No easy solutions to Black-Asian tensions

What are some solutions to the problem of black-on-Chinese/Asian street crimes and the underlying issues that have surfaced so emotionally in Oakland and San Francisco that I’ve been blogging about?

Simple question, no simple answers. Here are some thoughts that mash up hard and soft, public and private, and institutional and individual approaches. None is new or original to me, but the problem requires a reexamination of possible solutions:

To address the specific issue of black-on-Chinese/Asian street crimes:

Law & Order

• Arrest the perps and prosecute them to the maximum extent of the law. People who kill other people on our streets must be punished. But is harsh imprisonment the best way to turn this awful behavior by young men into better future behavior? Prisons today are more like an Institute of Advanced Criminality. It may make victims and their families feel a little better, but the conditions that create the violent anti-social behavior are still there.
• Increase police presence where the most vulnerable potential victims live and work. This provides a patina of security, but is it sustainable, given crimes in other parts of Oakland and San Francisco and severe public resource limitations? Oakland police statistics say Chinese/Asians are not disproportionately victims of assaults and robberies. Chinatown leaders scoff at such stats. But since many Chinese/Asian victims don’t report crimes, they must be encouraged to do so. That way, police stats will better reflect what’s really happening, justifying a plea to get more cops patrolling higher crime areas.

Vigilantism & Revenge

• There’s talk of a citizens’ patrol a la Guardian Angels for neighborhoods where vulnerable Chinese/Asians live and work. That may give a feeling of safety, but how sustainable and effective would this effort be?
• Floating out there is an idea to engage Chinese/Asian youth gangs as a retaliatory militia. This is NOT a smart solution.

Political Dilemma

What can local politicians do? Allocate more tax dollars for more law enforcement and prevention programs. Problem is, city and county budgets are tightly pinched, making added law-enforcement and prevention demands more difficult to achieve.

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To address underlying issues such as conditions that nurture anti-social behavior and cultural alienation:

Dialogue

Political and community leaders of all stripes say, Let’s talk with each other, blacks and yellows. “Don’t blame each other. Don’t hate each other. Let’s all get along.”

Talk is fine even if some it is recycled platitudes and empty promises, and good folks from both camps are talking more to each other. But earnest dialogue at the elite, leadership levels do not reach angry black youth, or vulnerable Chinese/Asians.

For all their talk of peace and unity, progressive African American and Chinese/Asian officials are boxed in.

If Chinese/Asian elected leaders aggressively stand up for their ethnic constituent victims, they may win favor among Chinese/Asian voters, but could alienate African Americans and others.

Black officials face their own dilemma. They can’t condone the bad youth behavior. They can call for more prevention programs, and try to be peacemakers across the racial divide, but both solutions are limited in what they can do to solve the basic problem.

Education

It’s a fantasy that our urban public schools can guide the most at-risk young people to a positive path. The most at-risk kids skip school, or they stick together, not with kids from other cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

Schools also don’t do a good enough job teaching race relations history and the need to try to get along. But why should schools be expected to do the job that parents, family, and the community should be doing?

Prevention Programs

Community-based organizations in both cities work hard to try to steer at-risk youth away from a criminal life.

I know several Oakland nonprofit groups that do excellent work with at-risk young people of different ethnic groups. Among them are Destiny Arts Center , Mosaic , Museum of Children’s Art , EastSide Cultural Center , and PlayWorks. I have heard good things about East Oakland Youth Development Center and Youth Uprising . I trust San Francisco organizations are doing similar prevention work. These organizations always need more funding and support.

As good as these organizations are, I doubt they reach the youth who need the most help.

Changing Behavior and Attitudes

The toughest task, by far, because it requires a combination of personal and group responsibilities beyond the scope of government or nonprofit organizations. That means individuals, parents and families.

For kids to develop well, it starts in the home – loving, secure parenting from birth. If some African American households have only one parent and this parent is stressed from low-paying work or no job or other problems, then children in this kind of a household more likely will get a bad start in life.

It’s been an enduring American debate as to why some low-income African American households are broken. Is it a stubborn legacy of racism, slavery, and Jim Crow? Or is it a lack of responsibility of the parents?

Whatever it is, out-of-control young people come out of such a dire environment, and true solutions to fixing this problem are depressingly long term, if at all, and maddeningly elusive – eradication of poverty, racism, and inequality of opportunities. For this, we all bear responsibility.