Bun_Bunz t1_ix8en48 wrote on November 21, 2022 at 3:24 PM

Reply to comment by ScootyHoofdorp in City reaches 300th homicide for 8th year in a row by Maxcactus

Yeah no, Baltimore robbed most of these people of an education and a way forward. Your whole premise is that these people have anything to live for to care about to begin with. A lot of them are homeless or close to, or have absent parents, no community. Hard to give a fuck without those things. You don't just join a gang cuz it's fun!

ScootyHoofdorp t1_ix8r5fy wrote on November 21, 2022 at 4:51 PM

I agree with you that most of these people are lucky to have even a sliver of an opportunity for a productive and healthy future. But, if everyone in the city who had little to live for was willing to kill, our murder rate would be much much higher. If poverty was inextricably tied to crime across the board, homeless people would be killing each other all the time, but that's obviously not the case. Let's not strip impoverished people of their agency and ability to make choices. The vast majority of poor people don't choose violence. The conclusion that some people are simply willing to inflict harm on others while others are not is unavoidable.

Xanny t1_ixibnd7 wrote on November 23, 2022 at 5:34 PM

Its a generational thing. This whole narrative traces back hundreds of years, but the recent threads have been - poor blacks working labor jobs, the industry died, the whites fled, the city ripped out their streetcars and means of getting around, and they were still here. So they turned to what was left - drugs and crime. The violence was less prominent in the start of the decline because the transition was slow. Jobs gradually lost, people gradually left. The ones who stayed were the ones who participated, enabled, or profited from the emerging culture of violence. It consumes everything else until its all that is left. Kids today are born 5+ generations into this shit.