I hate to put these up here, but they have a place and a story. I don't like the fact they were used in our paper and secondly I'm upset with myself for turning them in hoping my editors would side against this.
Some of these young men thought this was funny and even took pride in the fight that broke out by bragging on the sidelines. However their coaches did not and for that I am thankful. Arthur Hill's coach ripped these kids a new one and it made me feel proud inside that this behavior isn't being tolerated. It is so sad to see a lot of these kids with no direction in their life and so misinformed about life. They think they are confined to the hood life and how are they not supposed to believe this when it is reinforced around them all the time. Whether it's the print news, television, hip-hop, rap, movies, magazines they think they being tough is cool and it's sad.
For those of you that say well I grew up with these things and I turned out fine there is a big difference between you and them. Direction. You didn't grow up in a household where you like didn't have a father. If these kids have fathers they are working long hours doing manual labor jobs at factories for cheap wages and then sleeping when they are home.
For those of you that didn't have both parents I bet you had someone that filled the void for you. Whether it was church, another family member, a teacher or a best friend you had something to instill direction. These kid's don't have that, they have a version they are called gangs. They have all of these reinforced values around them in the mass media (music, movies, whatever)and they just don't have map to show them there is more.
1 comment:
These images tell a story that needs to be told, even if it's not the one you'd choose... keep it up.
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