Fearing What Society Tells You

Fear. Fear is a distressing emotion brought upon us by the sense of an impending danger including: evil, pain, and anxiety.

There are several people that I have talked with that have told me what they fear the most. Their fears range from the fear of spiders to the fear of snakes to the fear of inner city kids. They fear these inner city kids because of the thoughts placed in their heads by society and their parents. They fear these kids because they associate them with gang violence and shootings. Are there inner city kids associated with gang violence and shootings? Yes but what they fail to realize is that so are the suburban kids that they don’t fear because society has told them they don’t have to.

How is it a kid from an upscale school that decides it’ll be cool to drink and drive any better than a gang fight or late night shooting connected to an inner city kid? Some people believe that they can go to a basketball game at Ridgeway (public school) and risk getting shot in the parking lot, but the truth is you can go to a basketball game at MUS (private school) and risk getting run over in the parking lot by a kid who had one too many. Kids from upscale schools(at least ones that I have meant) tend to think that they are invincible. They act as if the rules of life and death don’t apply to them because their parents have a lot of money in the bank. I hate to break it to them (not really), but mommy and daddy can’t buy them out of a manslaughter charge...

The lives that are put at stake on a daily basis from teenagers who want to earn some more cool points for playing with the odds against death pretty much amounts to an inner city kid getting into a fight at school over gang related activities. But how come others don’t see the connection? Statistics shows that drunk driving kills eight teens a day. That is eight kids that will never reach their full potential; eight kids that will never grow to fulfill their dreams; eight kids that now have to pay the ultimate price because someone decided it would be an adventure to get behind the wheel with alcohol in their system.

Kids from upscale schools are too busy fearing what society or their parents tell them to fear that they don’t see who they should truly fear, themselves. The point of this wasn’t to say that gang shootings or gangs in general are acceptable; the point of this was to show that we can’t turn a blind eye to the wrongdoings of others just because we live in a society that tells us we’re right even when we’re wrong. Drinking and driving may be different than a gang shooting, but it has the same risk nonetheless. They both have the potential of taking many lives. It’s about time for people to wake up and see the dangers that are right in front of them, not the dangers that their parents have drilled into their brains. At the end of the day once you’re gone you stay gone.