The Violence Gap

Violence is real—but more real for some of us than others. Serving as a corps member with City Year Detroit, it became clear to me that the thing I had most taken for granted growing up—the thing that made my childhood experience so much different from that of many of the kids we worked with—was not never having to worry about food or having a roof over my head. No— rather, it was feeling safe: feeling safe going to school, feeling safe to go outside and play, and feeling safe in bed at night.

When I’m in Chicago, I stay in a neighborhood where I don’t have to worry about gun violence at all. Yet Chicago is the same city that houses four out of the twenty-five most dangerous neighborhoods in America—including number two, where in one year your odds of becoming a victim are estimated at one in four. This is same city where from September 2007 through December 2008, 508 students were shot—a little more than one child for every day—and where 37 children died from shootings during the last school year. This is the same city where less than a week ago, honors student Derrion Albert was beaten to death on his way home from school.

Derrion Albert’s death is horrifying. It’s brutal. It’s tragic. When deaths are reported as statistics, they are some how easier to swallow, because the humanity of each number—of each precious human life—is hidden behind the language of math and reason. But when a video relentlessly shows the violence that kids in these neighborhoods must regularly face, we have no more excuse for closing our eyes to the alternate reality that exists mere miles away from those same safe neighborhoods where violence is rarely heard of. Children exposed to violence—as victims or as witnesses—must find a way to process their feelings, either by becoming “anxious, fearful or withdrawn” or by learning to use violence themselves, adding to the vicious cycle of community violence.

I would like to believe that Derrion Albert’s death would have made the news if someone didn’t have the brutal, graphic footage of it happening, but I’m not sure it would have. Gang violence and its innocent victims are tragically all too common. Some might say that’s because in violent neighborhoods, violence is no longer “news”—it’s the every day reality, and so isn't "newsworthy." One study found that homicides were more likely to win media coverage if the victims were white, particularly young or particularly old, women, of high socioeconomic status, or killed by strangers. This also seems to ring true for Chicago robberies: robberies in the affluent Lincoln Park neighborhood were given much more media attention than those in other parts of the city.

Yet while I understand that news outlets seek unique and unusual stories, media coverage shapes how a city defines its most pressing problems, as well as the discussions on how to address them. The fact that violence in these neighborhoods is largely ignored essentially means that we have accepted these "death pockets" as inevitable parts of a city landscape, when our greatest asset should be that we know where they are. Violence, scattered in a random pattern throughout a city, would be much harder to confront than localized violence. Shouldn’t the mere fact that violence in these neighborhoods is, in a way, “predictable” give us an advantage in trying to stop it?

Constant fear of being a victim can affect your entire life. I quit my job because I spent my whole day dreading going to work, fearing the walk home through an unsafe neighborhood in the middle of the night. That fear and dread seeped into every aspect of my life. Because I had the resources to quit, that was my reality for only a month. But for the kids who go to school and live in these dangerous neighborhoods, it is an unending reality.

So, my question now is this: what can we do about it? “Nothing” can’t be the answer.