A similar, well written take on the situation.http://tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1026

Bob,You are right...I was expressing my own shock at serveral things....1/ The mothers indifference.2/ The lifestyle of 13 year olds in the US ( I am sure this lifestyle isn't limited to the US, but it's certainly different to how I grew up in UK in the 70's )- remember she's 13... I wouldn't have been so shocked if she was 17 or older.In all the coverage of the New Orleans disaster.. I hear a lot of talk of "poor areas", "black vs white" etc..My other point was that as you say... the "good areas/bad areas" thing isn't as clearly defined as the media is portraying.Paul

Don not all black people are like what Jwenting is describing but sadly he's right... I'm Afro-American and I can't argue his points above. When I look at the latest styles in Hip-Hop and the gang related dress code it's obvious. Just like tribes in Africa if you go in a certain neighborhood dressed any other way than the excepted fashion, your going to run into problems. Some ghettos you could get shot based on what color your clothes are. It's a sad fact yet many Black Americans don't prescribe to this heathen activity but we are the minority.Hip-Hop is like fuel to the fire concerning this self-destructive tribal activity. It has started to spread all over the world with the youth in many countries that play into this forum of entertainment. Asia still have allot of poor people whose minds haven't been polluted by the images on television and the internet. Hip-Hop as well as many other things in western civilization spread a cancerous mentality of self glorification at the cost of your fellow man... Try dating in America, it sucks (I know that

The vast majority are black though, and most of the rest are Hispanics who have a similar cultural biass towards violent gangs (possibly relating to their own tribal heritage).I've nothing against anyone purely based on the colour of his skin, but the cultural differences introduced by their original societies are more violent and tribal in blacks than most (and not because they're black, but because of them coming from Africa not too long ago where such culture is still alive even today as the wholesale slaughter in the constant tribal wars on the black continent show).There just happen to be mostly black people living in those tribes, which is a historical fact.