Quote:
Originally Posted by Sugar08
The one time I met him in person, I was pretty unimpressed.
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Ditto. Today, I remember 2 things about meeting him: 1) He was fun to watch. 2) His hair was fly. That's it.
I agree (for the most part) with Sugar. While I wouldn't say his tone was necessarily "attacking," it was definitely more than "critical." Also, I don't want to call it "anti-black," but seeing as how the whole country has taken up a "for us or against us" mentality(not just GC members), there's not a whole lot else you could call it(though I'm sure I could list some if I had the time to think about it right now). I appreciate his opinion and his stepping up to provide a fresh look at factors that have remained buried, but it didn't come off as looking at a particular stance to uncover new truths. IMO, skating past all the racial issues negates a lot of the reason people were out there protesting, though I'm not sure he meant it to do so. By that, I mean that I felt like he was writing as though the fact that the public did not know the whole story gave him the right to make out the situation to be more like it was thousands of misguided people supporting a boy who didn't deserve it and would never have gotten into trouble if a, b, and c had been in place. That's not true. Firstly, just because the public may not be aware of those details, does not mean these details were any less true. Secondly, I agree that the community should aim to be a more preventive community than one that tries to remedy a problem after it's gotten out of control. However, did the other 5 boys have absent fathers? What about the person who pulled a shot-gun on those teens or the kids who hung the nooses or the ones who hit the boy over the head with a bottle? I don't think all of those wrong-doers came from broken homes. Furthermore, did any of them have prior criminal records? Having a loving set of parents and a clean record does not guarantee that kids won't do things they shouldn't. I felt that, while the article helped me understand where Mychal's problems
may have started, bringing up his absent father and past record unnecessarily took away from the heart of the argument (the unfairness of the charges and the fact that he's still in jail) without providing anything that really needed to be thought about. It was a good read and I'm glad to have seen it because it adds to the bigger picture, but the author conveyed himself (to me) in the way that he meant(if he did, in fact, have the best of intentions when writing it).