Philly Answers Youth Flash Mobs With Curfew Enforcement

Not that it's the first city to enforce a youth curfew, and not that kids on a crime-spree is the only variety of moral panic offered as a rationale, but Philadelphia is cracking down through increased enforcement of a youth curfew law after children and teenagers attacked two people in the Center City district — attacks which, according to police, were coordinated via text messaging.

Comments

Flash Mobs Are Nerd News Now????

[Anonymous Coward]

And in this case, it wasn't really a flash mob at all, it was just a gang of hoodlums.

This story doesn't seem relevant to this site at all to me.

Re:Flash Mobs Are Nerd News Now????

[PCM2]

But its time to call it like it is folks, and admit there is a reason why even though blacks have only 10% of the population they are more than 30% of the jail pop and it AIN'T racism. it is because you have this huge "thug life baby, thug life 4ever!" culture coupled with ZERO shame for having a half a dozen kids and not even knowing who the father is or having a male even involved in the child's life.

I'm not going to "call it" like any of this.

For one thing, who are the biggest consumers of rap music? White kids. That is a fact: Whites buy more rap music than anybody else, including the "thug life 4ever" music you describe. It only makes sense, because whites are the majority.

But white appetite for gangsta rap music is significant, because various black leaders over the years, including (just for example) Chuck D of the rap group Public Enemy, have criticized gangsta rap as a fabrication created by the (white-owned) record labels to pander to white prejudices and bigotry. Gangsta rap music perpetuates the same kind of stereotypes first put forth by the "blacksploitation" movies of the 1970s: Black man as thug, black man as criminal, black man as sexual predator. Those movies were made by whites and white audiences ate them up.

And those stereotypes didn't come out of nowhere. They are essentially the same stereotypes that were created as a way to reinforce the institution of slavery: Don't trust the Negro. He has no intelligence, only criminality. His only interest is to steal whatever he can (which is hilarious, considering black slaves were systematically deprived every possible material possession, up to and including their own bodies). He covets white women, don't let your women near him. If you see a Negro walking unaccompanied, call the police. And so on.

To your second point, about black families not having father figures, guess what? This is America. I grew up in the white suburbs in California, and from the 1970s onward, divorce was positively endemic in that community. I barely knew anybody who grew up in a two-parent household. Judges tended to award custody to mothers, and many fathers (mine, for example) were more than happy with that situation. Most white kids tended to see their fathers on weekends, or at least a couple times a month. But that might be true of "fatherless" black kids, too -- that doesn't make their fathers into "father figures." And as for abandoning their kids? My dad was a doctor, making a six-figure salary, and my mom eventually gave up trying to collect child support for her two kids.

So what's the difference? The difference is that when compared to blacks, whites are disproportionately born into the middle class or higher. They live in communities with better schools and better access to opportunities. They live in communities that don't foster an atmosphere of criminality, hostility, and disrespect -- but that's largely because even the most disadvantaged of their peers is probably doing pretty OK, while kids who grow up in poor neighborhoods are likely to have friends who are literally living on the streets by the time they are teenagers.

The difference is that, however much you might want to wave your hand and vanish it all into the cornfield, blacks still must contend with the legacy institutionalized racism. They are still born into communities that inherit the poverty that came from discrimination, segregation, intimidation, marginalization, disenfranchisement, and all the inequalities to which blacks were subjected just 50 years ago.

Seriously, you do realize that there are probably people reading /. who were born in an era where it was actually legal to deny someone a job because they were black, right? Or for that matter, to deny them the use of a public toilet for the same reason? That doesn't just disappear overnight.

A lot of the change has to come from within the black community, true. But what

Re:Philly Flash Mob != Flash Mob

[insertwackynamehere]

I don't think it comes off as racist. Only on the internet, where racism has taken a meaning of pointing out problems within a certain community, would it be considered racism. Back in the real world, you pretty much described what a Philly flash mob is and likely what a good part of the reason is that they occur, specifically with poor black youth. It's not racist, it's a depressing reality: the majority of a flash mob (if not the entirety) is poor and black for a reason and not by chance. It's because of these issues that the black community in Philadelphia is dealing with: being raised by no one except some sociopath who was also raised by no one, to bash heads and snatch wallets.

The school system is falling apart meanwhile, we've got a string of terrible superintendents, teachers laid off, when I was in high school 5-9 years ago, there were schools known to be absolute hell holes (I went magnet, my neighborhood school would have probably led to my death) and even now some of these kids apparently were on their way to college but they decide to just participate in this violence? There is clearly something at work here, but that being said there is also no excuse for violence, none of the "white people deserve to get bashed" internet rage is appropriate, especially when most people posting it are white but super far removed from anything close to this because they live in some rich suburb in their parent's house and then act like white people in an urban environment are spoiled children for complaining about these sorts of things.

Problems...

[MaWeiTao]

We can talk about rights all we want, but the fact here is that what we're experiencing here is the criminal element stripping our rights away. Being unable to safely walk somewhere late at night constitutes a loss of freedom. The problem is that Americans are so used to this sort of garbage that they don't even see the problem. But I lived overseas where I could walk the streets at 3am without a care in the world. It wasn't that crime was non-existent but it didn't factor into normal routine. Sketchy neighborhoods were rare.

But the problem here is that American law enforcement is reactive, not proactive. The approach taken to crime is similar to how oppressive regimes keep sectarian conflict in check: oppression. I don't mean that Americans practice anything nearly that severe. What I mean is that they address problems with aggressive tactics; increased police presence, more arrests, etc. That only addresses the symptoms and once they're gone the problems return. And making matters worse is that this approach dehumanizes police offices, it turns them into this faceless force. They don't interact nearly enough with communities. They should patrol on foot, not in police cars.

However, the real problem are parents. Too many parents have abrogated their responsibilities. They don't care what their kids are doing, because if they did that kid wouldn't be out on the streets in the middle of the night. So, the responsibility ends up being foisted on the government. And what the government decides isn't always in the best interests of the citizens, especially when they're looking for quick results. Those quick results are effective over the current election cycle, but they never address the long term problems.

But the fact is the United States is suffering from serious cultural issues that perpetuates things like crime. Those need to be addressed properly, but honestly, I don't know see who could disagree with the benefits of enjoying safer streets, less vandalism, etc. But I suppose it's the tendency for Americans to want to stick it to the man, to the point of being irrational about it.

it's about class, not race

[circletimessquare]

the same things happen in other parts to the world, and it's not black kids doing it, it's poor kids doing it

the POVERTY is the issue, not the race

it's just revealing to me to see the right constantly falling into race based thinking, rather than class based thinking

it reveals the right doesn't understand the problems you create when you push social policies that create a large poor under class, rather than policies that support the growth of the middle class

the right pushes policies that makes people poor, and then they see poor people doing things because of their lame policies

and yet, they don't think "poor kids did this and that", they think "black kids did this and that"

very revealing