Our glass house has a lot of holes in
it.
I hope people wake up.
Role models help rescue
troubled teens
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
It was when that thought came to mind,
says Frederica Wilson, surveying the faces at the conference table in the
Miami-Dade County Public Schools headquarters, that she knew she had a problem.
After all, she was a school principal, a black woman. And Timothy was a
student, a black boy. But Timothy was also a terror and as she drove to school,
she found herself hoping he wouldn't be there.
The thought shocked her. If she dreaded
Timothy, she says, how must her Hispanic and white teachers have felt about
him? And why was it every time she held a disciplinary conference, it was for a
black boy? Why were they the ones who always seemed to be in trouble?
So she started meeting with them, “trying
to find out why they were so angry and why they were so disruptive and why they
wanted to fight all the time.” Then she started calling men in to help her.
Fourteen years and more than 15,000
boys later,
Full disclosure: Years ago, I spoke at
a Role Models assembly. I think it's a fine example of What Works. As in, my
series of columns profiling programs that improve the odds for black kids.
Wilson and some of the Role Model men are joined at the conference table by
graphic evidence that their program works: boys who became men under its
guidance.
One of them is Kionne McGhee. Child of
a single mother, he was suspended 47 times, labeled emotionally handicapped and
learning disabled. Today he is an assistant state attorney. “The problem was, I
was acting out because I needed a black male or somebody that could relate to
me,” he says, as opposed to someone who understood him only “through theory.”
Police sergeant Thurman MacNeal is one
of 3,000 men who have trained as Role Models. As a black cop whose interactions
with black boys too often involve handcuffs, he says, it can be “discouraging
because so many of these young men have so much talent it's amazing. But
because of other things that are going on with them and because those talents
are not being developed . . .” The thought trails away.
“We have to start somewhere,” he says,
“and this program has allowed us . . . to make a difference.”
The program is funded by the school system and by private and corporate
sponsors. Its components are many: workshops; scholarships; a basketball
tournament; peer, group and one-on-one mentoring; and field trips, including to
those opposite poles of black male potential: colleges and penitentiaries.
There is a Role Model pledge, a Role Model hymn, custom-made Role Model
athletic shoes and even a Role Model tie. It bears the program's logo: large
hands touching small ones. Each boy wears one.
To be surrounded by black men who are
productive members of society, says
It works, says 20-year-old Joseph
Dubery, because “it's not a pamphlet saying, ‘Don't do drugs.’ It's different
levels you have to earn. You earn your tie, you earn your shirt, you earn the
right to say that pledge, you earn the right to sing that hymn. It's constant
achievement, constant mentorship, constantly people watching out for you.”
Dubery, a med student, should know. He
used to be a Role Model boy.
Paul
Harvey Writes
We tried so hard to make things better for
our kids that we made them worse. For my grandchildren, I'd like better. I'd
really like for them to know about hand me down clothes and homemade ice cream
and leftover meat loaf sandwiches. I really would.
I hope you learn humility by being
humiliated, and that you learn honesty by being cheated.
I hope you learn to make your own bed
and mow the lawn and wash the car. And I really hope nobody gives you a brand
new car when you are sixteen.
It will be good if at least one time
you can see puppies born and your old dog put to sleep.
I hope you get a black eye fighting for
something you believe in.
I hope you have to share a bedroom with
your younger brother/sister. And it's all right if you have to draw a line down
the middle of the room, but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you
because he's scared, I hope you let him. When you want to see a movie and your
little brother/sister wants to tag along, I hope you'll let him/her.
I hope you have to walk uphill to
school with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it
safely.
On rainy days when you have to catch a
ride, I hope you don't ask your driver to drop you two blocks away so you won't
be seen riding with someone as uncool as your Mom.
If you want a slingshot, I hope your
Dad teaches you how to make one instead of buying one.
I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and
read books. When you learn to use computers, I hope you also learn to add and
subtract in your head.
I hope you get teased by your friends
when you have your first crush on a boy\girl, and when you talk back to your
mother that you learn what ivory soap tastes like.
May you skin your knee climbing a
mountain, burn your hand on a stove and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole.
I don't care if you try a beer once,
but I hope you don't like it. And if a friend offers you dope or a joint, I
hope you realize he is not your friend. I sure hope you make time to sit on a
porch with your Grandma/Grandpa and go fishing with your Uncle. May you feel
sorrow at a funeral and joy during the holidays.
I hope your mother/dad punishes you
when you throw a baseball through your neighbor's window and that he/she hugs
you and kisses you at Hannukah/Christmas time when you give her a plaster mold
of your hand.
These things I wish for you - tough
times and disappointment, hard work and happiness. To me, it's the only way to
appreciate life.
Written with a pen. Sealed with a kiss.
I'm here for you. And if I die before you do, I'll go to heaven and wait for
you.
The political statement in
Mary Cheney's womb
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Feb. 16, 2007
Five words you will never hear from me
again in life:
I agree with James Dobson.
Dr. Dobson is the founder of Focus on
the Family, a conservative activist group, and ordinarily, I couldn't see eye
to eye with him on the day of the week. But I agree with him about Mary Cheney.
He wrote about the vice president's
pregnant, lesbian daughter in a Time magazine essay in December. Here's part of
what he said:
"With all due respect to Cheney
and her partner, Heather Poe, the majority of more than 30 years of
social-science evidence indicates that children do best on every measure of
well-being when raised by their married mother and father. That is not to say
Cheney and Poe will not love their child. But love alone is not enough to
guarantee healthy growth and development. The two most loving women in the
world cannot provide a daddy for a little boy — any more than the two most
loving men can be complete role models for a little girl."
In other words, fathers matter,
something we seem to have forgotten, so busy are we pretending that women and
men are interchangeable. My problem with Cheney and Poe is the same problem I'd
have with a heterosexual single mom who decided to make herself a baby without
benefit of a man in her life. It seems part and parcel of the diminution of
fatherhood.
Adopt a child? Sure. Are you gay? Fine.
Forced to rear a child alone after you've been widowed or abandoned? God bless.
But please don't make this tacit statement that fathers don't matter. They do.
That said, who among us believes the
ongoing uproar over Mary Cheney's baby springs solely, or even primarily, from
concerns about the need for fathers? What has people exercised isn't that no
dad will be in the child's life, but that two moms will.
Cheney broke her silence on the subject
recently. Speaking in
She is wrong. What Mary Cheney has in
her womb is both a child and a political statement. One is reminded of how a
simple act like drinking from a public fountain once became a political
statement because some people said other people ought not have the right to do
such things.
Similarly, although women all over
And no small number of those people
serve or support the administration her father represents. The week before Mary
Cheney spoke her piece, Dick Cheney had a testy exchange with Wolf Blitzer of
CNN. Blitzer asked whether the veep would like to respond to conservatives who
have criticized his daughter.
Mr. Charm barked that Blitzer was "out of line."
He, too, is wrong. The Bush
administration has used gays as Southern politicians once used (and often,
still do use) blacks — as scapegoats, boogeymen, distractions. Largely because
of that, Heather Poe will have no legal parental rights to "her"
child.
Dick Cheney is that administration's
No. 2 official. So there is nothing "out of line" in asking him about
any of this.
Still, I feel for Mary Cheney. It can't
be easy to have people impose their narratives upon your pregnancy. But this
particular pregnancy has the effect of putting a face on the abstract. What
many of us have discussed in theory, we must now contend with in fact.
And maybe the bottom line is that the
baby will do what babies always do: It will change the dynamic. It will say,
here I am, world, ready or not.
Seems to me that's a political statement, too.
Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts
Jr.'s column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address
is: lpitts@herald.com
I'll
tell you when I decided -- apologies to Ricky Ricardo -- I had some splainin'
to do.
It was a few days ago, when I got an
e-mail informing me that I am an ''anti-gay bigot.'' Which would be a shock to
the system at any time, but seems especially ironic coming as it does a few
weeks before I am supposed to receive an award from PFLAG -- Parents and
Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
The source of this ire? A column I
wrote about Mary Cheney, who is a lesbian, pregnant and the daughter of the
vice president. I thought it was a bad idea for Cheney and her life mate,
Heather Poe, to have a baby, and I noted that this is an opinion I share with
Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family fame.
Which caused a few folks to fire off scandalized notes wondering how I function
without benefit of a brain. Or a heart.
A CASE OF NEED
I suppose you can't blame them for
going nuclear at an expression of solidarity with Dobson, who is not known for
his enlightened attitude toward gays. For the record, had he couched his
objection in terms of antipathy toward gays, I'd have happily torn him a new
orifice. But he did not. What he said was something I have often said myself:
Children need fathers.
That argument, for me, at least, is not
about sexual orientation. My objection to Cheney and Poe is precisely the same
one I have to heterosexual single women who decide to conceive children without
benefit of a stable and involved father. I believe that our slide toward a
fatherless society, a society where the male parent is considered optional,
irrelevant or interchangeable, is toxic for our children.
That concern is buttressed by a growing
body of research -- UC Santa Barbara, 1996; University of Pennsylvania, 1997;
Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania, 1998; London School of
Economics and Princeton University, 2002 -- which tells us the child raised
without his or her biological father is significantly more likely to live in
poverty, do poorly in school, drop out altogether, become a teen parent,
exhibit behavioral problems, smoke, drink, use drugs, or wind up in jail.
CASUAL DISREGARD
So dad's involvement would seem vital
to a child's well-being. And in reading those e-mails, I was repeatedly struck
by the blithe way people disregarded that fact, by how eagerly they assured me
fathers bring nothing to the table that cannot be replaced by an uncle, a
coach, a family friend or other ''father figure.'' As one woman put it: ``To
say that chromosomes or genitalia dictate the chances of happiness or success .
. . for a family really makes no sense.''
Actually, what makes no sense is to
pretend that you can remove a father from a child's life and have the child not
notice. I mean, can you imagine anyone daring to make the argument that
children lose nothing if their mother abandons them, that the emotional
support, nurturing and unqualified love she brings to the home can be readily
replaced by the friendly lady down the street? Of course not. That some of us
so airily make that exact argument about fathers speaks volumes about our lack
of respect for -- and understanding of -- fatherhood itself.
I have nothing against father figures.
I had one. I am one. But a father figure is not a father.
I also have nothing against gay
adoptive parents or mothers left single by tragedy, divorce or abandonment. I
admire them.
But as 16 percent of white kids and a
whopping 51 percent of black ones grow up father-free, facing all the difficulties
that portends, I definitely have something against the idea, whether advanced
by straight women or lesbians, that father is unnecessary, that so long as
there's some uncle around to show a boy how to hit the mark in the toilet,
everything is hunky dory.
A woman has the right to use her body
as she sees fit. I don't argue that.
But it seems to me her child has a few
rights, too.
For sake of kids, society,
dads must step up
By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
P-I COLUMNIST
VIOLENCE HIT HOME this summer -- teen thugs
at Third and Pine, gunshots that claimed lives on city sidewalks, a barrage of
bullets during a fracas near Pike Place Market.
What was behind this wildness in
Angry, rootless young people who more
than likely come from families in which their parents either failed to instill
positive values -- or weren't around at all.
But now, a group of
That explains why more than 100 people
gathered this weekend at the
Bottom line: Fathers need to be a part
of families, raise their children and provide emotional and financial support.
Otherwise, the negative cycle of wayward kids falling to crime or becoming
neglectful parents will go on.
“There are ways you can come together
and support your child, regardless of your circumstances,” King County Juvenile
Court Judge LeRoy McCullough, one of the speakers, told me during a break.
Standing at his side was Margaret
Spearmon, an associate dean at the University of Washington School of Social
Work, who echoed the importance of role models at home. Saturday's gathering,
she said, also was a way to show support for parents who are “doing the right
thing.”
Their on-point perspectives came the
day before entertainer Bill Cosby took to national airwaves. Continuing to keep
the plight of young African Americans in the spotlight, Cosby just co-wrote,
"Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors."
“For the last generation or two, as our
communities dissolved and our parenting skills broke down, no one has suffered
more than our young black men,” the book states.
The book also points to a statistic
that captures the bleakness: "In 1950, five out of every six black
children were born into a two-parent home. Today, that number is less than two
out of six. ... There are whole blocks with scarcely a married couple, whole
blocks without responsible males to watch out for wayward boys, whole
neighborhoods in which little girls and boys come of age without seeing up
close a committed partnership."
Why is this significant?
“Because children need the guidance,”
Cosby said in an interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"Because the other parent needs help as well."
His co-writer, Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a
professor of psychiatry at
Which brings us back to
Several men stressed the importance of
an estranged couple not bad-mouthing each other around their children.
“Boys see this,” one man said. “That's
where they learn how to treat women.”
And one woman had a reminder for other
women to support the father's involvement: “My ex-husband is not an ex-father.
He's still my children's father.”
At one table a linebacker- sized man
broke down and cried, describing the challenge of being a good father and
provider.
Cosby gets it right when he says the
glorification of gang culture and anti-intellectualism have created a crisis,
and now, dads are sliding away from personal responsibility.
But Cosby gets it wrong by suggesting
that people across the board don't care.
They do -- just ask those who sacrificed a sunny fall Saturday to find a
positive path and challenge the victim mentality.
P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr.
can be reached at 206-448-8125 or robertjamieson@seattlepi.com.
You call it a "prank," but I call it terror
Leonard Pitts Jr.,
The Miami Herald
October 14, 2007
A history of rope -- and shame
A noose is left for
a black workman at a construction site in the Chicago area. In Queens, a woman
brandishes a noose to threaten her black neighbors. A noose is left on the door
of a black professor at Columbia University. Go back a little further and you
have incidents at the University of Maryland, at a police department on Long
Island, on a Coast Guard cutter, in a bus maintenance garage in Pittsburgh.
Mark Potok, the
director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center told
USA Today, "For a dozen incidents to come to the public's attention is a
lot. I don't generally see noose incidents in a typical month. We might hear
about a handful in a year."
Jena's
superintendent of schools famously dismissed the original incident as a
"prank." It was an astonishing response, speaking volumes about the
blithe historical ignorance of people who have found it convenient not to peer
too closely at the atrocities of the past.
But watching this trend unfold, it occurs to me that maybe
what we need is the opposite of ignorance. Maybe what we need is information.
Maybe what we need is a history of rope.
A history of rope
would have to include, in 1904, Luther Holbert and his wife, who had their
fingers chopped off and handed out as souvenirs. Holbert was beaten so badly
one of his eyes came out. It hung by a thread. A large corkscrew was used to
bore into the couple's flesh. It tore out big chunks of them each time it was
withdrawn. A rope was used to tie them to the tree.
A history of rope
would have to include, in 1917, Rufus Moncrief, who was beaten senseless by a
mob. They used a saw to cut off his arms and otherwise mutilated him. The mob
hanged Moncrief. Then, for good measure, they hanged his dog. Ropes were used
for both.
A history of rope
would have to include, in 1918, Mary Turner, burned alive in Valdosta, Ga. A
man used a hog-splitting knife to slash her swollen stomach. The baby she had
carried nearly to term tumbled out and managed two cries before the man crushed
its head beneath his heel. A rope was used to tie Turner upside down in a tree.
A history of rope
would include thousands of Turners, Moncriefs and Holberts. It would range
widely across the geography of this nation and the years of the last two
centuries. A history of rope would travel from Cairo, Ill., in 1909 to Fort
Lauderdale in 1935 to Urbana, Ohio, in 1897 to Wrightsville, Ga., in 1903, to
Leitchfield, Ken., in 1913 to Newbern, Tenn. in 1902. And beyond.
You might say the
country has changed since then, and it has. The problem is, it's changing
again.
It feels as if in
recent years we the people have backwards traveled from even the pretense of
believing our loftiest ideals. It has become fashionable to decry excessive
"political correctness," deride "diversity," sneer at the
"protected classes." Code words sanding down hatred's rough edge.
"State's rights" for the new millennium. And now, out come the
nooses. Just a prank, the man says.
Mary Turner would
argue otherwise. I find it useful to remember her, useful to be reminded of
things we would rather forget. To remember her is to understand that there is
no prank here.
A history of rope
would drown your conscience in blood.