For me, the low point in Tuesday night's debate was when Mitt Romney blamed single parents for contributing to gun violence in America. I felt myself gasp, because I am a single parent. In a flash, I felt myself relive the challenges that caused my marriage to dissolve, and for a moment I considered whether my divorce from my ex-husband might lead to our child one day using a gun to end the life of another child. Rewind back to reality: I have lived in inner-city communities my entire life. I was raised by a single parent. When Mitt Romney speaks of single parents contributing to gun violence, I believe he is speaking to me, not to white, single parents whose suburb-dwelling kids have good schools and enthusiastic teachers. I am very aware that the highest percentage of gun violence in America occurs in communities like the one in which I was raised, minority neighborhoods where there are high educational dropout rates and few employment opportunities.
If there is one thing I know for sure, it is that it truly does take a village to raise a child. I will never forget the day my second grade teacher came to my home to speak with my grandmother about the opportunity for me to be bussed to a school in a middle class, white community where the educational resources would better match my potential. At the time, the schools in Watts were not fully sourced with music, academics and sports programs. Over the years, this teacher had watched my progress and offered whatever she could to enhance my educational experience. Often, she took me to her home on weekends and to plays at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I look back today and see our time together as enchanting and inspirational. She was a part of the village that nurtured me into who I am today.
The following year I did attend another school in a community several miles away from my home district. This school was surrounded by homes with two-car garages and manicured lawns. When I returned home each day, I watched the kids in my neighborhood begin to join gangs and sell drugs. In the community where I lived, selling drugs was celebrated and aspired to by many boys. Crack had come to the streets of Watts, and gang violence exploded. The parents of these kids were often working long hours or struggling with their own demons, preventing them from participating in the lives of their children. These parents, both single and married, were left with the effect of inadequate resources to nurture their children. By the time I left town to attend Howard University, the majority of the boys I played with as a little child were incarcerated for drug activity or had been killed in a fight over drug turf.
Yes, the candidates are right that gun violence must be addressed, and families and education need to play a big part in this effort. But gun violence will continue unabated if the NRA has a blank check to do whatever it desires and the money from drug sales is one of the few things that can make inner-city kids feel seen, powerful, and successful.
Single parents are not the reason we have a culture of violence that is devastating our communities. To lift such struggling communities to a place where such violence is no longer an option, it absolutely takes a village willing to take responsibility for creating nurturing, loving environments. That village includes a NRA that does not protect the sale of automatic weapons, even as young men die at alarming rates. That village includes local and state government agencies that are effective in the war on drugs. That village includes schools and teachers with the resources to support kids that need more than math and reading. And that village includes parents, single and married, who have the strength of will and hope for their children to assure that they're surrounded with loving, caring people and the resources that will lead to success, rather than an early death.
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Speaking as one who became a single mother after a youth in upper middle class society, I can attest that it is amazing how "pro-life" turns to "pro-adoption" once a woman decides to continue an unsupported pregnancy, and that once you are a single parent-- especially since the pregnancy-- you are regarded as a bane to all that is decent, even if you've never taken a dime of government money (and yeah, that's what it's all about: Money. Not life, not empowerment, not decency, not God, not our children. It's about what they think we are costing them). So yes, rest assured: We are all in this together. --Mari Gallion
IT's certainly not NRA members that are shooting up our cities.
Single parent have raised quality children but at what cost? If the single mother is on the margin of poverty and the child does not find stardom or sports a circle of poverty is fostered, maintained and passed on.
The governor's concern is welcomed and he deserves our votes....
Single parents are not the cause or reason for so much gun violence in America or the African American community.
The loopholes in our gun laws are primarily responsible because cheap guns are funneled straight from the gun shows directly to young Black males in the African American community.
As long as ANYONE can purchase as many guns as they want at "gun shows" and since anyone can purchase a gun in a "private" guns sale without having to go through a background check, as well the sell not having to be recorded, people are going to continue to purchase multiple/multiple dozens of guns at gun "shows" and then re-sell them on the streets to anyone that wants one. As long as these hyenas are out there making a profit from selling guns to young immature people, the gun violence is going to continue.
Single parents are not cruising gun shows and coming into their communities with a trunk full of guns to basically distribute to any young immature person they can.
The NRA is full aware of this, and couldn't give a damn, particularly because they know that it is primarily young Black males are targeted for these gun sells.
VOTE DEMOCTATIC VOTE OBAMA/BIDEN 2012 !!!!
has parenting suffered in my lifetime? absolutely, and for many reasons including rising divorce rates, working mothers (in two parent households) as well as economics. to attempt to lay gun violence at the feet of single mothers, however, is a reach at best.
Similarly,Mitt Romney visited the military aristocrats of El Salvador who were of his own station in life as far as wealth and privileges but who had been busy economizing by massacring "los Indios" the peasants" who had no margin of lands to grow their food. When the archbishop spoke out in sermons, they murdered him as well. Two educated women went to the Court of Justice in Spain to present their case in testimony to what was going on. Very few in the US acknowledge that it was the head of our CIA who suggested the best military police technique for getting rid of "expendables" in the population of Latin America by doing away with "national borders" and instead creating a borderless police-state. He too became president of the United States. He is now too senile to recall.
The GOP pick of the crop may not be as mentally stable from the article that I read just days ago in Rolling Stone about George Romney returning from Mexico to become candidate for the presidency depending on his making up his mind whether he wanted to or not really follow through.
Ann Romney's recent message to her husband,concerned for his health is the same indicator of why he never speaks about the grandfather-and-pre-grandfather days that inspired the family move to Mexico from Ute territory; but only says his grandfather left Mormon territory to live in Mexico with whatever number of wives(?)unknown. It is medically recognized that multiplying the survival of offspring by multiple wives of one husband increase physical and mental pathology within the polygamous group. And you think Muslims strange? Apparently, the GOP are the new Supermen.
I don't know how anyone could watch him and still support him.
His wife was disrespectful to military families during her interview on The View.
Those two don not belong anywhere near the White House.
That entire binders thing was disrespectful of women, period.
Blaming gun violence on single Moms was disrespectful, and somewhat racist. I'm sure that he was mostly blaming African-American and Hispanic single Moms.