
Originally Posted by
kib
Now ... I think about the black community, generally speaking. In so many places, this community is still in recovery from the violent rending of families during and directly after the period of slavery. The original slaves were tribal, their entire societal wisdom stretching back, perhaps, to the beginning of people, was based on that sense of innate belonging to a group. Suddenly over a generation or two, no group, no family, no sense of roots other than guessing what it might have been like. Male role models, fathers, elders are in short supply, still. Mothers in the poor communities tend to be young, inexperienced and often alone. I think this makes black children terribly vulnerable to the sense that they have to earn a place in a group; it's a birthright they do not receive. Add to this the ubiquitous western pressure to be part of a group of Owners of Something, and then add in the poverty that makes that ownership nearly impossible.
And I think, if you don't wind up with gangs, you wind up with people who are desperately empty. They don't have a sense of clan, and they can't buy a sense of commercial acceptability. This emptiness is where they begin, the "foundation" on which they attempt to create a sense of worth and belonging.