Fri, Jul 28 2006

No royal blue backpacks—and no red ones either

Every year area volunteers collect school supplies and other materials for kids returning to school who are homeless or are in some other sort of transient or temporary situation. It's a great cause, but I still thought it was a sad state of affairs when I read the list of needs provided by Register-Pajaronian. They can't accept royal blue or red backpacks for the kids because of the gang issues that might arise.

I understand their reasoning. No one helping the kids wants to put them in harm's way. It's just that this is another example of lawless people managing to control the choices of law-abiding people who are trying to do the right thing.

I suppose this will eventually translate into businesses and corporations having to market product color with gang issues in mind. It's amazing to me how a society of people becomes willing to cooperate with criminals with this kind of subtle group mentality, even though most of us would never partner with a criminal on a one-to-one basis. Will we also one day have to take the red and blue crayons out of those 16-color boxes we give the children? How far are we willing to let this sort of gang control go?

posted at: 09:21 | category: /Miscellaneous | link to this entry