But there is a new taste, too. More and more of them are feeling alienated, hopeless, and scared - that it doesn't matter what they do because no one really cares about them anyway. And it is not just kids of color. White adolescents have fewer demons to deal with. Of course they have their problems, but American society does not reject them because of what they look like.
Society often rejects the others, and that changes the way they see themselves.
What we've done in American society is to become afraid of our kids. We have allowed some of them to believe they are invincible. We have to stop treating young people like they're miniature adults. When kids reach early adolescence they might look like adults in some ways, but we forget that cognitively they are still very young. On the one hand we treat them as adults by fearing them, but on the other we expect them to do as we say.