Unit 1Final Essay

It Can Happen to you too

            Leading Chicano writer Luis Rodriguez, a former gang banger and former youth organizer analyzed violence in which it can bring to many of our attention. In his book Hearts and Hands he writes about violence to better inform people on the bigger problem that society is facing, he comes up with various solutions to this problem and he makes very good suggestions on how society can handle problems such as violence. To many of us violence seems to only happen in movies since we hardly experience it but violence has become a big problem in some community and it needs to come to an end. Many assumptions have been made towards youth and violence; people assume that the youth just doesn’t care and that they have no future going for them so they take them as a lost cause and lack to give them any acknowledgement. People will stereotype many youth and affiliate them as violent people. After Reading Rodriguez analysis of violence and his critique of our current solutions to the dilemma that our communities suffer do to violence changes my point of view of the problem. Because the youth are so vulnerable to violence, they are the ones that are the most affected because they are going through a stage of development, they need better communication with adult figures, they need guidance from experienced people, many youth go out to look for the support they don’t receive at home out on the streets and that can lead them to turn to gangs, some communities fail to pay any attention to this situation and fail to support the youth, people should be more aware of violence in every community due to the youth is the next generation and they are being put away in jail cells and not given a chance to succeed in life. People should come to a realization that what they are doing know is only affecting the youth more.

                While youth is in the process of figuring out who they are; by either making their own decisions or experimenting, Adults need to diagnose the difficult stage that the youth is going through, they are in the process of learning and adapting to society. Adults should provide guidance and have meaningful talks with the youth that can help make better choices. In Rodriguez analysis he discusses about Francisco’s situation whom was very smart but seemed to have trouble staying in school. Francisco was raised by a single mother because his father walked out of his life when he was young; he lacked strong communication with adults he looked up too. Since Francisco was very young he was hurt and often felt like he was alone, so he turned to gangs for comfort. Francisco was associating with the wrong people and he was being categorizes and often he was being put down and set up for failure by his own community. Rodriguez states “…although he had many things going for him. What he needed to get through this situation was a unified collective of caring adults who would hang in there with him… couldn’t be done when those most needed to help him do so had removed themselves from an integral and trustworthy place in the boy’s life” (73). Francisco was thrown out of school and no school wanted him, he dropped out. Francisco was out in the streets and later began to hang out with the wrong people, he had nothing else to. Since his community through him out of the only place where he can become someone he lost all hope and found comfort out in the streets. When youth are at their weakest and they have experimented things that resulted with negative consequences, like being involved with gangs, all they need is someone who can support them to do better choices instead of being punished. When the youth keeps being punished harshly and when they are being isolated form their community they have nowhere to turn to but to the people that will be there for them. Many can argue that the youth should know better because “they are old enough to know better” but because they are in such a vulnerable stage in life, where they feel like everything is good and sounds good at the moment, what they need is an adult that will be there to support them and provide guidance for them that can possibly guide the youth down the right path.  

            Because many adults find it easier to just punish the youth for their mistakes, the youth will find it hard to reflect on their own mistakes. Instead of helping the youth the community is making it harder for them to do better in life. They create laws that prevent them from rehabilitating, giving the youth harsh consequences that cause them to be more angry, this shouldn’t be the way that the community and the society as a whole to solve problem. Giving the youth a little more for their self-control will allow them to learn from their mistakes and help them do better in the future. Annette Fuentes an author writes about the “Zero Tolerance Law” that is aimed to clean up the schools, states in her article Arresting Development, Zero tolerance and the criminalization of children, “There are a lot of children arrested for disorderly conduct, which has a very subjective definition. Whoever is standing there gets to define it,” (20). Because the authority has so much power over what is “disorderly conduct” they are creating more criminals rather than preventing them.  Since many of these students were getting arrested for things such as refusing to sit down made them infuriated that cause them to rebel more.

            The adults in these youth’s lives are not providing the right guidance that is necessary for the youth to succeed. The adults are not guiding the youth down the right instead they are putting them aside and instead of communicating with them and trying to let them know what is right over wrong they are giving up and just give them harsh consequences to will eventually lead to give them criminal records. Handing the youth to law enforcement is just showing the youth that the adults in their lives have given up on them and don’t think that they believe in them. Rodriguez claims that since we live in such a rapid life style, the adults forget about what surrounds them ,” They are not vested to do anything real lasting because they are more concerned about their career, their financial standing, or their own neck,” (49). The fact that the adults are not helping the youth in life, they are worrying about themselves makes them selfish, they are supposedly here to guide their youth and help them down the right path, but since they are not being there for the youth can affect the youth and make them feel like they are alone in life and can turn them to violence because the people who is supposedly made to be there for them is not there.

                Society is doing nothing to give a hand to the youth that is the next generation for the future, because they are being put down and not given a chance to do things right they are set up for failure. Many of the youth stop trying because they feel that they aren’t good enough, law enforcement will stereotype them as bad people and accuse them of doing wrong. “The public debate is now limited largely to those who demonize  youth, who want to put them away to use the repression to curb their natural instinct to re-create the world,” (Rodriguez 45). The fact that people are out to   put the youth away to “clean up the streets and schools” is very over rated. The youth need chances to learn from their mistakes they have a long life ahead of them to change their ways to become something useful in life. Many youth have dreams and inspirations to do something big with their lives, buts since they are not being inspired to do something in life they will not live up to their dreams. The youth could have been very successful later in life but because they are getting criminal records at such a young age they start to believe that they have nothing good set up for them in the future.      

            Therefore, the youth need more guidance from the adult figures in their lives to support them guide them down a right path that will allow them to reevaluate their mistakes and learn from them. Since society is failing to help out the youth many of which have been affected by the consequences that they are paying for find it useless to try in life. If the community wants to see change with the youth they need to have better communication with the youth and allow them some power over their lives and not give them harsh consequences. Many adults fail to support the youth, the youth are at a point where they need guidance and love that they are not receiving at home. The adults need to address the problem in order to fix the situation that can affect them later in life.