FLIPSIDE 1.7

About ten years ago there was a young man from Pontiac, MI that gained national attention after shooting and killing a Pontiac man at the age of 11. After conviction, then 11 year old Nathaniel Abraham, was sentenced to a facility until the age of 21 at which time he would then be under house arrest for some period of time afterward.

Those 10 years have come and gone and Abraham was set free earlier this year. Most people in his community rallied around him for support and guidance in hopes that this troubled young man would get his life on track, perhaps proving that one can be rehabilitated in such a facility as he had been apart of for the last 10 years. Now, in regret to all his supporters, Abraham has been arrested in connection to some alleged drug charges and probation issues.

Now, I am not in anyway, taking up for or excusing Abraham for his actions because he is an adult and in full control of good and bad decision making. I will, however, say that spending most of your developmental years behind the walls of a facility, then being injected back into a community that struggles to fight crime, poverty, and education issues does somewhat put you into cycle that is hard to be broken.

What Abraham needs is for his supporters to remain supportive and not turn their backs to him and rely on a judicial system that has pretty much slapped us as black people in the face since slave auctions were legal and our ancestors were sold off like tools. With all of that said, I don't want it to seem as though I condone his actions, but I do however empathize with his situation.

I suppose a comment made by a reader in respect to the article on Abraham in a recent Detroit Free Press almost made me shiver. Perhaps I had taken it the wrong way, but I became offended immediately and it urged me to write this piece. This is the comment in question-eewally wrote on freep.com-

It's high time to start putting bullets in these people's heads. We
can't afford rehab anymore. Its not working. Too many thugs that
just love the free food, shelter and camaraderie. It's time to
start culling the gene pool.

Start culling the gene pool? I wonder if Nathaniel Abraham had been white and premeditated an assault on a school with shotguns that left many wounded and some dead - would we still be talking about culling the gene pool? Catch ya' on the FLIPSIDE.