Many Parents and Christian groups want to ban children’s and young adult books like the Harry Potter book series from the schools and libraries. Books are bad because they make young people think, express new ideas, develop creativity and question things. It’s horrible isn’t it?

The critics of adventure, fantasy, and magic-filled tales claim that these books are filled with witchcraft and are a tool for Satan to influence the youngsters into Wicca or Satanism and they teach anti-family values. These are the same ignorant people who have been trying to ban "questionable" books since the nineteen-eighties.

These books teach children good moral values and make reading fun. They are whisked into a bright and colorful world of imagination. Harry Potter books contain character names that suggest white, African American, and East Indian children in the story. Boys and Girls are equally involved in the action and plot of the story. It teaches children that good wins over evil, love wins over hate and knowledge over strength. Children learn to believe in themselves and ask for help from friends and family when they need it.

The Avvenire, an Italian paper written for Catholic Bishops, contained an article written by Massimo Introvigne stating that "the basic plot is, as expected, good versus evil. Good guys, including Potter, in the end prevail because they are clever, brave and – more than anything else – morally good."

Controversial children’s author Judy Blume wrote a New York Times article expressing her dismay at the challenging of Harry Potter, her own, and other books. She argues that parents will find any ‘ism’ in a book in order to challenge it and points out that many claims against books are ridiculous and unfounded.

Many groups claim that Harry Potter should be banned on the basis that it teaches anti-family values because Harry’s parents are dead and he lives with an evil foster family. They should be ready to take on a long list of other books, many of which I’m sure they enjoyed as children. Cinderella is orphaned and forced to work for her stepfamily. Sleeping Beauty is thrown out by her father and her stepmother tries to poison her. Peter Pan and the lost boys ran away from home because they didn’t like what parents expected of them. Peter Pan also used fairy dust to fly. That’s magic so it must be evil witchcraft.

Parents need to talk to their children and teach them right from wrong and, at a later age, what is real from what is imaginary. Censoring books of this genre strip the joy from reading and the possibility of an imagination away from children. Of course, some material isn’t meant for children but setting reasonable guidelines is a better solution than banning it from everyone else. Censoring children from reading books with ideas that differ from our own country will leave us as a nation filled with ignorant, rebellious, and uncultured people. Children would have nothing to guide them into believing that they can fly, make new discoveries, or visit other worlds, not even the ones in their head.

We’ve spoon-fed our youth and raised them with the notion that everyone can grow up and become whatever they want. They are unprepared to encounter obstacles set by age, race, gender, and class discrimination. Over time, obstacles become barriers because they do not know how to function in an adult society. This discovery deals a tremendous blow and disparages the individual. They feel helpless and don’t try to overcome the obstacles society sets for them. This opens the path to deviant behavior.

Rites of passage are necessary to mark one’s transition from one stage of life to the next. This leaves a map or chain of self-development embedded in a person’s conscious and is a key factor in behavior, self-confidence, and social skills.

Without proper rites of passage, people become disoriented and left in a limbo-state. This is common with our adolescents. They are often told, "Don’t act like a child," yet they are not treated as adults.

Our cultural mainstream provides pseudo-rites of passage; they are incomplete, unhealthy, and often dangerous. When a child gets older, they are encouraged to play with progressively more-complex sets of toys, entertainment may become less-censored, and they are given chores and responsibilities. There are other changes. For example, graduating from high school and college, getting a driver’s license, a first sexual experience, voting for the first time or even getting drunk. These experiences do not meet the transformational needs of young people. They don’t make a big enough impact to penetrate and change our psyche. They are superficial.

Pre-industrial societies knew the value of proper rituals and rites of passage. Girls were secluded and taught the art of womanhood by older females. Great grandmothers, aunts, mothers, and sisters educated them about the path of life. If a girl showed promise with certain gifts, for example herbs, healing, or crafts, training in those areas was intensified. Young men underwent years of martial training, a first hunt, a first kill, initiation into certain clubs of older men, scarification, the knocking out of teeth, or apprenticeship to a spiritual master. Rituals provide the vehicle for a rite of passage.

Elaborate rituals have developed around the heroic deed. Many required skills for rituals, like hunting, are no longer vital in modern society. Risking one’s life was inevitable during rituals in most traditional societies. That kind of ritual makes an impact on the psyche. This may affirm to the participant that they are somehow predestined to live. That could also explain the recent teenage craze for extreme sports. Extreme sport enthusiasts claim that the rush they get makes them feel alive.

America’s youth culture has powerful elements of rites of passage. This includes separation from family, initiations, special hairdos, clothing, piercing, tattoos, music, religious experimentation, and conscious-altering drugs. Many immerse themselves into a particular subculture. Teenagers engage in these behaviors to fill in the missing pieces of their developmental education. This is the time when they see the ugliness of the world and begin to question things. Many parents agree by saying, "They are trying to find themselves."

Anthropologist Joseph Campbell said, "Boys everywhere have a need for rituals marking passage to manhood. If society does not provide them they will inevitably invent their own."

The use of rites of passage to enter adulthood all have one central goal — respect. Whether it’s seen in the form of a gun-wielding maniac or a person becoming a doctor to appease the expectations of parents and peers, they are demanding respect.

When you throw in neglectful parents, exhausted by long work hours to make ends meet, the parents themselves may turn to drugs and alcohol and children are left in adultless communities. Also, many low-class parents leash their children with the idea that they should never expect to accomplish more than the parent has. They are fed many discouraging lies like, "College isn’t for everyone," encouraged to drop out of school, work in low-wage unskilled labor, or join the military.

Many of these children join gangs because they work, if they didn’t young people would create something else. When they encounter obstacles, the gang path seems the best choice because it’s the quickest shortcut to power and respect. Try walking into a room with all your best clothes and jewelry and lashing influential people with a silver tongue and you’re taking chances. Walk into that room with a raised gun and suddenly, looks, and social skills no longer matter, you now have everyone’s attention.

In deviant communities, peer admiration has extremely high value. Gangs provide a mock family created to distance young people from parents, create friendships, invoke fear, ensure protection or enmity, drug supply, smuggling, and income. It’s the quickest way for a street-smart person to strong-arm themselves. When you have access to influential contacts and shady individuals, you have more power. Gangs have their own code of honor and use rituals like a gang-rape, gauntlets, or murder to initiate new members. And these rituals are extreme enough to impact the psyche. This is the core power of a gang.

There are a few ways modern society could introduce positive rituals into the lives of young people. Grade schools should assess students in several areas and rate their strengths and weaknesses. Based upon this information, a student may decide to take specialized courses and earn college credits, certificates, and build degrees while still enrolled in high school. Outdoor activities and organizations like the boy scouts and girl scouts could also help develop an individual. These programs create diversity and set the individual apart, he or she would have a more established sense of purpose and direction.

We need to extend prison sentences for gang-related offenses and cut their power off at the source by implementing healthy rites of passage.

As the financial gap widens between the ruling class and lower classes, impoverished families, racism, broken homes, and unemployment leave our society in ruin. If rites of passage aren’t introduced into modern societies, teen violence will erupt and be an ever-increasing problem.

Religious intervention only fuels the problem. After-school programs and increased police forces are band-aid solutions. I would like to see primitive summer camps sprout up across the nation. They could work with Native American tribes and modern primitives to educate young people. Campers between the ages of 12-18 would take home parental-release forms for pain, endurance, or body modification rituals planned for the end of their summer stay. Would you sign the form?

Columbine Society – The Teenage Rebel Disconnect

The majority of young blacks don’t seem to identify with positive role models like Barack Obama or well-spoken teachers like the African mentor shown here. Instead, educated blacks are ostracized for being "white."

Mainstream black influences equate intelligence and white-collar success to whites. This is self-inflicted damage. While this may not be a widespread problem, it’s a crippling association and seems to be worsening.

Dangerous Role Models

A new thug culture is here, snatching the coat tails of important facets within the black community, hampering the possibilities of a future colorblind society. Students are encouraged to drop out in return for street-credit. There is nothing cool or special about acting like an uneducated dip shit or using a slurred speech impediment.

Early humans migrated from Africa. Technically, we’re all African-American. Urban youth (white kids included) are influenced by media, especially MTV. Modern-day black heroes are drug dealers, pimps, and rappers who masquerade as gangsters, scammers, players, and gun-toting professional athletes. People need to expose and distance themselves from the thug culture. 

White on Black Racism in America

Although blacks living in the inner-cities seem more defensive, most inner-city whites aren’t racists. People are so accustomed to living together, black people don’t really need to worry about hate crimes in the city. Inner-city white kids even try to emulate the black thug culture. The white racists involved in hate crime and discrimination tend to belong to organized hate groups and live in rural areas and it’s no surprise that most rural racists are ignorant and often fundamental religious zealots (in their mind, their god is needed to substantiate their claims of superiority).

You don’t need to worry about racists in the city, you need to worry in hick-town, USA.

Why are Blacks so Defensive in the City?

A group of people who suffer together share an extremely high sense of camaraderie because their shared humanity becomes so apparent during the struggle.

Slavery and segregation gouged open wounds into our society and people are still uneasy. Blacks feel oppressed. Whites feel ashamed. There can be no closure or fair retribution because too much time has passed.

Here is a real life example of the defensive attitude. My fiance’s uncle stopped at a gas station after church to buy fountain drinks for his family. Two young black men stood in line behind him, paid together, and exited after him. He held the door for them and said, "There you go boys." One responded with, "We’re not your boys, cracker-ass motherfucker!" They proceeded to punch him around the parking lot. Her uncle didn’t even fight back.

One of our friends traveled to Georgia for a vacation. She entered a convenience store and was shoved to the floor by a black man who said, "Your place is at the end of the line, white bitch."

Personally, my black friends have treated me better than the other white people I know. However, I’ve been treated to distrustful glares and wary behavior in the city.

Edgy comedians and emerging media technology and communication have dissolved some walls. Unfortunately, the new thug culture is rebuilding those old barriers for our future generations.

Compassion and Hate

True hate seldom exists. We mask what we fear and fear the unknown. Hate is ignorance of the unknown, a reaction of self-preservation. People are afraid of being hurt, therefore, hate is a barrier, not an emotion. Hate is shallow and, introspectively, fails to take all sides, behavioral causes, and perceptions into account.

When people finally regard others as equal, they will know that we each share very personal and very universal elements of life (development from childhood, experience of pain, heartache, hunger, loneliness, excitement, pride, embarrassment, and defeat).

Understanding the universality of our own humanity develops compassion for others while providing a lens to see through the intimidating masks of others.

Referencing differing groups or individuals with a name outside your own it is an attempt to demonize them into something insignificant and subhuman, they are no longer thought of as people. When regard for their humanity has been wiped away and replaced with something negative, it becomes easier to justify their extermination.

Targets of hate crime are pre-associated with a particular nation, group, race, gender, sexual preference, ability level, or generalized hate word. For instance, the biggest gay bashers commit acts of violence against their target. Why? Because they refuse to identify with the gay man. He is never thought of as human. Instead, he is a faggot, queer, etc.

A similar mental process takes place when we swear at people in traffic or flame on the net. People displace or mask the humanity of another before attacking. This is the face of hate.

Solutions

Reject the thug culture. Organize and communicate with other groups. Boycott MTV and their sponsors, protest, or write to elected officials.

Educate people around you about the prejudice and stereotyping on all sides.

Think for yourself. Don’t be a follower. Make a stand when another person engages in racism or group discrimination.