Mike
Males, c Youth Today, November 2001
Americans’ horrified revulsion
at the World Trade Center/Pentagon airline massacres included concern over how
help young people deal with massive tragedy. As initial shock at the attack
yields to sober reflection, it is evident that adults react to extreme stresses
in the same extreme ways we so often condemn in youths.
Polled by CBS News after the
attack, 70% of American adults said killing innocent victims (and 60% said
killing “thousands of innocent victims”) is acceptable to avenge terrorism.
Clearly, this sentiment reflected immediate grief and rage, not our normal
values. Still, if a grieving gang leader, after murderous attack by a rival
gang, advocated killing innocent people in revenge, authorities would brand it
proof of the rash violence of modern youth.
Ironically, a recent Alfred
University survey found seven in 10 students believed school shootings are done
to avenge bullying by jocks and popular students. The Columbine shooters and
WTC terrorists didn’t just express an opinion; they plotted brutal carnages and
carried them out. That’s what makes the few mass murderers so different from
the millions of us whose anger doesn’t lead to slaughter.
Missing that basic distinction,
Alfred psychology professor Edward Gaughan declared, “in the average high school
of 800 students, nearly 100 kids have the potential for violence, and as many
as 20 of them may be considered high-risk for shooting someone at school.” His
survey numbers projected 2.8 million violence-prone students, including 500,000
at “high-risk” to perpetrate shootings.
So, how many real school
shootings did Gaughan’s report uncover? Eight in the last two years.
Statistically, “500,000” is different from “eight.” Gaughan’s 99.8%
false-positive embarrassment stems from common anti-youth stereotyping that
fails to recognize that even the angriest, most alienated half-million teens
are utterly unlike the one in three million who shoots up a school. That same
difference exists between the 60% of grownups expressing survey support for
killing innocent people in vengeance versus the very rare Timothy McVeighs who
do kill.
Commendably, even amid crisis,
most Americans rejected any notion that terrorist attacks represent “Islamic
violence;” linking evil traits to entire demographic groups is bigotry. Why, then,
do we accept equally prejudicial terms like “youth violence” (featured yet
again in October’s “Student Pledge Against Gun Violence”) or “youth hate crime”
(a National Crime Prevention Council title)? Just as very few Moslems are
terrorists, only a tiny fraction of youths commit gun or hate crimes.
Or, consider the example set by
America’s prominent moral preachers and “values” politicians, who ceaselessly
berate young people for accepting their peers’ bad values. Yet, how many
high-level virtuists forthrightly condemn their own powerful peers’ immorality?
In 1996, Madeleine Albright, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, told
CBS News the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children from American Gulf War bombings
and embargoes were “worth it” to achieve victory. I make no excuse for the
unconscionable WTC attack to suggest that widespread Middle Eastern outrage at
Albright’s callousness was completely understandable. Not so the silence by
America’s normally loud moralists.
Or, amid Americans’ heartfelt
outpouring of compassion for 9-11 victims, how do we explain the House of
Representatives’ vote to slash $1 billion from programs to treat victims of
child abuse? Legislators excused the cuts to free money to fight terrorism
(and, incidentally, preserve hefty tax cuts Congress awarded billionaires).
No need for young people to sort
out such cynical moral expediencies;
they get the big principles. In peacetime and crisis alike, we teach
them that certain innocent victims don’t merit attention, certain population
groups don’t deserve fairness, certain violent atrocities don’t get condemned,
certain moral lapses (such as by you young people) get zero tolerance while
worse evildoings (such as by us powerful folks) enjoy infinite indulgence...
and who said life is fair? That adults successfully pressure youth to give up
high ideals as they grow up, Franklin Roosevelt said 65 years ago, is why the
world gets better so slowly.
Mike
Males is a Justice Policy Institute senior researcher and University of
California, Santa Cruz, sociologist. His writings, research papers, statistics,
and sources are at http://home.earthlink.net/~mmales