In the urban neighborhood where I have worked for many years lives a young woman known to her friends as Shorty. Shorty is a tiny person, under five feet tall and slightly heavier than the insulated hoodie sweatshirts she wears. Shorty is always smiling, and like many in her depressed neighborhood, unfailingly polite.
A few years ago, Shorty and two friends went to party at the home of an acquaintance. It was a chilly night, the place was packed, the music was loud, and there were no police in sight. Everyone knew everyone down here in the Flats. They all went to school together, and insults and double-crosses going all the way back to junior high school are not soon forgiven, or forgotten. This is probably why, when Shorty came out of the bathroom at the party, she saw two large women savagely beating one of her companions. Shorty did what most people would probably do: she threw her 97-pound body into the fray and did her best to come to her friend's aid. The entire place erupted into an alcohol-fueled melee which spilled out into the street. Sirens wailed and police cruisers screeched in as dozens of young men and women scattered between the houses. Shorty found herself sitting on the curb. She felt something wet on her stomach and looked down to see approximately one-fifth of her body's blood supply soaking her sweatpants and t-shirt. At some point in the fight, she had been stabbed in the stomach.
Shorty spent weeks in the hospital. Her doctors were astounded that she hadn't died there on the street. They looked at x-rays and tried to decide what parts of what organs should stay or go. In the end, this young woman, not yet 25 years old, survived. So many do not.
People who hear this story will ask questions: why did she join the fight? I think that one has an easy answer. A better question might be: who brings a knife to a houseparty? Unfortunately: lot of people.
It's called a "Culture of Honor." It pops up in places from the Ozarks to Scotland to Afghanistan. Cultures of honor occur when there is a premium on protecting one's family and resources from predators…mostly human ones. Reputation and respect are everything, and any slight can be met with deadly force. It is well-described by Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers." For examples, think of the honor killings in some Islamic cultures, or the Hatfields and McCoys right here in the USA. The conditions that gave rise to this credo of violence still pertain today, in the American ghetto and other urban jungles and rural wastelands throughout the world.
The Jovan Belcher murder-suicide, in which a Kansas City football player took the life of his baby's mother before ending his own, brought this culture of honor to the forefront for me. On sports radio, the DJs were this morning discussing the machismo in the NFL, the use of weapons as a fashion accessory, and Coach Tony Dungy's informal poll of his locker room, in which sixty out of eighty professional football players owned firearms. In their opinion, this tragedy was not about the Second Amendment, waiting periods, or firearm licensing, but about the ease and convenience that firearms provide for violent acts, the ability to act on a violent impulse with no time to reflect or calm down. I would take this concept a step further: this killing may have had its roots in the culture of honor, a culture in which "disrespect" leads to a physical confrontation, in which two people who will not back down or apologize escalate closer to a final showdown from which neither of them may walk away.
This belief system cannot survive for long unless there are communities without hope, children without role models, adults without education. Unless we give each child in the ghetto a fighting chance to make it out, these sorts of events will continue to happen. As hard as it is to accept, in the ghetto, honor murders make sense to a lot of people.
I saw Shorty the other day, healthy, happy, walking without a limp. She's working several part-time jobs to make a living, has a decent car and a new apartment. She's going to make it out of the ghetto. So many do not.
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