It's attractive to blame the problems of violence exclusively on poverty because its a convenient excuse we can all conceptualize but as I mentioned before, its not that simple. People aren't committing crimes in order to provide for their families, these are recreational crimes of covetousness. Poverty in the United States is not like poverty in Calcutta or the third world. When a major problem facing those at the poverty level is obesity, you know your dealing with an entirely different kind of poverty. And no, its not because the cost of bad food is cheaper. This is a myth and anyone with basic math skills can work this out.
There is a broken culture that exists in these communities that encourages irresponsibility and violence. Women are getting pregnant young and the baby-daddies are abandoning their children to be raised by the state. Parents aren't actively involved in the education of their children and being intelligent is viewed as a sign of weakness. Its not exclusively a black problem anymore, but they seem to be disproportionately effected by this kind of breakdown of culture and the family. Are they the canary in the coal mine?
I blame the hippies and leftists-no joke. We are experiencing the morning hangover after the great anything goes party that was the sixties and seventies, with a little eighties greed thrown for good measure. What isn't being taught is the basic concept of cause and effect. Kids are growing up with zero future orientation. Every problem is someone else's fault or the fault of some external force they can't control or change, like poverty. Fathers and sons....
