In Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun, by Geoffrey Canada, the three major points include the past, the changes, and the present because they help explain the current state of inner-city neighborhoods. In the past, Canada explains that to gain reputation on the block, one would fight, and winning said fights meant an increase in reputation. Children were “safe” more or less from other blocks when they were on their home block because the other children on their block would back them up. In this time, one learned empathy through learning to fight because they had to take some punches.
While traumatizing in its own way, this type of life was mild to later changes. As Canada grew up, guns started to enter the streets, but they were limited to a few older kids. Furthermore, soon drugs, followed by guns, quickly became commonplace items on the street. As Canada explains in his book, guns, not toughness, determine the pack’s head. This explosion of crime helps explain the mass incarceration of Black people, the high arrest rates, and the many deaths within Black communities.
Often in the United States, many people discuss “Black-on-Black crime” —as if it’s any different than the regular crime— without realizing why crime is high in impoverished, minority communities. The increase in crime and drugs has no basis in an intrinsic fault among minorities or because minorities are dangerous people. Instead, high rates of crime are due to the circumstances to which individuals are subjected to.
Mothers and fathers who can’t or don’t care for their children leave teenagers and sometimes younger children to fend for themselves. Without a firm adult role model, who do they look to? As Canada explains in Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun, they looked to the “older boys,” were literally just the older kids who lived on the block.
Canada explains that after he left for college, he only returned to the South Bronx for holidays. Still, the city was nothing like he remembered. Kids were used by significant drug suppliers to sell drugs, and they made more money than they or their families had seen in their lifetime. However, since they were kids, they couldn’t buy houses or cars like their older drug dealer counterparts. So, the kids bought clothes and jewelry. But, wearing expensive accessories in areas where robbery is highly likely meant that you were even more of a target. The only solution? Defend yourself.
Unlike how Canada grew up with fist fighting, the kids nowadays have access to firearms, and so, they bought them, no more needing to know how to fight. As kids increasingly obtained guns, there were no “codes of conduct,” as Canada calls them. Codes of conduct include when you can fight someone else and when you can’t.
But with guns, Canada says, “Sometimes these days they yell and curse and then shoot you, sometimes they just shoot you.” So, without rules, people needed to defend themselves, so they also obtained guns, resulting in a tremendous number of weapons being carried down the streets.
Having the opportunity to go to Bowdoin College in Maine and Harvard School of Education, Canada was able to escape this environment. After graduating college, Canada eventually returned to New York City, Harlem, to be specific. He founded a Beacon Schools program that opens in impoverished neighborhoods where school enrollment is low, crime is high, and the city has no interest in fixing. These schools offer children extracurricular activities proven to benefit children, a security presence, and community involvement.
Canada has found that, through the opening of Beacon Schools, the community benefits directly. Crime goes down, enrollment increases, and even violence within the school goes down.
If you’re interested in crime in the United States, this book is highly recommended. Many individuals, including politicians, believe that the quick fix to crime and deviance is to increase police presence, such as Reagan’s War on Drugs. But Canada offers a different resolution. He advocates offering free, quality educations, security for children, and extracurricular activities.
When you think about it, in its simplicity, all that Canada is doing is offering kids a proper childhood. Children in these neighborhoods have to grow up all too quickly on the streets, which hardens a person. Through an education, activities such as the Tai Kwon Do program he leads, and a sense of safety, the children get to be children again.
And as any adult knows, childhood is short as it is, so shouldn’t children get to enjoy it in all its innocence and purity?
Here’s links to Canada’s work:
Source
- Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun by Geoffrey Canada
THE JUSTICE COLUMN 