What’s behind the rash of flash mobbing in Chicago, where black youths have been attacking and robbing people in the Windy City’s trendy shopping districts?
At least 20 young men, all black, have been arrested in the mob attacks, which police believe began Memorial Day weekend.
Mary Mitchell, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist who’s also one of my colleagues in an organization of black columnists known as “The Trotter Group,” provided one answer in a June 8 column.
“Although each of the teens arrested in last week’s mob attacks made a bad decision, they don’t appear to be bad teens. None of these teens had a criminal record.”
The victims of some of these so-called “not really bad teens” might beg to differ with Mitchell. But maybe we can at least all agree that even if they are not be bad teens, they sure as heck aren’t very good ones either.
Mitchell continued her commentary with the observation that “there is no excuse for beating people and taking their stuff,” and then in the very next paragraph provided an excuse:
“But as they say, idle hands are the devil’s playthings, and there are too many idle black teenage males. These teens couldn’t get a job if they tried, given the high unemployment rate. Free organized sports and other recreational activities are also in short supply.”
As someone who’s been on the victim side of a beating by a group of young black men — and whose son was robbed, at gunpoint, by another group of young black men when he was a teenager — I’m not at all sympathetic to the claims of there not being enough jobs, sports, or recreational activities to keep young black men occupied.
And I’m certainly not buying the notion that the only alternatives to jobs, sports and recreational activities are felony battery, robbery and other crimes.
Let’s put the blame on how those black boys in Chicago went wrong precisely where it belongs: on their parents.
By the way, the headline of Mitchell’s June 8 column was “Unfortunately for mothers, suspects in flash mob case will be made examples.”
The headline came from a sentence in the column, which reads, “Unfortunately for the mothers, their sons will likely be made examples.”
Perhaps those mothers should have tried being better mothers.
When I dare suggest that some black parents have fallen down on the job, the accusations of my being an Uncle Tom-sellout-race traitor-handkerchiefhead-Sambo usually come out. How dare I, some have asked, question the parenting ability of any black mother or father?
Because I had a good one, that’s how. In my case, it was my mother. And I assure you, if I had participated in any activity similar to the ones that got those youths in Chicago arrested for villainous flash mobbing, surgeons would still, to this day, be removing parts of my mother’s foot from my derriere.
And she’d have no truck with the “there-are-no-jobs-sports-or-recreational-activities” to occupy my time nonsense.
Every summer until I was around 13 or 14 — when I went to summer school for academic enrichment courses — my mother knew how my summer days would be occupied and where.
It was called “Bible school.” For six weeks every summer, I was turned over to the tender mercies of some really tough nuns who ran the Saint Pius V summer school in Baltimore.
You can bet there was nary an “idle hand” in the place.
If those black mothers in Chicago didn’t want to see their sons made examples, maybe they should have churched ’em up a little.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
