The Destruction Cycle.  I like that.  It sounds ominous and terrible.  I doubt anyone will look at it and shrug it off saying, “Oh, the life cycle.”

In the diverse group I work with are the entrepreneurs, investors in their own future, who venture in the world of real estate.  The general discussion started around a piece of property for sale on the edge of The Bad Part of Town.  Being diverse, the topic of gentrification was tossed out.  It was strange to hear the same individuals who are investing in real estate express that it was wrong.  The evil was identified as ripping off the home owners by only paying fifty or sixty thousand for a run down town house, only to rehab it and sell it to someone else for three hundred thousand.

The urban growth cycle has been observed and documented before.  Communities are born, grow, flourish and eventually start to fail.  The value drops and lower income families move in.  Add to that the tendency for investors to rent these houses, the lack of ownership stresses the neighborhood more.  The life cycle for the are in question was about eighty years.  Most of the construction is making use of the existing foundations and some are trying to preserve the amazing architecture and stone work.  Others are just trying to make as much money as they can with cookie cutter apartments that could have been designed in Mother Russia during the Cold War.

We destroy our past to create our future, building on the bones of our ancestors and our history.  There is no Year Zero for us or our descendants.  They have to start from where we are as a nation, a people, with all the good and bad that got us here.  Growth and competition, robber barons, railroad tycoons, medical and scientific breakthroughs, we don’t know if we should applaud or lament because of the lives sacrificed to get here.  The Constitution allows for the growth cycle.  It allows for the nation to change.

It’s all of a piece.  I look at society and see natural competition, destruction and growth.  Back up and look at it again.  We can’t forget the past but we can change some of the things we don’t like.  Our children will change more.  We are going to have to destroy some of the old neighborhoods to do it, not everyone is going to like that, it’s how we grow.

So, I work in this minor hell.  A violent, drug infested, crime ridden, slice of survival over humanity.  This assessment coming from an amoral, emotionally numb human who was raised in a similar environment.  I survived.  I’m sure most of the children I see everyday will also.  The question that is exercising my brain is what version of them will survive.

I’ve been paying attention this last half century.  Watching myself change to survive.  As a child living with violent alcoholics or manipulative psychopaths, I learned to endure without understanding.  In combat, I learned to isolate my emotions further.  I’m not fearless as much as indifferent to risk.  You must learn to care and do for yourself because there are so few you can rely on to do for you.  It’s my armor.  You can’t hurt me because I will never give you the chance.

I see it on the streets everyday.  I wonder if it’s camouflage or role modeling.  In nature, defenseless creatures imitate predators as a form of defense.  Even when confronted with a determined adversary who has seen through the display, they still pretend.  If they survive and escape, they must still act like a predator in the hope that it will keep the next attack at bay.  Survival instinct.

Humans do the same, the nurture versus nature argument echos in living experiments.  You can watch the sweet loving child grow until they reach a social separation point, usually school age.  After the introduction to complex society, they learn to negotiate for position.  Cooperation or dominance defined by ability and bargaining position start to replace family security.  In the early teens comes a major change, not just puberty.  The roles become set.

This is where the question of the day comes in.  Are these young adults choosing to camouflage themselves or picking role models?  To survive in the street, you either look like a predator or a victim.  The traditional, forgive me, White American role models are policemen, teachers, scientists and businessmen are portrayed as oppressors and chumps, people to be fought or exploited.  The strong man, seen everyday, fighting and surviving is right there on the corner.  He’s powerful, has a gun and money.  The people all know him, the women all want to be with him.  It doesn’t matter that he will die young or spend half his life in jail.  He accepts that as part of the cost.

Does it matter whether a child chooses camouflage over role model?  That’s the problem the rest of society has.   It’s simple.  You can’t tell the difference.  That’s the point of camouflage.  The weakness is that as soon as it is broken, it is useless.  Which is the wasp and which is the moth?

There is a flurry of comment and vitriol after the Super Bowl 50 half time show.   I didn’t watch it. I don’t care for Beyonce, Coldplay or Bruno Mars.  So when my coworkers and I discussed the game, I was asked about the halftime show and it “message”.  I said, “I don’t care”.  I was hit from all sides.

“You’re just a racist.”  Being a middle aged, bald, white, male, with a lingering Southern accent, that was expected.  “Are you anti-cop?”  and “You can’t agree with her?” Came next.  See, I’m also a cop in a large city.  My obvious stance is pro-cop and anti-Beyonce.

I started thinking of it as Enough Racism.  I don’t care enough.  I don’t agree with the new extremist view, by what ever imagined oppressed group is protesting.  I’m a racist.  When Black Lives Matter comes up, I say, “…not to most blacks, because most black males are killed by other black males not Police”.  Same Sex marriage?  Who cares?  The only people that it effects are the ones in the relationship.  I must be anti-gay, because I’m not for the cause.  Immigration?  If they come to this country and want to work, let them.  I’m discriminating against illegal aliens, because I don’t think we should pay for them to stay in the country.

I’m labeled a racist because I don’t support the cause enough.  I’m not liberal enough to want separate rules for separate groups, based on arbitrary factors.  I’m a racist because I don’t believe the government should tax the working class to pay for cell phones and cable for families living in government housing so they “don’t feel shame” over their position.

I am hated by people who don’t know me because I’m perceived as part of the privileged.  I fit the stereotype that other try to shove me into.  I don’t matter as much as what others think I am.  If I am not for the cause, I am against it.

I am the New and Hated “Not Enough” Racist!