Another Day in the Death of America

by Gary Younge

  3. Probinso2013, “From Swingersville to the Gulfton Ghetto, A Brief History,” Disposition Disposal (blog), June 8, 2013, https://dispositiondisposal.wordpress.com/2013/06/08/from-swingersville-to-the-gulfton-ghetto-a-brief-history/.

  4. Ryan Pintado-Vertner, “The War on Youth,” Colorlines, December 10, 1999, http://www.colorlines.com/articles/war-youth.

  5. Foti Kallergis, Twitter, November 24, 2013, https://twitter.com/heykitty/status/404484915460190208.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1. Valerie Boyd, Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston (New York: Scribner, 2003), 65.

  2. Quoted in Nancy Gibbs, “An American Tragedy: The Aftermath of Katrina,” Time, September 4, 2005, http://time.com/3210311/hurricane-katrina-the-aftermath/.

  3. Jens Manuel Krogstad, “Gun Homicides Steady After Decline in ‘90s; Suicide Rate Edges Up,” Pew Research Center, October 21, 2015, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/21/gun-homicides-steady-after-decline-in-90s-suicide-rate-edges-up/. Also see http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=teen-homicide-suicide-and-firearm-deaths.

  4. Chris Kirk and Dan Kois, “How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?” Slate, September 16, 2013, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html.

  5. Dan Kois, “A Year of Gun Deaths,” Slate, December 12, 2013, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/12/newtown_anniversary_what_slate_learned_from_trying_and_failing_to_record.html.

  6. Joe Nocera, “And in Last Week’s Gun News,” New York Times, January 29, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/opinion/nocera-and-in-last-weeks-gun-news.html.

  7. Adam Weinstein, “The Times Killed Its Gun Report After the Writer Asked for a Raise,” Gawker, June 20, 2014, http://gawker.com/the-times-killed-its-gun-report-after-the-writer-aske-1592851849.

  8. Joe Nocera, “The Last Gun Report,” New York Times, June 10, 2014, http://nocera.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/the-last-gun-report/?_r=0.

  9. Melissa Repko, “Teen Fatally Shot when Walking Down Street in Southeast Dallas,” Dallas Morning News, November 24, 2013, http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2013/11/teen-fatally-shot-when-walking-down-street-in-southeast-dallas.html/.

  10. “Dallas Teen Killed by Random Gunfire,” Fox 4, fox4news.com (story removed from site).

  11. Susan D. Moeller, Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War, and Death (New York: Routledge, 1999), or see http://www.savan.nl/data/IntroductiontoCompassion-fatigue_Moeller.pdf.

  12. Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2013), 194.

  13. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, 11, or see http://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/2429/2487430/pdfs/lippmann.pdf.

  14. Table: “Average and Median Amounts of Net Compensation,” Social Security Administration, https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html (accessed April 13, 2016).

  15. For 2013 personal income of $28,031, see https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html.

  16. Lars Willnat and David H. Weaver, The American Journalist in the Digital Age (Bloomington, IN: School of Journalism, Indiana University, 2014), http://news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/2014/05/2013-american-journalist-key-findings.pdf.

  17. Quoted in Michael E. Young, “Dallas Morning News Wins Pulitzer for Editorial Writing,” The Dallas Morning News, April 13, 2010, http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/dallas/headlines/20100413-Dallas-Morning-News-wins-Pulitzer-for-5971.ece.

  18. Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped: A Memoir (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 237.

  19. Quoted in Harvey J. Graff, The Dallas Myth: The Making and Unmaking of an American City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 17.

  20. “JFK Death Not Associated with Dallas,” The Southeast Missourian, November 20, 1988, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1893&dat=19881120&id=1LYfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=S9cEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5675,2700778&hl=en.

  21. Molly Ivins, Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? (New York: Random House, 1991), 37.

  22. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 75.

  23. Quoted in Graff, The Dallas Myth, 19.

  24. Ibid., 127.

  25. “Quick Facts, Dallas, Texas,” United States Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/4819000 (accessed March 2, 2016).

  26. Sam Howe Verhovek, “Dallas Is First Big Texas City to Elect a Black to Be Mayor,” New York Times, May 8, 1995, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/08/us/dallas-is-first-big-texas-city-to-elect-a-black-to-be-mayor.html.

  27. Graff, The Dallas Myth, 169.

  28. Jason DeParle et al., “Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor’ Startle the Census,” New York Times, November 19, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/us/census-measures-those-not-quite-in-poverty-but-struggling.html?_r=0.

  29. Hope Yen, “4 in 5 US Adults Face Near-Poverty, No Work for at Least Parts of Their Lives,” Business Insider, July 28, 2013, http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-poll-4-in-5-us-adults-face-near-poverty-no-work-for-at-least-parts-of-their-lives-2013–7.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (London: Allen Lane, 2012), 10.

  32. “Census Tract 116.01, Dallas County, Texas,” Table: Data, USBoundary.com, http://www.usboundary.com/Areas/Census%20Tract/Texas/Dallas%20County/Census%20Tract%20116.01/493345#Data (accessed April 13, 2016).

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1. Brandy Zadrozny, “The Year in Murder: 2013 Marks a Historic Low for Many Cities,” The Daily Beast, January 1, 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/01/the-year-in-murder-2013-marks-a-historic-low-for-many-cities.html.

  2. Gary Younge, “Gun Violence in Chicago: A Struggle for Answers in Obama’s Hometown,” Guardian, February 12, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/12/barack-obama-gun-violence-chicago.

  3. “Crime in the United States 2012,” Table 8, Federal Bureau of Investigation, https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/8tabledatadecpdf/table-8-state-cuts/table_8_offenses_known_to_law_enforcement_by_illinois_by_city_2012.xls (accessed May 13, 2016). Compared to “Crime in the United States 2011,” Table 8, Federal Bureau of Investigation, https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table8state-cuts/table_8_offenses_known_to_law_enforcement_illinois_by_city_2011.xls (accessed May 13, 2016).

  4. Matt Pearce, “10 Dead, 43 Wounded in Chicago’s Bloody Holiday Weekend,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/29/nation/la-na-nn-bloody-chicago-weekend-20120529.

  5. See ICASulaTies.org, “Operation Enduring Freedom, Coalition Military Fatalities by Year,” http://icasualties.org/OEF/index.aspx (accessed May 13, 2016). Compared to “Uniform Crime Reports,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, UCR Publications, Crime in the United States, https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr-publications#Crime (accessed May 13, 2016).

  6. Peter Nickeas, “Fourth Sibling from Same Chicago Family Killed by Gun Violence,” Chicago Tribune, January 27, 2013, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-01-27/news/ct-met-ronnie-chambers-dead-20130127_1_gun-violence-gunshot-victims-cabrini-green.

  7. Monica Davey, “In a Soaring Homicide Rate, a Divide in Chicago,” New York Times, January 3, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/us/a-soaring-homicide-rate-a-divide-in-chicago.html?_r=0.

  8. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 9.

  9. Sean Stillmaker, “Chicago Still the Most Segregated U.S. City,” Chicagoist, October 31, 2010, http://chicagoist.com/2010/10/31/chicago_still_the_most_segregated_c.php.

  10. Lolly Bowean and Jeremy Gorner, “Spike in Violence Takes Its Toll on Residents in Chicago’
s Troubled Neighborhoods,” Chicago Tribune, July 1, 2012, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012–07–01/news/ct-met-chicago-violence-0701-20120701_1_homicides-last-year-neighborhoods-shootings.

  11. Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Vintage, 2010), 395.

  12. Ibid., 396.

  13. Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004), 249.

  14. “Mapping America: Every City, Every Block,” tract 4603, New York Times, http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Obama, Dreams from My Father, 157.

  18. Erica Demarest, “Slain South Chicago Teen Wanted to ‘Get His Life Straightened Out’: Family,” DNAinfo, November 24, 2013, https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20131124/south-chicago/slain-south-chicago-teen-wanted-get-his-life-straightened-out-family.

  19. Ibid.

  20. “National Youth Gang Survey Analysis,” National Gang Center, https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Survey-Analysis/Measuring-the-Extent-of-Gang-Problems#estimatednumbergangs (accessed March 5, 2016).

  21. Ibid.

  22. H. R. Hutson et al., “The Epidemic of Gang-Related Homicides in Los Angeles County from 1979 Through 1994,” The Journal of the American Medical Association 274, no. 13 (1995): 1031–1036.

  23. Malcolm W. Klein, The American Street Gang: Its Nature, Prevalence, and Control (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 81.

  24. Deborah Prothrow-Stith with Michaele Weissman, Deadly Consequences: How Violence Is Destroying Our Teenage Population and a Plan to Begin Solving the Problem (New York: HarperPerennial, 1993), 106.

  25. James Baldwin, The Evidence of Things Not Seen (New York: Owl Books, 1995), 8.

  26. Michael Lansu, “Deandre Ellis Shot Dead at West Englewood Barbershop,” Homicide Watch Chicago: A Chicago Sun-Times Publication, September 27, 2014, http://homicides.suntimes.com/2014/09/27/deandre-ellis-shot-dead-at-west-englewood-barbershop/.

  27. Prothrow-Stith and Weissman, Deadly Consequences, 24.

  28. Scott Olsen, “One Dead, Seven Shot During Violent Weekend in Chicago,” Getty Images, November 25, 2013, http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/building-resident-signs-a-memrial-to-18-year-old-tyshon-news-photo/451955749.

  29. Sudhir A. Venkatesh, Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), 29.

  30. Jonathan Tilove, “Where Have All the Men Gone? Black Gender Gap is Widening,” Seattle Times, May 5, 2005, http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/where-have-all-the-men-gone-black-gender-gap-is-widening.

  31. “Census Tract 4603.02, Cook County, Illinois,” Table: Data, USBoundary.com, http://www.usboundary.com/Areas/454133#Data (accessed April 13, 2016).

  32. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012), 189.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1. Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (London: PaperMac, 1992), 50.

  2. Quoted in Brad Tuttle, How Newark Became Newark: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of an American City (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 65.

  3. Ibid., 8.

  4. “New Jersey Resident Population by Municipality: 1930–1990,” New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, http://lwd.dol.state.nj.us/labor/lpa/census/1990/poptrd6.htm (accessed April 4, 2016).

  5. Steve Strunsky, “Newark Teen Shooting Victim Recalled as ‘Good Dude’ Who Tried to Shield Girlfriend from Gunfire,” NJ.com, November 24, 2013, http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/11/newark_shooting_victim_recalled_nice.html.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid.

  9. All quoted in Tuttle, How Newark Became Newark, 9.

  10. Ibid., 208.

  11. Ronald Smothers, “Newark’s Ex-Mayor Admits Tax Evasion and Avoids Prison,” New York Times, November 1, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/01/nyregion/newark-s-ex-mayor-admits-tax-evasion-and-avoids-prison.html.

  12. Tuttle, How Newark Became Newark, 225.

  13. Ibid., 266.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Strunsky, “Newark Teen Shooting Victim Recalled as ‘Good Dude.’”

  16. Dale Russakoff, “Schooled,” New Yorker, May 19, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/schooled.

  17. Tuttle, How Newark Became Newark, 162.

  18. Kevin J. Mumford, Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 125.

  19. Kerner Commission, “Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders,” reproduced by the Eisenhower Foundation, http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner.pdf (accessed March 2, 2016).

  20. Lawrence Mishel et al., “Wage Stagnation in Nine Charts,” Economic Policy Institute, January 6, 2015, http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/.

  21. Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney, “The Uncomfortable Truth About American Wages,” New York Times, October 22, 2012, http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-american-wages/.

  22. William J. Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Vintage, 1997), 26.

  23. Ibid., 27.

  24. Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 123.

  25. Wilson, When Work Disappears, 31.

  26. John R. Logan and Brian J. Stults, “The Persistence of Segregation in the Metropolis: New Findings from the 2010 Census,” US 2010 Project, March 24, 2011, http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/Data/Report/report2.pdf.

  27. Joshua Wilwohl, “Report: Newarkers Among New Jersey’s Poorest,” Newark Patch, November 7, 2011, http://patch.com/new-jersey/newarknj/report-newarkers-among-new-jerseys-poorest.

  28. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 126.

  29. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 99.

  30. Delbert S. Elliott, “Youth Violence: An Overview” (paper presented at the Aspen Institute’s Children’s Policy Forum “Children and Violence Conference,” February 18–21, 1994), http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/publications/papers/CSPV-008.pdf.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1. Daniel J. Siegel, Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2013), 67.

  2. Ibid., 69.

  3. Ibid., 108.

  4. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers, Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 285.

  5. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (London: Penguin, 1992).

  6. “George W. Bush: Out of His Father’s Shadow,” BBC News, November 8, 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/americas/2000/us_elections/profiles/576504.stm.

  7. “Cameron Student Photo Is Banned,” BBC News, March 2, 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6409757.stm.

  8. “Justin Bieber Pleads Guilty to Careless Driving in Deal,” BBC News, August 13, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28781437.

  9. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012), 2.

  10. Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Harper Perennial edition (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 232.

  11. Jeffrey Toobin, “This Is My Jail,” New Yorker, April 14, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/04/14/this-is-my-jail.

  12. German Lopez, “Police Are Much Less Likely to Solve Homicides When the Victims Are Black,” Vox, June 11, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/6/10/8757163/homicide-race.

  13. Quoted in Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of M
urder in America (London: The Bodley Head, 2015), xvii.

  14. Ibid., xvii.

  15. Frank Newport, “Gallup Review: Black and White Attitudes Toward Police,” Gallup, August 20, 2014, http://www.gallup.com/poll/175088/gallup-review-black-white-attitudes-toward-police.aspx.

  16. Leovy, Ghettoside, xvii.

  AFTERWORD

  1. Gary Younge, “Tighter Gun Control Won’t Stop the Violence on Its Own,” Guardian, May 4, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/04/gun-control-violence-poverty-segregation-nra.

  2. “Portraits of the Hundreds of Children Killed by Guns Since Newtown,” Mother Jones, December 10, 2013, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/children-killed-guns-after-newtown-portraits.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Agger, Ben, and Timothy W. Luke, eds. Gun Violence and Public Life. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2014.

  Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2012.

  Baldwin, James. The Evidence of Things Not Seen, Tenth Anniversary Owl Books Edition. New York: Owl Books, 1995.

  Berger, John. A Seventh Man: Migrant Workers in Europe. New York: Viking Books, 1975.

  Bluestone, Barry, and Bennett Harrison. The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry. New York: Basic Books, 1982.

  Boyd, Valerie. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Scribner, 2003.

  Braman, Donald. Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.

  Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. London: Penguin, 1992.

  Cohen, Stanley. States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2013.

  Coles, Roberta L. The Best Kept Secret: Single Black Fathers. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010.

  Cosby, Bill, and Alvin F. Poussaint. Come On, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007.

  Dyson, Michael E. Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005.