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Take a Number and Wait Your Turn!
By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
One way in which we might stem the recent rash of
black-on-black crime is to have an inner-city lottery in
which all black males between the ages of 13-27 randomly
take a number.
Each day, a number will be called out over the local
radio stations and TV outlets and if you have that number,
you are to report to a pre-determined location and you will
be handed a loaded revolver and be given five minutes to
hide before you are hunted and shot down in the streets
before live cameras.
If you can remain alive after the allotted five
minutes, your number is retired and you are allowed to live
for another year and only then your number is placed back in
the lottery for another public calling.
Sounds crazy doesn’t it? But guess what? A study of
800 black males between the ages of 10-27 were placed in
such a year’s study using a controlled environment wherein
the males were able to monitor and manipulate video action
figures that were made in their likeness.
The study of the males showed that if they knew that
their number was called, they began to act differently and
avoided situations in which the “hunter” could find them and
shoot them.
All of the participants in the study (note: the minors
received permission from their parents) were hooked up to
heart and eye monitors which registered visible fear and
trepidation at the thought that they could be randomly
killed by someone else simply because their lottery number
was called out. Something as silly as a number!
An astonishing 82 percent of the participants in the
study wanted to opt out of the “hunt” when it came their
turn but only 12 percent opted out when it was their turn to
“hunt” someone else.
According to Randall Fellisope, Ph.D, professor
emeritus of sociology at the Davidson-Cardell College in
Pittsburgh, who is the author of this highly controversial
controlled group study, he discovered that the only way that
urban communities can reduce the grim statistics of
black-on-black crime is to have potential malefactors
simulate being both the hunter and the hunted; and only then
are they able to understand the value of life…their lives
not being sniffed out by inconsequential events.
The inconsequential events that led to such
black-on-black crime among youths were tallied by the study
group as being: (1) arguments over girls; (2) disputes about
money (including drug sales); (3) fights about family honor
or one’s “manhood” being challenged and, surprisingly, (4)
anger and inner turmoil about not being able to negate
societal perceptions that they were of no value or of any
importance to anyone.
Fellisope further indicated in the study that when
society has labeled an ethnic group as “trouble,” that
ethnic group began to act out that label in a type of warped
self-fulfilling prophecy and committed acts that if they
were not so labeled as “negative,” they would avoid.
When asked how the results of this study could be
applied in the classroom or in media, Fellisope indicated
that society will have to reverse the purposeful negative
imaging that is still being fashioned of black males as
being aggressors and brutes who lack impulse controls.
But also, media and merchandisers, including those
whose job it is to “sell” images to the public, must cease
to glorify violence as a means of conflict resolution and in
its place promulgate values that do not give “points” to
aggression, violence, mockery and ridicule as acceptable
means of relating to each other.
The author of the study was quick to point out that the
institutions that are best designed and fit to change images
and “re-set” a child’s perception of him or herself
are the family unit and the local church.
If the family cannot rein in negative behavior amongst
its members and if the church compromises on its core
function of an undiluted gospel message of hope and
redemption, the individual is left to his own devices and in
that vacuum, negative behavior takes over the void.
The controlled study took into consideration such
factors as single parenting, poverty, lack of education and
the lack of outlets for young men to engage in constructive
dialogue with their peer group and found that the above
scenarios did not force or contribute to untoward
delinquency.
Being in poverty and/or poorly educated or raised by a
single parent did not automatically give rise to criminal
behavior.
But, it was found that when the individual, given
choices, was repeatedly taught to discern between good and
evil and thus could opt out or avoid negative and dangerous
interpersonal relationships that could result in violence
and in particular gun violence…they did so 95 percent of the
time.
One of the core messages of the study was that when the
family and the church are in synch with each other’s core
mission statements and assist each other, kids can
successfully grow up in spite of “mean” streets since
involved parents or “shadow” parenting persons or groups and
cooperating churches will lessen the impact and influence of
those streets.
The physical “streets” are harmless in themselves, it
what takes place on the streets that causes the problems.
Note: Of the 800 participants in the yearlong study, only 11
ended up in felony court accused of a serious crime.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at
Tolliver@Juno.com |
