The "Knockout Game:" Social Eruptions in a Land of Disenfranchisement

The 'knockout game:' The manifestation of apathy, anger,  and impulsive response to a feeling of disenfranchisement. The active use of calculated rage against someone perceived as not being disenfranchised by rendering them  dead or in a comatose state of existence. An attempt to gain respect by peers.

To create and promote this openess to this kind of behavior in a young person requires years of fine-tuning. A variety of parameters need to coexist to usher in a moral individual breakdown. Included within these can be being neglected love and a nurturing home environment, not having a Father and Mother present in the house, having a broken home caused by a divorce, lack of access to a fair education, and a lack of community support systems to provide consistent support to help each new generation of kids do well.  

The 'knockout game' is but the tip of an iceberg whose name is not Racism in America, but Socio-Economic disenfranchisement that is culturally ingrained across centuries. Here is my point. It is horrendous what these kids, young adults call 'fun.' But it is a reflection of what is on the inside, not only of the perpetrator, but quite possibly, I posit, the contorted, manipulated self-perception of the perpetrators socio-economic disenfranchisement. I cull my observational evidence from what appears as a nation-wide activity happening more frequently than we think. Though I caution myself to speak in generalizations, especially about a human race, it appears to be black on white physical assaults, and if you take the account of Jewish-Americans... focused on them. Is it black on white physical assault? Is it focused on Jews? If black on white, then what is the prevalence in 'attacks' since say... the Zimmerman trial? Has there been an increase, decrease, or about the same?

Is it black on white, or poor on perceived rich? In other words, disenfranchised, on what appears as established? It may be that this last dichotomy better explains this 'knockout game' phenomenon. I say this even after seeing that all perpetrators have been black? Have all victims been white? Either way, I don't think it is a skin color issue at its core, but a socio-economic issue at the heart of what one of my number one role-models of all time stood for. The great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A man I personally admire and yearn to emulate in his stance for fairness and equality in the face of tyranny and evil would probably connect the dots very quickly if he were present today to make sense of these 'knockout games.' You don't see black, white, asian, hispanic kids from middle class/ upper class communities doing this. It is because they have socio-economic support behind them. They come from families that more or less have a greater balance (never perfect) of the right kinds of needed supports and attention that a person needs growing up.

A disenfranchised poor, working/ welfare class is always 1 to 30 days from complete poverty. This is an overbearing feeling that crushes a person at a deep level. Whats worse, there is very limited social upward mobility, or expectation of success for hundreds of thousands, nay, millions of disenfranchised poor/ working class folk. Strangely, the exportation of America's manufacturing labor force was outsourced to very young children, tweens, and adoelscents in 'developing' countries, leading to the loss of... a countries manufacturing labor force which put money and opprotunity in peoples pockets. 

What I am getting at is that the "knockout game" is but one big tear in our social fabric. To fix the social quilt of the nation is a tall order, and at this point, perhaps wishful thinking. There appears o be no end in sight to the internationalist-minded mechanisms that are bankrupting the middle and poor-working class of our great nation creating all sorts of social eruptions. If we want to have communities that are free of these kind of barbaric actions, then it must begin by making small and big measures to refortify the family and strong community bonds that go past the color of a humans skin, their religion, and our own biases and preconceptions. We also have to stop listening to racial instigators who play to our emotions, for personal political positioning.

@CoachBill007 .. an Executive Function Skills Coach & Special Educator

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