It’s not good enough to go home and hug our own 9-year-old daughters a little tighter, to let that kiss goodnight on the top of the forehead linger. It’s not good enough to march and light another candle, to go to church and temple and mosque, holding hands and calling for calm and peace and healing.
Those actions get us through the day. But what about tomorrow?
Tomorrow, Jamyla’s classmates, those innocent children left behind in the Riverview Gardens School District, will go to school and before the bell rings be eons behind 9-year-olds in other parts of the city. Their chance at success, and a long life, is limited by their ZIP code.
The For the Sake of All report published by Washington University last year under the direction of assistant professor Jason Purnell tells us they will die a full 15 years earlier than people who live just one or two ZIP codes to the south, just because of where they live. The same report tells us that Jamyla’s friends, those who graduate high school, at least, will earn about half what their white counterparts in St. Louis will earn. They’ll be more than twice as likely to be unemployed. They will be more likely to have heart disease or cancer. Their ability to move out of the social strata into which they were born is severely limited, Harvard University’s recent study on social mobility tells us.
They are stuck in a community in which dying of a gunshot wound is not an unusual event.
This is the reality that too many St. Louisans of color, particularly on the north side of the city and county, have been living for too long. It’s costing us more than lost lives; it’s costing the entire region billions of dollars in economic opportunity. We continue to allow an entire region, one generation of people after another, to suffer because in a divided St. Louis, some people have theirs and that’s just the way it’s going to be.
Enough.
Let Jamyla’s death touch a region’s heart. Let her be memorialized in the conversations about inequality in the greater St. Louis region that have been taking place in the past year. Let it not end with conversation. Let conversation become conversion.
Change is happening, but not nearly quickly enough.
We may never know who killed Jamyla, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find justice for a 9-year-old child who wanted to do better than her best.
A year after #Ferguson, the schools that serve its children are still underfunded and failing. The housing is still unequal and unsafe. Guns are rampant. Jobs are few. In a community where blindly fired bullets can kill a little girl in the safety of her home, hope is scarce. Justice is only a word.
Until St. Louis invests in its children — and it’s going to take a whole lot more than $26 million — the promise of a positive future will be trapped in the casket of a child.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/editorial-america-broke-its-promise-to-jamylabolden/article_db8fa5e1-677f-5bad-a354-b9c5f81a21ba.html
Was going to post this in Good Reads, but figured I post it here to instead. This editorial really got to me; especially the last few sentences detailing just how much in the city of Ferguson hasn't changed. I feel like the rampant gun culture and failure from this nation to ensure a livable and leveled field of opportunity and success for many young black kids needs to be discussed, it needs to be national news and conversation too.
RIP to this little girl and to the others lost to senseless gun violence and lack of care for black children.