Deadly streets, failing schools: Why are we throwing away the lives of young Americans?

There is being destitute, oppressed, exploited or crushed — and then there is America’s inner-city student population, most of them minorities. 

“Lives thrown away by society” is a vapid cliché that has lost its shock value. Why should anyone get worked up when one more nameless, faceless and hopeless nothingness of a human being stumbles into the abyss of misery? They don’t count. They don’t even rise to the level of the background noise you think you hear in the soundtrack of your suburban or rural life. 

They might as well be on the other side of our galaxy — except that, if they were, then billions of dollars would be spent by government and private-sector agencies and scientists seeking to make contact with them. Light years away, you are worthy of discovery; but miles away on crime-infested streets, you’re not worth the time of day.

It’s the truth, and it always has been.

Decades ago, I grew up in abject poverty and was often homeless as a child; by the time I was 17, I had been evicted from 34 homes. I bounced from one public inner-city school to another, often living in majority-Black housing projects while being one of the few white children in my class (if not the only one).

It was a brutal existence that I would not trade for anything today, however. That real-life experience was priceless. I was blessed to learn at a young age that minority America is a great America. I watched young Black mothers working two or even three jobs to support their children while sacrificing their own happiness, and they became not only my heroes but my enduring role models.

But that experience of my childhood has opened my eyes to another horrific truth: My childhood was a walk in the park compared to what many urban youths endure today. 

Many of these children must traverse a virtual war zone twice a day to attend school. You think that is an exaggeration? Then just walk the inner-city streets of Chicago.

Consider a recent headline in the Chicago Sun-Times: “Violence in some Chicago neighborhoods puts young men at greater risk than U.S. troops faced in Iraq, Afghanistan war zones, study finds.”

As the paper reported, “The risk of a man 18 to 29 years old dying in a shooting in the most violent ZIP code in Chicago … was higher than the death rate for U.S. soldiers in the Afghanistan war or for soldiers in an Army combat brigade that fought in Iraq, according to a study published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open.”

It continued: “Among men ages 18 to 29, the annual rate of firearm homicides in that ZIP code was 1,277 per 100,000 people in 2021 and 2022, the study found, compared with an annual death rate for U.S. troops in a heavily engaged combat brigade in Iraq of 675 per 100,000.”

Think about that: Almost twice as deadly as a heavily engaged combat brigade.

And children must cross that war zone five days a week to get to and from school.

When these virtual young “combat veterans” — nameless, faceless and hopeless to the rest of us — reach school, then massive insult is added to crippling injury: Many, if not most, are not educated.

The 2022 data from the Illinois Department of Education indicates that, in 55 Chicago public schools, no students were reported to be proficient in either math or reading. No students. None. In 55 Chicago public schools.

Some people will be inclined to blame this massive, shameful failing of at-risk students on the COVID-19 pandemic. That;s not even close to the truth.

As the authors of the Wirepoints report stressed: “Defenders of the current system are sure to invoke COVID as the big reason for the low scores. But a look at the 2019 numbers shows that the reading and math numbers were only slightly better than they are now.”

Tragically, Chicago is not alone in this scandalous dishonor. In Baltimore, an analysis of data from Maryland’s State Department of Education test results for 2022 found that in 23 public schools — 10 high schools, eight elementary schools, three middle schools and two elementary-middle schools — not one student passed math. Not one.

This, in a city where the head of Baltimore Public Schools was earning a base salary of $333,125 — which rose to $444,875 with allowances.

While some parents blame systemic corruption in Baltimore for the schools’ poor performances, it actually is much worse than just that. For all intents and purposes, no one cares about these children. Republicans don’t care because they believe these communities are loyal to the Democrats; Democrats don’t care because they have long since taken these communities for granted. Preening celebrities don’t care because they can’t monetize the suffering.

Nameless, faceless, hopeless children — staring down crime, substance abuse, poverty, homelessness, mental illness and death.

“Big deal,” right? Hard to feel sorry for young nobodies in long-forgotten inner cities? Fortunately, most Americans can fall back on the “It’s not my problem” defense as they plan vacations, visit the malls, hit the Cineplex, enjoy a nice restaurant, go on college road-trips, cash their pension checks — or plan their reelections.

But as they do those things, tens of thousands more nameless, faceless, hopeless nobodies will plunge into the bottomless abyss, atop the hundreds of thousands already there. We all share the blame and will all reap the repercussions to follow.

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.