Police say 17-year-old Kydaryune Curry was shot to death while he worked on a car in his yard because over the weekend he had shown disrespect to one of the suspects in front of a girl. The incident was so trivial to Curry, described as a fun-loving, good kid who attended a private Christian academy, that he didn't tell his family about it.
Sadly, the notion of "disrespect" has been at the core of far too many harmful incidents that have escalated to preposterous proportions and tragic consequences. The manic reaction in the Middle East to an amateurish video insulting the Prophet Muhammad is a global example.
But the teen violence in this country, in our neighborhoods - most often among black and Latino youth, primarily young males - that spawns from such trivial disagreements feels even more maddening. These kids live here among us.
David Jacobs, associate medical director of the F.H. "Sammy" Ross Trauma Institute at Carolinas Medical Center, enlightened me several years ago that much of the violence that ends up in the emergency rooms where he works - and too often the morgues - is the result of just such trivial "disrespect" issues: "Most of the time, it's very stupid stuff. Somebody took somebody's lunch or something." Yes. Or something.
Jacobs keeps pounding the gavel for all of us to get more aggressive about tackling this issue. It's hard to know where to start. But Jacobs made an apt observation: "All kids," he said, "have a propensity toward violence." And unfortunately, they now live in a society saturated with it - on TV and other media, and for some in their communities. "Many have become very comfortable with violence."
Breaking those connections and that comfortableness won't be easy. But all of us - parents, ministers, educators, community activists - must keep trying.. "Resilience factors" help most kids - two parents in the home, being on sports teams. These kinds of things counterbalance violence tendencies, Jacobs said.
"It's a crazy, senseless thing," middle school principal Mike Dunn said of Curry's death.
Crazy and senseless for the kid who lost his life - crazy and senseless for the kids charged, who if guilty, will for all intents and purposes lose theirs.
Posted by Fannie Flono
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