You get up in my face and I’ll get up in yours
You pack a gun and I’ll pack a gun
You pack an AK-47 and I’ll pack an AK-47
Mayor Daley’s announcement on Saturday that he supports a plan to make assault rifles available to all police officers in Chicago may actually reinforce the violent norms he is seeking to counteract.
There has been a lot of discussion and heated rhetoric in the news over the last week concerning how to stop the violence that plagues many of our neighborhoods. Folks have argued that the problem is bad parenting, drugs, a lack of jobs, unsafe and underperforming schools, access to guns, and even a loss of community and love. Several articles have brought up issues of race and commented on the tragedy of black and Latino kids killing members of their own communities. Mayor Daley even called an emergency summit of community leaders in an attempt to identify possible solutions. While leaders have been clamoring to identify a solution, we may be losing sight of the fact that youth violence is a complex issue that cannot be solved without addressing it on multiple levels. The politically popular or commonsense approaches may not be effective and may in fact reinforce that which we wish to target. I think that Dawn Turner Trice, in her Chicago Tribune column on April 21st may have had it right when she wrote, “All they have is a false sense of pride and a false sense of what it means to be a black man or a Hispanic man.” While I agree with her sentiment, I think it is important to shift the discussion from talking about what it means to be man within a racial context to simply examining their false and dangerous sense of masculinity in general. "Their greatest weapon may not be their guns,” it may be their notion of what it means to be a man. A notion that normalizes violence and equates respect with fear.
When we meet force with force and violence with violence we may achieve an immediate reduction in shootings while police are present but long-term change requires something more. Compliance with authority may appear, on the surface, to be effective social change but I believe that it actually reinforces the violent masculine norms that we are seeking to change.
Meeting force with force teaches young men that the strongest person always wins conflicts or, as our leaders would have us believe, the person with the biggest gun. It teaches young men that respect is about fear rather than love, caring, and a sense of community. It teaches young men that they don’t need to learn self-control because someone will always be there to tell them to get back in line.
A viable solution to male violence requires a multi-pronged approach that controls access to guns while providing social service supports that work to alleviate the detrimental impacts of poverty and remove barriers to effective parenting. At the same time we need to cultivate an environment in which aggressive male actions are not met with aggressive male posturing but rather with father figures, political leaders, newscasters, musicians, sports players, and religious and community leaders that are willing to equate strength with vulnerability and love. True strength is found in those willing to trust another with their own vulnerabilities not in those whose pride leads them into defensive aggression.
The way I see it, we have two huge elephants in the room that we are too uncomfortable or unwilling to address: Violent Masculinity and Poverty. Taking away their guns may make them less dangerous and cold weather may drive them inside but we have a problem with masculinity that can't be solved with intimidation.
The bigger person is not defined by the size of his gun.
Jeremy Karpen is the Green Party candidate for State Representative in the 39th District. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor currently working in a residential treatment center for troubled boys and volunteers as a Partner Abuse Intervention Facilitator.
