As a citizen of the USA, as a citizen of the world, as a former teacher, as an activist, as a person who draws air, and any other way you want to cut it, I am offended by your solicitous and barely disguised bigotry. You are the kind of racist that I have spent a lifetime battling. And you set the predicate for the troll by acting like this is a legitimate pronouncement on a legitimate problem. I despise you and all who think you are legitimate. That would make them shallow or ignorant, and you......a malevolent human being.

The problems with a significant portion of the youth of today are not defined by color, nor is this a phenomenom of this moment in time. One need only look at South Boston, and the Irish, during and after the famine years, the back of the yards in Chicago with many Eastern Europeans, the steel mills of Pittsburgh, and on and on. The problem you describe is not a product of race. It is a product of hopelessness and a lack of opportunity. I am seeing the same symptoms among the children of single, working mothers of all backgrounds, as well as among the children of the underemployed of all backgrounds working at Walmart.

If you really want to deal with the problem (which, IMO, you really don't) then deal with the hopelessness that many of our youth face.

Mick