Badly Behaved Children

Sometimes I get a little annoyed when folks go on and on about how shocked they are that my sons are so well-behaved. The typical comment goes something like this:

"I just can't BELIEVE how good your kids are! I mean, look at them! They are just so well-behaved, it's AMAZING!!!"

Those are the moments I want to ask in return, "Why can't you believe it? Because they're black and male? Do you think all black males are heathens who can't behave? Hmm???"

But that would be me reading into the situation a little too much, even if I do sometimes think that racial dynamics are a part of the shocked response to their good behavior. I never ever do the, "Oh, but you should see how they bad they are when they're at home," thing. Instead, I verbally agree with the person, especially when my boys are in earshot. "Yes, they are very well-behaved. They are such good, polite boys."

We talk about the proper way to behave a whole lot in my house. Plus, I was a teacher, a teacher that did not play around and accept anything less than excellent behavior. Kids learn how to behave if you teach them how to and reward them for being good. To me, it's the essence of vanity to think you can go somewhere and be rude or disrespectful.

My seven year-old just started taking Kung Fu lessons at a place a couple of miles from my house. My husband took him to the first two lessons but I wanted to go so I took him last night. There are six other boys in the class and five of them are really badly behaved. My husband had warned me about how bad they are, but I still wasn't fully prepared for how they were talking back to the Sifu. These boys are a little older, maybe 6th graders, so the Sifu was giving them sets of push ups to do as punishment for being disrespectful. It really didn't seem like these boys cared all that much because they were doing dozens of push ups.

I saw my son watching these boys and then he'd look over at me to gauge my reaction to this. I kept shaking my head at him and giving him the "eye".

I started having flashbacks to something that happened when I was at a middle school basketball game. This girl in my class named Eleanor called her mom a bitch in front of everybody. What did Eleanor's mom do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She just stood there and said, "Oh, Eleanor, don't talk like that, honey!"

And what did Eleanor do with that? "Well you are a bitch! And I hate you! I wish you weren't even here."

My mouth was totally hanging open and I remember my mom just looked at me with this look that said, "If you ever do something like that, I will kill you."

The parents of these boys at Kung Fu last night were sitting right there watching their sons misbehaving. I think they saw my mom's look on my face. But them? One mom actually had the nerve to laugh and say, "They just come in here with so much energy, don't they?" They were totally being Eleanor's mom.

I made sure to talk with my son after the class about it all. I told him how I liked how respectful he was, how carefully he followed directions and how he thanked the Sifu after class. Then I took him to Robek's to get a smoothie treat. He asked me why I thought the other boys were bad and I told him it's because their parents let them act like that.

Later on, I got to thinking about how every single one of those misbehaving boys are white. After I got home I was talking on the phone with a girlfriend of mine and I told her about these boys. I started joking with her, "What they need is a black mom to set them straight because black moms don't play that."

Total stereotype, I know, but I think there is a grain of truth that certain cultures, particularly black folks, don't look kindly on their children misbehaving in public. And if your mom or dad is there, that's a definite no-no. It's not regarded as cute or funny and there's the cultural legacy that misbehaving in public can get you killed. Google Emmett Till's story if you're not sure what I mean by that.

Clearly, I know from teaching that black and Latino kids can and do misbehave in public. But again, I never saw it go down while the parents were sitting right there. I had students who would talk much smack, they'd be all, "Call my momma, I don't care!" Then when I'd call mom and get her to come up to the school, the tears and apologies would start big time and they'd never be a problem again.

The flip side of this is that while some of this cultural stuff is true, it also gives rise to, like I said, stereotypes. White parents are nice, but passive wimps, and black parents are mean and will beat your ass if you even look at them wrong, (especially if they're from the Caribbean).

Now, I don't beat my children at all. I do the modern version of discipline, which clearly, parents of all colors do: explain the rules, enforce the rules and reward and punish accordingly. I'm curious though, what do you all think about all this? What do you think about culturally different ways that people raise their kids or discipline them? In your experience, what do you see happen?

Fearless

I had a little crying moment at the park this afternoon.

A couple of weeks ago my sons got their first ever bikes. So far we've only been letting them ride in the gated parking lot in back of our building. But today I let them ride their bikes over to our local park.

They rode around and around on a flat, paved loop, but finally decided they wanted to ride up the sloped dirt trail. Neither are super skilled at getting up slopes yet so it took some pushing to get them to the crest. But once they got there, they were more than ready to cruise to the bottom.

The seven year-old, "O", is a much more cautious rider, so he rode his brakes the whole way down the slope. But his four year-old daredevil brother, "T", screamed, "Rock on, baby!" at the top of his lungs and pumped his fist in the air the whole way down the slope. He rode so fast down the incline that I couldn't catch him even though I ran as fast as I could. (Sigh. My slow running is another issue entirely.) I was so worried because I totally thought he was going to crash.

In contrast, he was absolutely fearless.

It was really something to see my little wild baby refuse to look back even once. It really got me in the gut to see how he's growing up thinking he's absolutely invincible. He's whip smart, he's creative and he's not afraid to take risks.

So what made me cry? Well, it all got me thinking about how I've known so many other black males over the years who have also been smart, creative, outgoing, risk-takers... and they've had to deal with so much. I think about all the black males I've known who had blowout parties on their 25th birthdays because they honestly didn't think they'd live to see that age.

My mom can't even trace her patrilineal DNA because all the males in her family are dead. Her father died well before I was born. My brother is dead. My uncle is dead as well. My great uncles are dead. Sometimes I look at my sons and think about all of those relatives they won't know, men who had to work around not just the systemic lack of opportunity or institutionalized oppression, but also the psychological and emotional weight of racism. And it undeniably affected their health and/or their mental stability.

What's the weight? Marian Wright Edelman sums it up:

"Only 3 out of 100 Black males entering kindergarten will graduate from college. Every 5 seconds during the school day, a Black public school student is suspended. Every 46 seconds during the school day, a Black high school student drops out. Every minute, a Black child is arrested and a Black baby is born to an unmarried mother. Every 3 minutes, a Black child is born into poverty. Every hour, a Black baby dies. Every 4 hours, a Black child or youth under 20 dies from an accident, and every 5 hours, a Black youth is a homicide victim. Every day, a Black young person under 25 dies from HIV infection and a Black child or youth under 20 commits suicide."

And as much as I get up every day and 100% tell myself that my sons are not going to be a part of any of that because I'm making sure it doesn't happen, the reality is that so many other parents of black children have said the exact same thing.

Sometimes that reality gets to me. Sometimes I find myself getting stressed out thinking about how I can't slack at all when I come to my boys. I know I probably add to the pressure by operating with this fear.

With all of the violence going on in this city, these days I think about how I don't want my sons to grow up as teenagers in Los Angeles. I don't want them to be anywhere someone will drive by and shoot them because they're black. I don't want them stopped by the police and harassed. But where in the United States can we go where that sort of reality doesn't have the possibility of taking place?

My son hasn't caught on yet that he's supposed to walk softly and talk softly so he doesn't scare anybody. He doesn't know yet that when he does succeed someone will tell him it's only because he's black. And if he opens his mouth to acknowledge what he's going through, he'll get told he's playing the race card. Now though, if someone does something wrong to him, he expects immediate justice and he's come to believe that justice and fairness are fundamental to his world.

So when I see my son owning a slope like that, knowing he is worthy, capable, wonderful and smart, knowing he is invincible and just as much a rock star as any other child on that playground, I cherish that. I know it's going to hurt to see that start to get chipped away.

Assassins and Child Molesters

I didn't sleep last night. I had too much on my mind.

I was distracting myself from myself with the early morning cable news when the first report of Benazir Bhutto being assassinated came on. It's heartbreaking to see such a thing happen because she didn't deserve it. Who could think that God would bless such actions? And true, lots of people are "assassinated" by rival gangs every single day in this city and none of them deserve it either. But it matters in a different way that such a thing would happen to her at this time in history.

I still don''t know what to do with the story, what to make of all the political fallout from it. There's certainly enough political jockeying being done by those currently in power and those who are running for President in this country. But I don't know what to make of it, and so I will tell you about something else that's been on my mind, something I can not necessarily make sense of, but it's not an unfamiliar topic. In fact, I've seen it too much.

Do you remember the group B2K?

You probably don't if you aren't one to keep tabs on the ever-revolving door of pop culture, but B2K was a boy band from LA that had a string of huge hits a couple of years ago. All the teeny-bopper girls on both sides of the pond were crazy for them and they seemed to perform on every music awards show under the sun. They even made one of those dance movies that come along every once in awhile, "You Got Served".

They weren't the most stellar singers on earth but they could dance and had great production, so it worked. Here's the video for one of their biggest hits, "Bump, Bump, Bump". I remember when this song came out it was definitely a banger, and it went to #1 on Billboard, but the video creeped me out for a few reasons.

First, it features Sean Combs, also known as P.Diddy, Puffy, Puff Daddy, etc. He's creepy in his own right, but an additional creeptastic vibe was created because he's like twice the age of the teenage B2K boys. It's a really weird dynamic to watch him performing such a sexually suggestive (written by Chi-town's finest, R. Kelly) song with them.

Second, the female "dancers" in the video also seemed to have a few years on the guys. It could just be the power of makeup and hard living but the women definitely didn't seem to be 17 year-olds. Everyone wants to talk about older men and young girls, but a wink and a nod is given to younger guys and older women, like being 17 and able to pull a 21 year-old means you're some sex stud.

Third, I got to thinking about how I'd feel if those were my sons. It made me think about how I wouldn't want my sons around that industry, with all the predatory people who just seem to be absolutely morally bankrupt and just pimping folks for profit.

And then suddenly, kaput. B2K was over. The lead singer, Omarion, ended up going solo but the rest of them disappeared...until now.

A few days ago, two of the former members alleged via a YouTube video that their svengali-like manager (and cousin?), Chris Stokes, molested them and other members of the group beginning when they were pre-teens.

Many people don't know that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused in this country. When I was a teacher I'd look around my classroom and know that statistically, sexual abuse had happened to at least two or three of my students. I'd look to see which ones still sucked their thumbs when they thought no one was looking, which ones danced a bit too suggestively on the playground.

When I was supervising teachers, it was always heartbreaking when one of my teachers would call and ask what they should do to work with a student they'd recently learned was being abused. It never was an easy answer.

There are a lot of folks who have had some relative, family friend, coach, pastor or stranger sexually abuse them. But folks don't talk about it. And we damn sure don't discuss how it happens to boys. I find that there is so much abuse going on that sometimes there's a "just get over it" kind of message sent to victims. Plus, there's a vibe that boys like the abuse if it happens with a woman.

But what if the alleged offender is a black male? And it's not Michael Jackson? And the victim is also a black male?

What does it mean for these young black men who were the object of a million teen girl fantasies to put a video of themselves on the internet where they allege such crimes? And one explicitly references having had anal sex performed on him?

For the young men, making such allegations is the equivalent of giving up their mythological status as a heterosexual, well hung, black male sex stud. The word "gay" rapidly started to fly around the sites that were reporting the story. LAPD began an investigation...and very few doubted that the claims weren't true. Because what black male in his right mind would want to go down the path to being considered, as the term goes, "suspect"?

Today, one of the young man from B2K recanted his allegations.

At least 20% of abused people recant so what are the adoring B2K fans to believe? Especially now that the other alleged victim has stated that the recantation is due to being rolled up on and threatened by Compton Bloods.

Yes, gang members. Sounds crazy but that makes it all quite believable to me...remember the story of Suge Knight hanging Vanilla Ice off a balcony? Yeah, not so far-fetched anymore, is it?

Al Queda or the Bloods. Take you pick. Because whether someone is an assassin or a child molester, surely both are killing someone, even if for the victim that remains alive, it's all a figurative thing.

School And Society

Yesterday my youngest son officially became involved with one of the most powerful entities in this city, the Los Angeles Unified School District.

It was his first day of Pre-K and he was not too thrilled to be going. He refused to wear the lanyard-style name tag. In fact, he threw it on the ground. I could see tears beginning to well up in his eyes as the teachers told the kids to line up at the Pre-K entrance to the school.

His teacher came over and told him he was going to be okay. She kindly smiled at him and took his hand. His lip trembled a little but he held onto her.

I only let the tears roll down my face when he was safely out of sight. I cried because it's hard to see your baby experiencing such a milestone. And I cried because I worry about what this school system has in store for my little boy, a black male, especially since he has an "artistic" temperament.

Schools don't do too well with black boys with artistic temperaments.

But, I have confidence in his Pre-K teacher. My eldest son had her and she's great. We understand each other and I grilled her two years ago before my eldest entered her room. I know she was initially surprised when I asked her how she would deal with my son being called names or being teased because of his skin color or hair. But she recovered quickly and was open to hearing why I asked. When an incident did happen, she dealt effectively with it. And she was not afraid of my son's blackness and what that means for him in our society. She loved him instead of tolerating him and looking down her nose at him with a sense of superiority.

This is not how all teachers behave. I can tell you without a doubt that bad teachers come in every color. Racist teachers do too. But I've had a whole lot of experience with young white teachers coming in to teach poor children of color.

The things I'd experienced in my personal life and also seen in my own teaching experience gave me a prime opportunity to think about who I was working with. Who were these people coming to teach poor children of color? The majority were young white women who were admirably idealistic. They were eager to teach in low-income communities and change the lives of their students. They believed it was immoral for poor children to not get a decent education.

That belief is, in itself, a noble and wonderful thing. However, many of them were unprepared for the myriad ways race would play a factor in their teaching experiences. There was definitely a palpable desire to believe that race wouldn't be a big issue, even if many of them were afraid that black and Latino students wouldn't accept them because they were white. And they figured the veteran teachers who weren't white wouldn't accept them either.

Most of them had never had a very close friend who was black. I'm talking about a girlfriend they talked with every day. Someone who did the anorexia intervention on them during their sophomore year of college. Someone whose shoulder they cried on when they went through a bad breakup. Someone they were roommates with.

Many had never been to a black person's home. They'd never sung the Black National Anthem or been to an Ebony Fashion Fair Fashion show. Never been to a black beauty shop or smelled the chemicals of hair relaxers.

Of course, they'd read in sociology classes about the black male being an endangered species. Perhaps they'd even gone through an experimental phase where they'd slept with a few black guys at college. If they liked rap music, they believed it gave them the street cred they needed to relate to their students. They didn't stop to think about whether the black boys in their classrooms were being socialized to be 50 Cent. After all, he's a rich guy, and who wants to be Barry Manilow?

Many of these teachers didn't want to think about how little trust black folks have in schools that have failed their families for generations. None had ever thought the historical interactions between black and white women in this country needed to be taken into consideration when dealing with their student's mothers. They'd missed the history lesson on the jealous revenge white wives would take on black female slaves because their white husbands were spending time down at the slave cabins, raping those slaves.

Then they'd complain because when they'd tell mothers that their child had misbehaved, the mother would mistrustfully ask the teacher, "And what did you do to my child?"

They didn't know what was going on when the little black girls in their classrooms wistfully stroked the waist-length hair of the Latina girls. Instead they'd agree with the black girls who'd say to the Latina girls, "Your hair is so pretty."

And when those black girls came to school with hair extension braids, the teachers would ask,"Is that your hair? How did it get so long overnight?"

They'd complain that the black children were the worst behaved children in their classrooms and they didn't understand why those black children were still not achieving academically, despite having them, the awesome and motivated first year teacher.

Some were angry when I'd point out to them that they were treating their black and Latino students unequally. They didn't believe it was true. And then I'd share that when the Latino boy talked out of turn, they'd ignored him. But when the black boy talked out of turn, they'd yelled at him and given him a negative consequence.

"Are you calling me a racist?" They'd say. "Because I'm not a racist."

I'd tell them I was just objectively sharing what I was seeing. I was usually too chicken to say, "Yes, you're a racist." Instead, I'd ask what leadership opportunities they'd given the black student, what positive contact they'd had with the family, what encouraging praise and affirmation they'd given.

They'd just reiterate that they weren't racist. "Liberal" and "socially progressive" were the labels they'd given themselves. After all, who else would come teach in these schools? Who else would take the time for some poor children of color? Sure they were afraid of a black mother whose tough questions would be seen as normal if they were coming from the mouth of a white mother. But that fear wasn't racism, right?

The thing about our world is that teachers aren't alone in their denial. We desperately want to believe that everyone gets treated the same at work, when they're buying a car, when they're looking for housing, when shopping at Macy's, when walking down the street.

And if they don't, it's not racism. It's some sort of personal issues between two people.

Even more, we want to believe that we are not the perpetrators of racism. We all want to believe that racism is for people who from the South, are married to their cousin and are missing teeth. Racism is for people who wear white hoods on the weekend and voted for George Bush.

Yes, my son takes one more step into growing up in Los Angeles, a city where the chance of a 30 year old black male being murdered is 15.9 in 10,000.

And if he was white, it'd be 0.6 in 10,000.

Teachers are a part of that statistic, whether they want to admit it or not. We're all a part of that, whether we want to admit it or not.