Dear X:
It has been some time since we last communicated. It’s already late March but Spring is still a stranger for Chicago. Midwest is like a person who always puts on a cold, poker face. How’s the weather in the place you live? When I am writing this letter, I constantly thought of the time we worked alongside each other, fighting for our shared dream, and the bitterness and sweetness we both tasted. How time flies! That period has become the past but memory is eternal.
X, as I quoted Fitzgerald’s words in our first letter “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had”, we live in a world shaped and structured by social, political, and group-based dynamics, which perpetuate a wide array of forms of inequalities. If I ever learned one thing from my past few years of activism, it’s that everyone craves brightness but not everyone can reach that. People who live in segregated, violent, and gun-common neighborhoods are no different from upper-class or middle-class people who live in affluent neighborhoods on their eagerness to live a life that is peaceful, enjoyable, and ‘normal'. Further, their desirableness may even be stronger. Violence is not a choice. It’s a reality, and a consequence of other problems, such as poverty, limited access to quality education, and insufficient health support. This is why we, policymakers, must be committed to curing social illness by working with different parties to identify problems, connecting people with research-confirmed effective programs like restorative justice and cognitive-behavioral therapy, and putting the community at the center of all works to build community relationships and enhance accountability,
Like many other social problems, crimes are rarely because of personal evils. Early last century, sociologist Robert Merton developed the concept of strain theory, by which he argued that the imbalance between pressuring people to achieve a societal goal and providing them with the necessary resources to fulfill that vision pushes people to commit crimes. Merton believed in the underlying structural and systematical reasons behind crimes. Grounded in his year-long research, Merton observed that poor people, struggling for the unfulfillable American dream, would seek monetary success through illegal activities, such as drug dealing, in which they could acquire money faster and make their end meet (American dream) than the legitimate means (jobs). His idea, though criticized by later scholars, has important implications. Inheriting the thinking of Durkheim, Merton told us that people were not born criminals. Instead, they were ‘forced' to by a system that produces systematic inequalities that pass along racial and socioeconomic lines.
Meron’s theory reminded me of K whom I met at my internship last summer, where he was one of the staff and the youngest ONE. K was an early-20 Black male who was close to 6 feet tall and very masculine. He had a quiet and introverted personality. When it was his turn to make the introduction, he spoke in a low volume slowly. He then introduced himself as a former gang member in the South side of Chicago who used to have a street life but was now a college student beyond the job. His talking soon attracted my interest that I tried to approach him during the break time to grasp more information about his background. He didn’t share much about himself, which wasn’t surprising. It was the first time we met, and the trust hadn’t been built. Plus we only received 20 minutes break. It might also be that he was just a wordless person for whom silence was his protection color.
I later knew from other colleagues that K grew up in a community where violence brought about more violence. He joined the local gang at an early age, following the step of his friends in the neighborhood. However, compared to his friends, he was lucky to have the option of quitting and taking a new life.
K’s experience resembles the many stories that researcher and sociologist Victor Rios depicted in his book Punished, the ethnography-based study of an Oakland gang that he was known for. Rios himself is a gangster-turned-scholar because of which he shared a personal connection with the work he was doing. Rios noted that violence, drug, poverty, and the demonetization of gang people as criminals begot continuous gang problems on the streets. What Rios called the ‘Youth-Control Complex’, the structural dynamics that led to the difficulty of gang control, was reinforced by other researchers and journalism, for example, Jill Leovy’s Ghettoside.
X, nobody would not want to bathe in the warmth of sunshine and immerse in the vibrance of early spring. However, life has its favoritism. When I was working with the juvenile system in Minnesota, many kids were sent to the center in handcuffs not because they made mistakes but because that their parents were both taking night-time jobs that there was nowhere for them to stay overnight. As such, their parents called the police and asked to bring their kids to our center. Did those parents love their kids? Certainly. Did these parents understand the negative consequences of having their child exposed to the criminal justice system and the potential trauma their behaviors might generate? Likely yes too. However, it was just a miserable reality that they had to call the police, ask them to take their child away and bring them to our center where their child would be supervised by the staff overnight and have a place to sleep.
X, we often make the assumption that choices are offered to others like they are offered to us, ignoring our privilege and refusing to sit in others' shoes and care to know what their lives might be like and what obstacles they may face. Everyone can claim to own compassion but few show that. It’s important to realize living under the sun could be a luxury.