will end up with a false perception of the world similar to the following:

From the Time article mentioned above -

“Today Woodberry is a member of J-CAP, a rigorous two-year rehabilitation program. He sounds down to earth when he talks about earning his graduate- equivalency diploma and getting a job as a computer technician. But it soon becomes clear that Woodberry is still far removed from the mainstream, workaday world. When asked his minimum salary requirement, he replies, “At least $100,000.” He shrugs. “Hey, that’s comfortable.”

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