Dickson Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

A number of Ivy League sociologists in the USA argue that crime and dysfunction spring from personal choice, not external factors such as environment and societal influence. That argument may open up a Pandora’s Box.   

This first narrative, in a three part story on criminal dysfunction, states that there are lessons to be learned, and experiences to be avoided, by young black male youth in these British Virgin Islands from the social dilemma facing the US Inner City.

Many US inner city areas are an extension of regular prison. This idea of the public street as prison can be taken literally, since it is only a matter of time before a majority of black men on those streets meet with the reality of incarceration. This is indeed a tragedy. What makes it even more tragic, according to sociologists, is that it is a matter of choice. It can be avoided. Or is it?

These “street prisons” are prisons of choice, it is argued by a significant number of sociologists. The prisoners are held in fetters by a choice to take the illegitimate path and engage with dysfunctional behaviours, such as drug use and drug dealing, criminal activity, and sexual and relational practices that have kept black communities in the USA single parent, and matriarchal. The absence of a strong male role model is endemic in the US inner city.

The following story assesses a narrative from Commentary magazine of May 21, 2015, penned by Amy Wax titled, ‘Negatively Sixth Street’.

Wax uses research from a number of sociologists to write her article. She begins her article by making an interesting observation: “academic sociologists are rarely asked to participate in political initiatives to address poverty, inequality, and black disadvantage.” There is a reason for this, according to Wax. “Sociologists in a politically correct western culture do not want to be seen as blaming the victim.”

However, black people who live in crime ridden areas understand clearly the role of “attitudes, habits, and values, in their present dilemma.” Blacks are even more aware that the problem is one of culture and bad choices, than experts in psychology and sociology who are mostly part of the white academic establishment.

Wax describes “the extensive network of young black men, all of them unemployed high school dropouts, on the run from police.” There are clear dysfunctions in these communities that drive these men into a life of failure. However, a politically correct approach prefers to, “focus on large scale and impersonal forces bearing down from outside.” In essence, this is an excuse to avoid the real cause of the problem: wrong choices.

Wax describes a culture of “SELF SABOTAGE”. These young men are “architects of their own desperate and deformed lives.” They are not, “helpless victims doomed by oppressive laws, anti crime policies, and a hostile occupying force of police.”

These are young men that have consciously followed “a well worn path to trouble, marked by educational indifference, erratic and unsuccessful employment, and mounting legal violations.” The young black man presented in the article chooses to violate traffic laws, deal in drugs, commit murder, fail to pay fines, fail to honour conditions of probation, and goes on to accumulate a proliferation of warrants for arrest.”

There is a dark consequence of the wrong choices these men make. A formidable law enforcement regime in the US has turned high crime neighbourhoods into prisons where an unrelenting vigilance through computer mapping and high tech surveillance becomes the order of the day. Police busy themselves stopping pedestrians, searching cars, searching homes, and monitoring streets, looking for men with outstanding warrants.

The “culture” of illegality, and deviancy is as far from true freedom as “east is from west.” Instead it is a culture that shackles, and then imprisons the young male. “Ordinary life is out of the question.” He is locked into a way of life where “attending a funeral, applying for a job, and obtaining a driver’s license, can result in his being taken into custody” by that ever present law enforcement machinery. 

Life for the illegal and deviant is a shadowy, marginal, erratic, and unpredictable affair. He has to avoid steady work and keep on the move. This is hardly a life for a future father, husband, employee, and business owner. This life in the shadows, “breeds mutual distrust, disrupts personal bonds, and generates hostility towards authority and law enforcement.”

This is a way of life that establishes a culture of lawlessness. It puts the practitioner in bonds. He is not supposed to snitch. In reality, cooperation between police and community is thwarted. The culture of silence in actuality puts the young male in chains. His so called associates use this culture of silence to blackmail, extract payment, take revenge, and buy future silence.

There is an elaborate criminal network on the black street. “Local Entrepreneurs supply clean urine samples for probationers, store possessions and clothes for young hoodlums, procure false identity papers and documents, and forge driver’s licenses.” These men unknowingly have adopted a fugitive status. That status affects the full spectrum of their social and economic relations.

They are in reality already in prison.

To be continued…

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