Here we go again. Another groups comes to Camden, makes a quick comparison to third-world problems (in this case it’s Vice contrasting Camden with Darfur), and leads with sensationalized videos of crime, blight, and Camden. I want to contrast that with a compelling, well-written, and, I think, compassionate view of the struggles of youth in Cincinnati that deals with urban struggles in a responsible way.
First, Vice:
Here we go again: Camden's crime will be featured on @VICE 's HBO show @SteveDanley https://t.co/NK8AuDWmiU
— Sunny Camden (@SunnyCamden) June 11, 2014
Season 2 Episode 12 Preview
Here’s an excerpt from Nick Valada’s article on Vice over at the Inky:
As the story goes, Camden police are essentially turning the city into a surveillance state in order to keep up with the high crime rate they’re faced with on a daily basis. The result, it seems, has been the removal of privacy from Camden’s residents in the name of better policing through technology.
Contrast the sensationalized images from that take, with the thoughtful introduction to this writing on Cincinnati.com:
Introduction by Managing Editor Laura Trujillo: On March 21, 14-year-old Jashawn Martin was shot as he passed by a fight on his way to see a friend. Eight days later – a day after she attended Jashawn’s funeral – 14-year-old Tyann Adkins was shot to death as she waited to get her nails done. The boy who shot her was 14, as was the boy who called 911 and tried to save her. Not long after, a 14-year-old was part of a robbery at DeSales Market in Walnut Hills that left a father of two begging for his life.
In the newsroom, we routinely deal with crime – shootings and robberies, death and grief. But somehow these violent episodes crept into our heads and we couldn’t get them out.
It was the number 14.
All three of us most closely connected to this project – editor, reporter and photographer – have children who are 14 or close to it. We thought we knew 14. But through Jashawn and Tyann, through kids who commit crimes and kids who are their victims, we realized 14 is not easily known.
In some neighborhoods, 14 is the sweet spot between childhood and adolescence, a time of unguarded emotion and untempered enthusiasm. In others, it’s an abrupt introduction into a complex, confusing and sometimes even violent world.
This project, which we simply call “14,” is a rare chance to view three such neighborhoods – Avondale, Evanston and Walnut Hills – through the eyes of the 14-year-olds who live there.
We don’t have the answers to the violence and hopelessness that has taken hold of some young people in those neighborhoods. Neither did the 14-year-olds we interviewed. But as they opened their lives to our questions, we understood that we will never find answers unless we listen better to them.
So this is our start. We invite you to enter the world of 14.
The writing keeps that promise, dealing with troubling stories with compassion and humanity. The results are still disturbing, but it’s easier to imagine those involved respecting the writers, and those reading coming away with a better understanding of urban areas, instead of sensationalization and dehumanization:
It was a crime people couldn’t stop talking about — three teenagers in Halloween masks barging into DeSales Market in East Walnut Hills in the middle of the day, putting a pellet gun to the owner’s head, reducing a customer to begging for his life, stealing their wallets and fleeing to a suburban mall to buy clothes with their credit cards.
It was a ruthless act that belied the boys’s age. When their identities hit the street, the name of the youngest – a 14-year-old from Evanston – was passed along as a question.
Malek Green?
Malek Green, the freshman forward who scored 28 points to lift Taft over West High? Malek Green, who gets As and Bs and wants to be a math teacher? Malek Green, known for breaking up small fights and walking away from big ones?
Malek, who didn’t have a criminal record and whom nobody thought ever would?
“I thought it wasn’t a really big deal at first. I didn’t have to do anything. I was just there. They said, just come in there.” Two days after his release from juvenile detention, Malek sits at his dinner table, trying to explain his actions. His head is mostly down. His voice is quiet. A monitor is attached to his ankle. His mother, who has made sure Malek has done everything the court asked and apologized to his victims, sits at his side.
One of his two worst moments, he says, was disappointing her. The second was seeing what they put their victims through. Of the customer, Malek says, “He was scared and stuff. He said he had kids right there near. And I know a lot of things was going through his mind, like is he going to lose his life.”
Only later did Malek realize how easily he could have lost his own.
Malek says one reason teenagers commit crimes is they fear being viewed as a punk, “getting looked at like a lesser person, or like they’re afraid of things.”
His mother gives him a long, serious look. “I need to know the people who I be around,” he says slowly, soberly. “If I’m around somebody who’s talking about negatives, or about doing something wrong, I need to find an excuse to to leave — or just walk away.”
Please, take the time to read the whole thing and support thoughtful, considerate approaches to urban issues. That’s a sharp contrast to what we too often see from national media outlets here in Camden. The problems with these sensationalized portrayals aren’t necessarily that they are inaccurate; it’s that they are incomplete. They show stylized failings, then ignore the way humanity learns to live with it. That’s what makes this Cincinnati article so special; it’s about human reaction to struggle. Let’s support the same things in Camden, supporting the Courier-Post and Inquirer when they the time to do similar work here, and artists like April Saul who strive to portray complexity and humanity, not stereo-types and sensation.
photo via April SaulShare it!
