Breaking the Cycle - Part 1: Abuse

About two months ago, I witnessed the perpetuation of a dangerous cycle. The story goes like this: I was standing on a bus platform at Dudley Station on my way home from work - as I do virtually every day. There were people lumbering around waiting for the next 1 bus to depart - as there are every day. In this lump of people there was a woman, in her mid to late 20s, and a young boy, about 3 years old. They were black(this is statistically relevant). She was either his mom or a much older sister. She was on her phone, texting most likely, while he stood closeby her side holding a Curious George book in his hand. She seemed indifferent at best, but he was smiling happily. Then, it happened - the book fell from his hand and hit her shin and foot. And so it began. She exclaimed, “What the f---, bro! That hurt my foot!” She picked up the book and threw it in the garbage. He immediately burst into tears. She continued, “The f---, my leg still hurts. Why can’t you just stand still, bro?” As he continued to drown in his tears, “You need to be quiet before I have to pop you, bro. Stop crying. Sit down. I said, “Sit down over here.” I told you to hold onto it til we got home. I’m not gonna carry it for you. Come on, the bus is here. Stop crying.” They began to walk towards the end of the platform to board the bus. I and the other onlookers shuffled down the platform to board as well. As I passed by the garbage can, I considered reaching in and pulling the new book out. Maybe I could find a way to sneak it to him. I had seen the hurt in his eyes when we had made eye contact as he was being guided to sit down on the bench right next to where I was standing. I paused, briefly, but continued onto the bus. They sat down a few seats farther back than where I had ended up, tears still in his eyes - but silence. Six stops later they got off the bus at Boston Medical Center and went on to whatever their final destination was.

I think that it would suffice to say that I was deeply disturbed by the event that had transpired in front of me. Should I have intervened? I had run through several of those scenarios in my head while standing nearby, watching things occur: I could have followed through with: Operation SBBBH(S triple-B H) - Sneak the book back into the boy’s hands. I could have opted for: yell at the woman and explain why what she was doing was wrong. Maybe even bargaining: “this book probably cost money, you shouldn’t throw away money.” I don’t know. There are so many permutations on how the situation would have played out if I had intervened in any number of different ways. She didn’t hit him. If she had, it would have been an easy call. Instead it was it was a moment of moral ambiguity. So, I rode the bus all the way down Mass Ave, got off eleven stops later, and walked the rest of the way home. What had just happened?

What had happened was that a cycle that was set in motion many many years ago was perpetuated. It’s a cycle that needs to be broken, but I think it’s critical to understand it before we even approach solutions. Also, a reminder that I’m not interested in vilifying anyone specifically - blame rarely lives in a single camp. So, as always, I am looking to define problems so that we can seek solutions.

I mentioned before that the fact that they were black was statistically relevant. The rate of child abuse is 14.5% for african-americans. Something like 1 in 7. That little boy was traumatized - he was one of those 7. I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to say that he is less likely to go near books. I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to say that as he gets older, instead of breaking down in tears, there’s a good chance that he turns to more destructive tendencies - maybe violence. I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to say that 20 years down the line when he’s with a child of his own that he’s more likely to unload on them because it pushed him to grow up. It really just comes down to a bunch of probabilities. The probability that he would reach certain outcomes was shifted in that moment. Unfortunately, those odds are what define lives. Every life is just a tree of possibilities - a tree that intersects with the trees, the paths, of the lives around them. Those intersections, those interactions, especially during the growing up years, they create people. The form personality and perspective and habits and, most importantly, a most likely future. So, how did things get to that interaction?

I don’t know what the exact pathway was, but I’m going to give my best attempt at a traceback. They got off the bus at the Medical Center, and it seemed to be their destination. There’s been an opioid epidemic in Massachusetts in the last several years.

Several shelters in the Methadone mile area have closed or been forced to reduce their capacity, so I have seen more than enough people strung out on the side of the road on my way too and from work. The woman’s manner, short fuse, and location lead me to believe that there was a relatively high probability that she was dealing with some stage of withdrawal symptoms. Granted, that’s a big assumption - though I don’t think it matters much. Whether it was true or not, there’s a much higher probability that she had learned to treat young children harshly either during her childhood. Even if she hadn’t, whatever it was that had pushed her to be harsh with the people around her had to have happened long before that day. Whatever that interaction was and whoever it had been with could almost certainly be traced back to another event - and so on. How far back can we trace the cycle?

Honestly, if you were to grab a random person in a low income bracket in an area plagued by drug abuse - I’d estimate that you can go back at least two generations(For reference, I’m considering a generation to be about 25 years). So, her age at ~25 plus 25*2 = 75 years. That puts us at roughly the 1940s - The Silent Generation - the generation born between 1925 and 1945 - An adult generation that grew up in a period plagued by war and economic instability. Despite that, their arrival at adulthood was during a period of prosperity. As such, they have also been referred to as the “Lucky Few”. So, without getting too far into the weeds and breaking down the characteristics of every generation between then and now, I just want to think about where that should put us in terms of a cycle assuming that their generations’ adulthood was a high point - and assuming that each successive generation moves up or down one rung between high, neutral, and low. In theory, we should be moving into an uptrend as the tail end of Millennials and leading section of Generation Z move into adulthood. On the whole I’d say we are actually relatively in line with the trend...maybe? I have no idea what the big picture looks like. What I do have an idea about is the events within a single lifetime. Let’s jump back to the tree of the young boy’s life.

To keep things simple, I assumed that there were only two paths from any possibility. So, this first tree was more for the background of getting to how many young boys there are in his position. Now, given that position, what are the probable outcomes.

I neglected to include the stats on violence and drug abuse because I think it’s much harder to find reliable information on either topic. I will say that the information that I was able to dig up wasn’t all that encouraging. In any case...let’s talk about the trees. The data indicates that a young black male in his income bracket has a 10% chance of graduating college - without considering abuse. If you add abuse, the high school graduation rate is reduced to 48% and the college graduation rate is reduced to about 3%. That 10% shrinks to about 1.5%. One point five percent. As I write this, I’m not shocked. It’s sobering, but not surprising. I couldn’t possibly have imagined that taking his book, that he was so happy about, and throwing it into the garbage would give anything better than a 1.5% chance of success.

I thought about ending with that, but I didn’t even mention the right side. The income outcomes. Those numbers were for being black and starting in the bottom quintile. That is to say, that if you start at the bottom you have a 51% chance of staying there. If you were in the 27% that made it to the second quintile, it’s likely that you graduated high school. The remaining 22% being for those that likely graduated college or had some kind of further education following high school. Oh, and again, those numbers don’t account for abuse either. So, yes, the numbers make things look pretty bad. Where are the solutions?

Frankly? I’m not 100% sure. In my own personal opinion, it comes down to support. During those growing up years, kids need support. They need someone to ask if they did their homework and/or to help doing it. They need people, stable people, to talk to when things aren’t going well. See, I grew up with a loving mother and father and extended family and family friends. I got lucky. So, my answer has to be to try to create the kind of community that I grew up with. What does that look like? I think it looks like offering your time and support to organizations like Sitters Without Borders. They provide free to low cost babysitting services to low-income mothers attending college - it’s a few hours of your time. I think it looks like volunteering to work with and mentor kids at organizations with Youth Programs - during the semester, I tutor as part of the ReachOut Program at MIT. I recently became familiar with Roca, an organization that aims to disrupt the cycle of incarceration and poverty by providing work, education, support, and encouragement for young people who have found themselves incarcerated. There are countless organizations doing this kind of work around the country and around the world.

I don’t think that the systemic problem of abuse - the cycle - is something that is going away. On the homepage I said, “Apathy is easy - Kindness is cheap - Change is hard.” Change really is hard, especially when it’s at a systemic level. Big ships don’t turn quickly. But those other two things, apathy and kindness. Taking the easy way forward, the easy way out, has never been good enough. Apathy has not been good enough to change the world. So, be kind. Be involved. To quote Merry, “But you’re a part of this world. Aren’t you? ...You must help! ...please.” Whether you choose to give your time or your money or not, there is a cost to apathy. In 2012 it cost about $124 billion - just under $340 million per day. Do you think that number went up or down in the last 5 years? Survey says - it's almost doubled. So, let’s get to work.

By popular demand - Sources: by and large most of the raw data is from https://www.census.gov/ even if it appears in other places and forms.

But given that I can basically just copy and paste my web history for you...