I suspect the number isn't a whole lot different here than it is in Baltimore.

In 2005, the Baltimore Sun reported that 1/5 of all young (age 20-30) black men in their city were in jail, and 62% were imprisoned, paroled, or on probation. Those statistics are staggering. If you were black, living in Baltimore, how would this affect how you raised your kids? And when you realize that most young kids have a father between 20 and 30 years old, what is this doing to the next generation?

Steven Levitt's Theory

Economist Steven Levitt argues that the changes in the abortion law have led to a dramatic reduction in violent crime. A woman in an unwanted pregnancy is highly stressed, and that challenges the unborn baby. Once he is born, he's likely to not bond well with his mother. Kids under such circumstances grow up to be criminals. When you can't win acceptance, you learn there's no point in trying.

Levitt's results have been challenged by other economists, although I haven't run across any really valid arguments against it, and what's more, there's lots of evidence that he's right. The drop in the crime rate has been more dramatic in states where abortion is easier to obtain. What's more, the crime rate dropped earlier in states that legalized elective abortion before Roe v. Wade.

Has Anyone Looked At This?

So, let's consider another fact. It's not just the legal climate, and the physical distance to abortion clinics that makes abortion available, it's also the social acceptability of abortion - and unlike the white population, the largest religion for blacks is Baptists, who are strongly anti-abortion. The largest population for whites is Roman Catholicism, but their followers mostly ignore the church on matters of birth control, and there are significant number of jews and of mainline protestant churches, both of which fought for the legalization of abortion.

Does the Baptist church, in essence, lead black children into a life of crime? That's obviously not the intent, but is that the effect?

Centerfold Senator Scott Brown

OK, let's change the subject, but not stray too far. Scott Brown, the GOP poster boy who won the senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy for decades, has just released his new biography, "Against All Odds". If prodded, most people remember that he posed for a centerfold, years ago, and that he announced victory, he introduced his beautiful daughters, noting that both were available, only to have one of his daughters remind her dad that the other daughter was not available. In his new book, he relates being sexually abused at a summer camp.

I'm not even sure which morning show it was (maybe CBS?) because I was only listening, not watching, when they were discussing. The host questioned by Scott Brown revealed this information, and the talking head - which I presume was a GOP hack - said, well, a tell-all book humanizes politicians to the electorate. He pointed out that Obama's two books helped sell him to the population, and this book was effectively his own "Faith of my father".

Stupidity Reigns In Politics

The host went on to ask the hack whether this information would hurt Brown, and the hack responded as if it couldn't possibly hurt him. "Aha!" I thought. "There is a man who never was abused."

A couple of decades ago, I voluntarily went into a locked ward because I was suicidal. It's desirable to lock up those who are seriously suicidal for about three weeks, because anti-depressive medicines give the patient the energy "to do what needs to be done" before it improves his mood enough that he no longer thinks suicide is desirable. If the patient is locked up during that critical period, he doesn't have an opportunity to commit suicide, and it may save his life. There's a pretty high death rate for those who aren't locked up.

While I was in there, the psych techs poked and prodded me, and several of them asked me if I thought I had ever been sexually abused as a kid. I denied it, but they recommended that I read Laura Davis's The Courage To Heal anyway. Over the course of months, I asked friends and family members for details, and Little Brudder jogged my brain.

Sometimes, You Don't WANT To See

Eventually, I opened my eyes. I still bore scars on my foreskin from the sexual torture I'd been put through. Scar tissue doesn't stretch like regular tissue, so every time I was engorged, the skin would split, painfully, putting a crimp on my love life. You'd have thought I would have noticed those scars. When someone else mentioned that a symptom of PTSD was recurring nightmares, I realized that the scar tissue and my recurring nightmares had their origins in a single afternoon, when I was just short of being five.

I'm lucky. Many survivors (as those who've experienced child abuse are termed) have had years of trauma. I only had one horrid afternoon. On the other hand, I was middle-aged before I started to heal myself. And once I started to see what the symptoms of abuse were, I began to recognize others as being survivors.

One of the things that survivors worry about is whether they will end up hurting other kids. The answer, it appears, is "probably not". As it is, one in four girls, one in six boys, is sexually abused before the age of 14. If every abuse victim were to become a perpetrator, it wouldn't take three generations before virtually 100% of all kids were abused.

The Popular Media, Though

The popular media, though, perpetuate the fact that most predators were themselves abused as kids, without pointing out that most people who were abused as kids don't become predators. As a result, survivors hesitate to mention their status as survivors, knowing that it will make parents fear their actions. It took a lot of courage for Scott Brown to make that admission - or perhaps something else. Survivors tend not to have good boundaries. They reveal too much of themselves for their own good - which, any regular reader of this blog will realize, is true of me.

What determines whether someone becomes a predator, I asked Rick, my therapist for several years. It's the fight-or-flight response, he said. Most people flee confrontation. Some people prefer to fight. And every so often, we'd return to that topic, but Rick had a more succinct way of expressing it: people are either dicks or vics. Sometimes, victims get fed up, which is what happened at Columbine, when they finally retaliated against the dicks that bullied them. As a rule, though, just as pyromaniacs seek out jobs on the fire department so they get maximum exposure to those pretty flames, the biggest dicks become athletic coaches, drill sergeants, or police officers, jobs that allow one to bully and beat up people as a regular part of the job. Think of it as a tax-free perk of the job.

Not All The Same

When I was newspapering, I learned to recognize the difference between the various police agencies. One town kept switching police chiefs, because some council members hated dicks, and the non-dicks who had the job were mistreated by the town mayor. Another town had the same dick running things for three decades. Ohio's state police mostly patrol highways and investigate accidents. It's a hard agency to get hired into; they try hard to screen out dicks, and they generally are extremely polite. On the other hand, sheriff's offices were invariably dicks. I am unaware of any Ohio sheriff who served at least two terms without becoming a millionaire, even back in the depression, dollars were worth ten to fifteen times as much as they are today. I know of one sheriff who retired in the 1960s, and a state cop ran for the post. He ran a clean department for about two years before he gave in. He wanted to fire all the dicks, but there simply weren't enough non-dicks available to meet his manpower requirements.

So when you think about black-on-black crime in the urban centers, think about Columbine. Think of the riots of 1968 in Watts and Detroit, and Newark and the lesser riots in other cities. The riots in Egypt were relatively peaceful, but CNN's Anderson Cooper was punched in the face anyhow, and CBS's Lara Logan was sexually assaulted. We cannot continue to abuse the black population of our cities like this without consequence. The racist wing of the TEA party is stirring the pot, and the results aren't going to be the least bit pretty.

As Jerry Reed sang, "We've got a long way to go, and a short time to get there." I wish I could be optimistic, but I think the dicks are winning. Maybe men like Scott Brown will help make a difference.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
abortion - Against All Odds - Baltimore Sun - Baptist - black crime - child abuse - Columbine - Courage To Heal - fight or flight - Laura Davis - police brutality - predator - Roman Catholic - Scott Brown - sheriff - Steven Levitt - survivor