Paper Topic:

Youth Violence & Racism

Running head : Youth violence

Youth Violence and Racism

Abstract

This deals with the issue of violence , particularly in relations to youth , today . Violence is all prevalent today , and although violence can be politicized or carried out with subtlety , one must recognize the fact that violence has become a part and parcel of all our lives today and unless one takes notice of the fact and decides upon a strategic course of action to combat this alarming phenomenon , violence may well take over the world

Everyday , everywhere , there is violence being

perpetrated against a lesser member of the society , and although it is true that violence may be predominantly physical , that is , in the act of physical violence of one human being against another , violence can also be a part of society in various other ways , like for example , it can be psychological , it can be structural , or it can be symbolic . Structural violence refers to the violence meted out against the vulnerable within a society , like for example , against street children , while symbolic violence refers to the acts of violence perpetrated against basic human dignity , self worth and other such , in which the assaulted are made to become complicit in their own destruction . Examples of this type of violence are common on the streets of Brazil and in the squatter camps of South Africa . Violence in these cases becomes a sort of `continuum ' made up of a number of small wars and genocides played out on the streets and in the ghettoes and shanties where the poor and the downtrodden are forced to live out their lives . At times , the phenomenon of considering the socially vulnerable classes to be completely expendable , almost akin to garbage and rubbish is all prevalent , and acts of violence against the poor are carried out by the rich , who prefer to hole themselves up in fortresses that cannot be violated by the socially deprived classes of human beings . The author of the article , Nancy Scheper-Hughes has conducted extensive field studies in Brazil and in South Africa , and in her opinion it was during periods of intense political change and transformation that violence seemed to escalate among the youth of the countries . In brazil , for example , violence was carried out against street children during the process of democratization , and more than thousands of street children in the age group of 15 to 19 were put to death by the so called `death squads ' in what was known as a `cleansing operation ' to get rid of the `vermin ' of the streets . 680 ,000 children and adolescents were confined to correctional centers , while the rest had to languish unclaimed and unloved in prisons across the country . It is obvious that these exterminations , and also those that were carried out in South Africa by the death squads in that area were all a part of the social structure of a place determining and leading to violence . In the famous Amy Biehl case , where a young woman was stoned...

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