Valley Fair, Youth Violence, Race, Moral Breakdown, and Disintegration of the Family

The vicious attack by a group of primarily black youths on a white teenage girl and her father at ValleyFair has spiked the race issue and generated a good bit of discussion in the Twin Cities. Several of the youths charged are members of a notorious Minneapolis based gang/family heavily involved in criminal activity. Some convicted of aggravated assault and prostitution.

The race issue often tends to cloud the picture either causing some to make prejudicial comments and others to go out of their way to assert they're not racist. What's lost is examining the root cause of the problem.

The Star Tribune editorial response, other than saying let's not be racist, which of course we shouldn't be, is primarily recommending more government and nongovernment programs. They and the liberal mindset miss the fundamental issue.

The fundamental problem is a moral problem. For one, we're raising up a generation of young people who have no moral compass. (What should we expect when our public education system promotes the moral relativist view that kids should decide what's right for themselves, and they've evolved from a blob of goo which means they have no intrinsic value.)

And second, closely related, is the disintegration of the family. Kids raised without a dad is closely tied to criminal problems. Heritage Foundation and hosts of other groups have documented the linkage.

Concerning the crime problem, the reason more black youths are in trouble per capita is simply because they are much more likely to come from broken homes. In fact, Minneapolis, the home base of the attackers at ValleyFair, has one of, if not, the highest out of wedlock birth rates of an African American community in the nation. In 2005, it was 86.6% in the African American community in Hennepin County. Nationally, it's around 70%. The rate for the entire nation is around 38%. This means lack of dads in kids' lives and the resulting lack of positive male role models and authority figures. These kids, unfortunately, often obtain their role models through their gang involvement.

I don't know if the liberal mind will be able to fundamentally address the problem, because for most liberals promoting marriage is a bridge too far. It would mean saying living together is not a good thing and that's "moralizing".

From the results at ValleyFair, we could use some more moralizing.