Violence Is Not Innate

4 Pages 1101 Words

Violence has been with us from the dawn of history and only becomes a larger problem. Before newspapers, radios, or TV’s signaled us to the presence of violence and before police and prisons protected us from those who practiced it, violence was around. The first violent act ever committed and reported was that of Cain when he killed his brother Abel. Cain only killed his brother out of jealousy, not because he was born to commit all forms of violence. When we look back at the prehistoric species of man, scientists have proven that primitive men killed their enemies out of rage or for protection. Through his childhood experiences, Geoffrey Canada persuades readers that violence does not come innately. Canada’s earliest memories of learning to use violence taught him that he would only survive if he fought with other children. Through Canada’s experiences, we learn that it is not instinct that drives us to commit atrocities but our culture.
Geoffrey Canada illustrates the urban America’s culture of violence by proving that children learn violence because of the environment they grew up in. The economic status that Canada and his family were living in prevented them from living in a safer neighborhood. Canada grew up in various small apartments in the Bronx with his mother and three brothers. Growing up in the urban ghetto, Canada, at such a young age recognized the subterranean evilness that existed when someone robbed his brother’s ten dollars in their new apartment. Geoffrey gained conscious of the possibility that he can be robbed at any given time and learned that no one was going to “come to a standstill because of our personal loss”. Due to environmental determinism, Canada went through incidences such as these and became psychologically prepared for other possible hostile scenarios.
Canada claims that “violence is a learned response…” because he studied students that were not from the lower class urban...