Three Years As A Punching Bag. Race And Violence

     A white boy went to an integrated junior high school where he was in a classroom with the most aggressive black kids in that grade. He was a small, skinny underdeveloped kid that was quiet and made an easy target. For three years, ages 11, 12 and 13, he was beat, punched, and used as a punching bag. By the time he left the 8th grade, having experienced three years of getting beat, he had become an insomniac riddled with anxiety and a nervous blinking habit. The constant anxiety took away his ability to concentrate and he lost thereafter his ability to relax, like or do well in school.

       Whatever dreams and high hopes he imagined for himself were gone. School was a nightmare that existed only to get through.

        The motives for why adults did not intervene, including his parents, the parents of other kids that were bullied and beaten, teachers, coaches and others, have to do with weakness and cowardice. Fear for some, indifference for others. Perhaps the desire to be liked by the black aggressors. Perhaps enjoyment in knowing torment was reserved for someone other than themselves, even if it was a child.

        There are people that throw their weight around to take advantage and harm others. No race has a monopoly on bad behavior and the capacity for being a bully. Plenty of vulnerable black and white kids get abused by other black or white students that are stronger, violent and aggressive. Bullies and the bullied come from all races and ethnicities. Bullies target who they perceive to be vulnerable and weaker. 

         One man, who ended up as an adult immersing himself in religion, and who was the victim of childhood bullying, explained why his parents, who were not mentally ill and that had good jobs, did nothing to stop his bullying. His parents refused to believe black kids were capable of violence and bad behavior. In their minds, black people can only be victims, not victimizers.

          We live in a world that fails to contain violence. Many people live in privileged little worlds that allows them the luxury of seeing black people and those they consider oppressed in an idealized way. Black people to them are idealized victims. They infantilize blacks and other groups they consider oppressed. They do not see, blinded as they are by self righteousness, the harm in pandering and infantilizing.

            Their pandering, infantilizing and failure to hold all people accountable for their actions, for their behavior, for how they parent, is just as ignorant and toxic as overt racism. Refusing to hold people responsible for how they act and parent does no favor to anyone, and only contributes to violence.

            The underbelly of America is violent. It is violence that few want to face. Many people make excuses for violence, and offer nothing but self righteous narratives regarding victimhood, oppression and the right of victims to be violent and destructive. Left or right narratives of infantilization or sub humanness always have, and always will produce nothing positive. Many from the left infantilize, while many from the right subhumanize. Both are toxic.

               People need law and order, but people also need opportunity and hope for the future. Generations of poor parenting and violent, gang infested communities perpetuate a vicious cycle that is difficult to change. Infantilization, not just overt racism, is a poison that prevents change for the better.

                Meanwhile, the victims of bullying that are being beaten, black, white and everything in between, need adults, not cowards, to intervene. Childhood trauma is something that even resiliency cannot overcome.