My Time Will Come by Ian Manuel

Author:Ian Manuel [Manuel, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2021-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

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In 1996 Princeton political scientist John Dilulio sparked widespread social panic when he put forth a novel theory about juvenile delinquency—which he has since retracted given how stunningly wrong all of his predictions turned out to be—sounding an alarm about the advent of a “new breed” of black inner-city youth whom he called “superpredators.” “Fatherless, Godless, and jobless,” they are “radically impulsive, brutally remorseless youngsters, including ever more teenage boys, who murder, assault, rob, burglarize, deal deadly drugs, join gun-toting gangs, and create serious disorders.”4 This was the media landscape in which an interview with Debbie Baigrie (“I Forgave the Guy Who Shot Me”)5 was published in the now defunct McCall’s magazine.

Debbie described the excruciating toll my crime had exacted—the shooting had ripped up her mouth and gums, requiring years of painful reconstructive surgery. But with dignity and empathy, she added:

[A] glimpse of Ian’s bleak life made me reflect on my own circumstances, the reasons I have to be thankful: a husband with a good job as an electrical engineer, a great family, a beautiful home, many caring friends. So, hoping I could make Ian’s life a little better, I began a correspondence with him. My husband didn’t approve. “Forget him!” Stephen said. “He can just rot.”…It would be wonderful to end this story with the news that Ian has been completely rehabilitated. But reality is seldom so neat. What I am grateful for is that Ian seems to be finding himself, that I have not only recovered but have been able to develop a relationship with my attacker and that I have found a new direction for my life. I still get a lot of pressure to stop bothering about Ian, but he needs a friend. And for reasons I don’t fully understand myself, I intend to go on being that friend.

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