Some people are absolutely beyond redemption. I've got zero sympathy for these kids, and any active participants need to be locked up for a very long time. Remove them from society. This isn't a youthful indiscretion. Someone who plans to kill a poor old man, laughs about it, actually beats and kills the man, all while filming the entire thing has something seriously wrong with them. They're broken and dangerous, and they don't deserve any benefit of the doubt.
I can't get down with this.
I want to be clear: I'm a Black person living in Philly. Everyone I know is talking about this, and everyone I know is aghast at the entire situation. These kids absolutely deserve consequences,
legal and lasting consequences, and pretty harsh ones, at that.
But I can't get down with this language (and not to single you out, Addie, you're not the only one in this thread talking like this).
I've watched this video, and
there will be no convincing me that these kids set out with the intent to kill a man. I don't even see evidence in this video that these kids thought what was happening would result in this man dying (this
does not absolve them, before anybody gets me fucked up). I see one overt aggressor; I see one poor girl who looks horrified from the start of the video until the end. I see the boy in the white shirt who's filming stop filming and look shocked when whatever happens when the girl with the cone runs off-screen happens. And then I see a group of other kids who look a mix of entertained, then complacent, then confused/shocked.
I watch this video, and I see a
Lord of the Flies moment in real-time. What I don't see is the same ragtag group of murderers set out with the intent to kill that so many in here are insistent on seeing. And so,
I will not use the same language to describe these kids that I would use to describe a ragtag group of murderers set out with the intent of kill. Because THOSE people exist. They're not a fictional archetype. There are cold-blooded killers in this world. We see evidence of this in threads posted on this site damn near weekly. This language should be reserved for them. Because when we use this language, and we start to see these kids (who went too far in some shit they shouldn't have been doing in the first place, which resulted in the death of a man, and yes THEY DESERVE CONSEQUENCES I will repeat) as no different than people who truly do revel and gloat over the idea of killing people, then we create the environment for every kid (and it is not inconsequential that these kids are Black) engaging in any level of illegality to be viewed and thus punished in this same light. We see this same language used to describe the origin of the fear of Black boy shot for stealing a soft drink from a convenience store. This language, used so wantonly, trickles down and becomes the reason it was OK for a bunch of white people to watch a police officer step on the back of a Black girl for acting rowdy at a public pool. The fear and hate that this language spawns becomes the reason why a Black boy in a hoodie, carrying nothing but skittles and an Arizona iced tea, doesn't make it home.
This shit is all connected.
This language is not just inaccurate, but it bears down on the lives of all of these kids. Not just the kids involved in this crime; ALL of
These kids. It crushes them down and then reshapes what they see to be the expectations of their lives. It affects the opportunities afforded them. It robs them of the benefit of the doubt so many
other kids get when, like most kids, they inevitably do something wrong.
And that's not to trivialize what happened to James Lambert -- his life was stolen by a group of kids who absolutely deserve to be brought to justice despite the hand society has dealt them. But when it comes to
These kids, we have to
stop stopping at the violence. We have to stop running away from our collective responsibility in how a world was shaped where shit like this can happen, even down to how we
talk about it.
