Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System - NYT. Because I am white and my family well-off, that I am bipolar has been a mostly personal struggle; had I been poor or a minority youth, I would be dead, in jail, or slowly winding towards the wretched conclusion of serious addictions.
My class has meant that my regularly insane behavior was excused, even romanticized: “Bright and disturbed, sadly; he’ll need our patience! An artistic sort!” A bright, disturbed black male will not receive the forbearance of the police, his teachers, his neighbors.
When I imagine what it would have been like to be as I was at sixteen, often quite deranged, locked in prison without the means to get treatment, without a support system to contextualize my infractions as “medical” rather than “moral,” without the tolerance of a society which looks to excuse what I do wrong, which wants to forgive me, I feel real despair.
I do not consider anything I’ve written above to reflect any political affiliation; I cannot imagine how it could be thought ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative.’ Is it not a matter which ought to stir concern in anyone?
