Fox Butterfield’s 1995 work, All God’s Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence, analyzes the cumulative effects of racism and oppression upon five generations of an African-American family (Butterfield 1995). It achieves this through the careful study of Willie Bosket, a young man who embarks on a lengthy criminal career at a tender age despite having considerable potential. Indeed, he began assaulting and robbing subway passengers at the age of five but largely got away with these crimes insofar as teenagers were not tried or sentenced as adults until Bosket’s mid-teenage years. The author guides her reader through the torturous journey of the Bosket family, starting as slaves on a South Carolina plantation.
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3), also played a salient role in the encouragement of criminality among certain groups. The objectives of these laws were flatly to avoid interactions that could amplify the obvious differences between the races and lead to open conflict. Of course, the rules went so far as to ban minorities from holding public office or even exercising the basic, inalienable right to vote. The main aspect of these laws that contributed to criminality was, of course, the fact that members of minority groups were denied access to basic resources, whether schools, restaurants, or restrooms. The overarching perception of restriction and inequality led these people to a situation where they often felt obligated to resort to crime as the only available means for elevating themselves above this institutionally asserted and systematically enforced privation and …show more content…
For example, Willie’s father manages to obtain a doctoral degree while jailed: despite his outlaw roots, he turns himself into a success, albeit a transitory one. It is the ultimate irony that Willie—who grows up in an even more liberal, accepting culture—ends up as one of the most vicious criminals in the history of New York State, having committed hundreds of armed robberies and dozens of stabbings before reaching the age of majority. Ultimately, the reader is left appalled, even haunted, by the intimation that Willie could have ended up as so much more had he taken the positive lessons from his father’s life and simply discarded the negative: easier said than done, to be sure, but, nothing ventured, nothing
3), also played a salient role in the encouragement of criminality among certain groups. The objectives of these laws were flatly to avoid interactions that could amplify the obvious differences between the races and lead to open conflict. Of course, the rules went so far as to ban minorities from holding public office or even exercising the basic, inalienable right to vote. The main aspect of these laws that contributed to criminality was, of course, the fact that members of minority groups were denied access to basic resources, whether schools, restaurants, or restrooms. The overarching perception of restriction and inequality led these people to a situation where they often felt obligated to resort to crime as the only available means for elevating themselves above this institutionally asserted and systematically enforced privation and …show more content…
For example, Willie’s father manages to obtain a doctoral degree while jailed: despite his outlaw roots, he turns himself into a success, albeit a transitory one. It is the ultimate irony that Willie—who grows up in an even more liberal, accepting culture—ends up as one of the most vicious criminals in the history of New York State, having committed hundreds of armed robberies and dozens of stabbings before reaching the age of majority. Ultimately, the reader is left appalled, even haunted, by the intimation that Willie could have ended up as so much more had he taken the positive lessons from his father’s life and simply discarded the negative: easier said than done, to be sure, but, nothing ventured, nothing