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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here is one fact that I find relevant to this conversation: the average household income for white families in DC is nearly $150K while for black families it is under $68K.

https://www.dchealthmatters.org/demographicdata?id=130951&sectionId=936

And I don’t have a source for this, but I would bet a large percentage of black families are DC natives while most white families are transplants. Generations of black kids have seen outsiders come into their city and prosper while they struggle. I think the gentrification argument has some weight.

Also, the halfway-legalization of pot hasn’t helped. I know at least some shootings have occurred around pot pop-up markets where there is a lot of cash and therefore guns. If these markets were in legal storefronts you would hope the potential for violence would be lower.[/quote]

Funny, when I worked extensively with extremely poor DC black youth ( have you?) Very few's radius was off their non-gentrified block. There were DC teenagers who had never, ever been to the National Mall. They did not know, nor give one shit about, "white families moving in" . Try again.[/quote]

what were their hopes and dreams? It seems inevitable that some percentage of boys who have no other options for hope and achievements will turn to crime. I’m positive my teenage brothers would have been those boys in other circumstances. Humans want belonging, excitement, challenge. You deprive healthy adolsescent boys and young of productive ways to use their testosterone, crime is inevitable. [/quote]

They wanted "respect", whatever that is. Fame/fortune (maybe through rap music, easy money)..Instant gratification (a smoke, a snack, nice shoes, new "do" (the boys were as vain as the girls) a laugh). They loved their friends and their grandparents.  Parents were sort of amorphous. They otherwise had trust issues,  tho they theoretically wanted love, safety and when they werent being fatalistic a future - but the skills gap to secure that was large. They weren't playing with a full deck of cards in terms of life skills or education. At least my students knew they had to close that gap, but the time/effort/demands could be very frustrating. [/quote]

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