Two middle-aged black men were walking along a riverbank in an American city. The water was swift, churning — to the point of being angry. Jagged boulders broke the surface at various places making it appear even more dangerous.
One of the men spotted a teenaged black boy in the raging water, struggling to keep his head up high enough to prevent drowning, which was a clear and distinct possibility — nay, more like a probability if they didn’t move quickly.
The men jumped into the river and swam out toward the teen. They managed to get their arms around him and began dragging him back to the shore. By the time they were about to pull him out of the water they spotted another black child being carried away by the water. They threw the first child onto the river bank and swam back out to rescue the second child.
As they got him to the safety of the river bank another, and then another, and then yet a third child was seen fighting for their lives in the muddy river. As one of the men began swimming back out into the river, the other man started climbing out of the water.
“What are you doing, man? You can’t get out of the water, we’ve got to save these kids!”
The second man yelled, “No, I’ve got to get out. I’ve got to go upstream! I’ve got to see who’s throwing these boys in the river!”
Indeed. As a society, in the Coming Age of Biden, we have to be willing to go upstream if we want to begin to solve the dilemma — actually the plague — of youth gang and gun violence that’s infecting cities around the country. The mayhem and mindless loss of life has to move this issue to the top in terms of the concerns and challenges we face as a nation.
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsIn