I hate that I was proven right, as the evidence is as clear as day. A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece called Face It, Kids Don’t Give A F*ck These Days! in which I discussed the callousness and the ease of accepting the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ day and age our young people live in nowadays.
I wrote that they seem to have no compassion or no remorse, living life like it doesn’t matter anymore. Not all young people, just a small sect.
Unfortunately I was proven right once again, as two news stories came across the wire that have garnered national attention.
The first involves a Cleveland Greater Regional Transit Authority bus driver who got into a shouting match with a young black girl who had to be between the ages of 20-25. The argument escalates to the point where the young lady assaulted the bus driver, going so far as to spit on him as he’s driving the bus.
The bus driver confronts the girl and unleashes a vicious uppercut haymaker that would make Mike Tyson proud.
While the young lady is laid out on the bus floor, a passenger says to the driver, “She’s a girl” to which he responds, “I don’t care. She wanna be a man, I’m a treat you like a man.”
The Internet has been going wild since the video appeared on WorldstarHiphop and various other sites, with a large percentage of people siding with the bus driver.
A couple things: this is the state of some of our young people today, no respect for their elders, the ability to go from 0-60 in anger at the drop of a hat, a false sense of entitlement.
Even though the bus driver’s reaction was extreme, and I hate to say this, but the young lady had it coming. She never expected the bus driver to react the way he did, but she should have expected a reaction.
What bothers me most is that after the bus driver did what he did, the conversation automatically turned into “She’s a lady, she’s a girl, what are you doing?” But just a few seconds ago she was squaring off like a dude ready to get busy. And furthermore, ladies don’t act like that. Don’t come with the she’s a girl argument after the fact. I’m not saying that she got what she deserved, but she had something coming. The young lady hit the bus driver for one, that’s assault, allegedly spit on him and cursed him out.
Since the altercation with the young lady, the bus driver has since been suspended as the investigation continues.
It’s sad when I think about how our children behave toward one another. No matter who you are, at a moment in your life you’ve been bullied, whether elementary school, high school, college, in your neighborhood, or even at work. Bullies do whatever it takes to make you feel bad while making themselves feel good.
When I read about young teens killing themselves due to consistent ridicule as a result of bullying, it makes me think that, one, we’ve failed as parents and two, we’re not teaching our kids to treat everyone with respect.
Amanda Todd, a 15-year-old from Vancouver, killed herself earlier this week after years of bullying, going so far as to admit in a YouTube video that she would cut herself after being bullied.
As we continue to see the Stop The Bullying campaign grow, more kids are killing themselves and it’s because bullying has expanded from the classroom to cyber-space. When I was growing up, you would get teased in school, go home and forget about it, the ridicule only lived at school, but with today’s social media age, it’s non-stop.
Twitter, Facebook, AIM or whatever the social tool is, makes the bashing more hurtful at a level that drives young people to take their own lives. It’s not that kids are meaner; they just have more outlets to be anonymously vicious.
The absence of thought is what makes these kids do the things they do. They know better than to bully or act out, they know that’s not the proper way to conduct themselves, but like I said before, attitudes like that erases any chance of hope, and for teenagers to have such callous look on life – especially at a such a young age – is heartbreaking.
Shaka Griffith is the News/Politics Editor of GlobalGrind.com Follow him on Twitter and send your thoughts, rants and outburst to @Darealshaka
