VivirLatino

We all remember the horrific video of the school kids in Chicago literally beating a fellow student to death. It was played over and over for us on national television and talk shows cashed in the main question: How can this be happening in our schools?

Or, more specifically, how can this be happening in *those* schools. Because we all know that there are certain kids who have to put up with this violent shit every single day of their lives, and there are certain kids that simply don’t.

But my question was never brought up, much less answered. Why do we assume that the kids that are brutalizing other human beings in the most horrific ways haven’t learned that behaviors from others? I.e., adults?

From Truth Out comes a video that is almost as horrible as the beating video. A teen age boy with a learning disability was walking down a hall way when the school cop noticed that the boy’s shirt wasn’t tucked in.

Within seconds, the police officer pushed him into the lockers, repeatedly punched him and then slammed him to the ground and pushed his face to the floor. The officer then applied a face down, take-down hold to the child, a maneuver that has resulted in over 20 deaths nationwide and is banned in eight states.

Now, many activists and bloggers have rightfully noted that just because there’s been an overtly racist reaction to the beating death of the teenager, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t something going horribly wrong in youth culture today. I agree with those people. Kids don’t just beat others to death without having gotten the idea somewhere that reactions like that are ok.

I would argue that the police man’s reaction to a boy walking down the hallway with his shirt untucked is one of the reasons why so many youths today react the way that they do to perceived insults. How many children are treated in similar ways by adults–whether it be the police, teachers, fathers or store managers?

And why do we think that our kids aren’t noticing that “power” comes in the form of violence?

I know many people will try to say that kids have a choice to make the bad choices that they do, and it’s not society’s fault and when oh when are we ever going to stop turning our kids into pansy Sesame Street “love everybody” queers?

I have to wonder, however, how many of those people who would say something like that have spent time mentoring youth? Grown ups want youth to take responsibility for their choices–but how many times have grown ups taken responsibility for their choices? The choices we are making right now are causing children to beat other children to death, leaving the most vulnerable kids open to violent attack by adults, and taking away opportunities from youths before they even realize they had the opportunity to begin with.

And yet, even though it is OUR choices that are harming kids, we are blaming everything on others. Seems kids are learning more than what we give them credit for.