My thoughts to David Chappelle’s comedy routine is that though the main focus of the bit is of age though I think there is also a suggestive underlying racial issue. Chappelle mentions that Elizabeth Smart, a 15 year old white girl, made headline news for several months after she was kidnapped from her home. He then compares this with a black 7 year old girl who was also kidnapped but didn’t get much attention from the media. The focus here doesn’t seem to be of age, but of race. I believe that he is implying that minorities get far less attention than that of whites when events like a child abduction occurs.
I believe the question of “How Old is 15?” is hard to define and it reflects in the legislation of laws in the different states around our country. In most states, lesser offenses like shoplifting and possession of drug and/or alcohol are handled in juvenile courts and jurisdictions, but more severe and most times violent offenses are adjudicated to adult courts that carry adult sentences. I think the overall belief is that someone who is 15 years old should take responsibility for an adult action and be held accountable as an adult committing the same offense particularly if it’s a violent offense. A juvenile committing a lesser offense will likely be able to reform themselves before reaching the standard adult age of 18.
I think that overall youth of the same age (15 years old) mature along the same lines as others of the same age unless there are other circumstances like learning disabilities, mental retardation or other conditions that would prevent the progression of normal learning and behavior patterns. I believe that at 15, people have a clear understanding of society’s expectations of accountability for positive and negative behaviors.
Great first blog post! It looks like the blog is set up properly and you've gotten your first post up this week. Excellent!
ReplyDeleteThe racial subtext you pointed out is definitely an interesting one - and sadly, the empirical studies (Min and Feaster, 2010) support Chappelle's assertions about media coverage on abductions find that indeed media coverage is disproportionately focused on white children and African-American female children are very underrepresented in terms of abduction coverage.
Your observations about the difficulty in determining punishment for 15 year olds is definitely one of the biggest challenges facing juvenile court systems, I'm glad you mention this in the post.
Good start, I hope that as we continue through the rest of the materials in the class, we'll be able to provide some new insights into the questions you raise.
Reference: (Min, Seong-Jae and Feaster, John C.(2010) 'Missing Children in National News Coverage: Racial and Gender Representations of Missing Children Cases', Communication Research Reports, 27: 3, 207 — 216)