On Living in a "Safe" Suburb

We live on a busy street in a nice suburb of Pittsburgh. We moved here in 1993 because we were looking for an area with an excellent school system, close to town, with a house we could afford. We really weren't all that concerned with "safety" issues per se. We lock doors out of habit no matter where we've lived, and aside from petty theft from a pair of break-ins, have been lucky to not been victims of real crime.

Over the last few years, major crime has seeped into our suburb. In April 2000, a guy in a nearby neighborhood went on a shooting spree. His first victim was his neighbor, a Jewish woman. He drove to the next town and started shooting Indian people at a grocery. He shot-out the windows of two synagogues. He murdered a man in a Chinese restaurant, and finally shot a black karate instructor. When he was done, five people had been murdered, one man was left paralyzed from the neck down.

I wasn't very surprised, in some ways, because folks in Pennsylvania love their guns and there's a fairly ugly current of racism among some people. In fairness to my home, some folks in the town have started to deal with diversity issues and are at least talking about them.

More recently, though, the pace of murders has quickened. Two young men whom my daughter went to high school with, "allegedly" killed another man in what, "allegedly," was a drug deal gone wrong. While this murder did not happen in our town, it "allegedly" involved people who do.

A few weeks ago, a young man murdered his girlfriend. We don't need the "allegedlys" in this case - he killed himself before the police could arrest him.

Just last night, a policeman was shot during a domestic disbute. While the policeman was shot in the chest, he was wearing a bullet-proof vest and is expected to recover.

This level of violence in a "safe" suburb is depressing. I suppose it's just a reminder that nowhere is safe. It doesn't mean we should panic and crawl in our homes and never emerged - it just means we need to be vigilant everywhere.

Why American Slavery Reparations Are Such a Terrible Idea

I am politically liberal. I used to feel more middle-of the-road, but not so much lately. And that, in theory, should mean that I am in favor of the current suit for slavery reparations some African Americans have filed.

The more I have read about the suit, the more I am convinced it is a terrible idea, and I hope some judge throws it out soon.

The suit deals with wrongs that are over 140 years old. None of the people who made the decisions at that time are alive today. None of the people who were slaves are alive today. True, the ugly spectre of racism is still alive in some Americans today, but it has been fading over the last 40 years or so. The legal apparatus that reinforced racist behavior has mostly been dismantled.

I had mixed feelings about the moves to pay slave laborers from World War II, but at least a few of those laborers are still alive.

For Americans to take the American slavery suit seriously means we are becoming as obsessed about redressing generational past wrongs as people in the Balkans, Turkey, Armenia or the Middle East. We must be aware of our history, but we should never run our lives to make sure that wrongs against our father's father's father are refought in our own time. For that just means that we can't get beyond past ills.

Focusing on past wrongs means people are less likely to pay attention to current wrongs. We should be much more worried about the remaining vestiges of racism (housing, education, jobs) and work to erradicate them, rather than fighting issues related to past slavery.

Does this suit mean I should be suing the government because my grandmothers (and those before them) were not permitted to vote? My great-great-great-great-great-great* grandparents were Quaker immigrants to America who were exiled to an island and who starved to death; should I sue the English government or the American government to complain? Almost everyone in America can find a reason to sue someone over generational past wrongs. Suing will do nothing to change the lives of the people who died long ago.

Slavery does exist in our time, particularly in parts of Africa and Asia. We need to make people more aware of contemporary slavery, and we need to find ways to fight it. Suing over past slavery offenses can aid current slaveholders by keeping people distracted about the present.

We live in the present. At least, we ought to. I've always believed that we should learn from the past, live in the present and plan for the future. Suing over wrongs from hundreds of years ago keeps people too tied to the past.