A Problem Population

A Boston U prof is taking some heat for a tweet or two. In one, she called "white college age males" a "problem population." The statement is perhaps annoying, but it's also true - or at least one of Bohr's "great truths." College age males of whatever race are one of the most dynamic elements of society. They become entrepreneurs, soldiers, political activists and athletes. They also protest, get in trouble with the law, and commit a lot of acts of societal foolishness.

It was offensive of her to single out whites, but it was a natural reaction to the focus of some of the more racist media (say Fox) on the trouble young black men get into. Young men, and women too, need what one thinker called "the moral equivalent of war." If opportunity to engage in it isn't there, they will tend to find war and its other immoral equivalents attractive.

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