It's a white kid who has never been in the minority, surrounded by blacks who are hostile to him, in his entire life. They're not real-they think they're invulnerable,but they're just white and weak. We have become a nation of Bostoids. Without any pressure, except the anguish, as New York magazine tells us, of being merely slightly rich in a city full of the very rich, we show as a society the baleful effect of a total belief in the amiability of the universe. To us it is inconceivable that the stock market or real estate market could go decline, that we could sicken and die from anything other than the effects of cigarette smoking, environmentally-caused cancers and inadequate gun control.
Children suffer most from our complacency.
The rich, as a letter-writer to the New York Times pointed out, used to pay good money so that their boys and girls could be taught to live in the wild, to toughen them and teach them to survive adversity. Now summer camps boast of the quality of their chefs and the softness of their beds. Physically weak and unable to take care of themselves, our children inherit the self-satisfaction of their elders without being able to sign checks or have credit ratings or lease SUVs. They lack the opportunity to sacrifice themselves, to feel the kind of fear that used to define childhood-the realization that because you are weak you must develop the desire to become strong, the cunning to evade the bullies, the courage occasionally to stand up for your rights, the judgment to decide when it is wise to fight, and when, more frequently, it is wiser to flee. Of all the disciplines of nature and nurture our children lack, only Little League remains.