No Death for Molesters

When I was in college, one of my sociology professors shared a shocking statistic with my class. She stated that one in four girls in this country is sexually abused as a child.

I often thought about that statistic in the days following that particular class, especially as I engaged in the typical conversations and interactions with the various women I knew. Indeed, a few days after that class, I went out with the group of young women and men that I spent most of my time with. I looked around at all the women and reflected on the fact that as much time as we spent with each other, we really didn't know each other well enough to talk about such things. Yet I wondered, if, within our group of friends, that statistic was true.

The guys we were hanging out with were being really juvenile (we were all around 18 or 19) and trying to get all the girls to say whether we were virgins or not. If a girl did not want to say, the guys were being all, "So you must not be a virgin if you don't wanna say anything."

I began to think about how such a question is so complicated for the victim of sexual assault. How does a girl say, "No, I'm not a virgin because I was raped as a child?"

And really, how does one begin to share that they have been raped as a child? Or as a teen? Or whenever?

When I became a teacher, I learned about some common signs that a child is being sexually abused. And in my first year teaching, my heart broke when I found out about the abuse one of my young, eight year-old students was enduring. My heart broke again a few months later when one of my male students confessed to me that his mom had had it out with her boyfriend because his two young sisters said they'd been molested by him.

Then it came out that the boyfriend was touching my student too, but he didn't want to say anything because this guy sometimes took him to the Bank of America on Long Beach Boulevard. No big deal to you and I, but a big deal to an eight year old in Compton. He claimed that his sisters were just jealous because they didn't get to go to the bank and said, "They just don't want me to have a daddy."

Now that I've had my own children, one of my biggest fears is that they'll whisper in my ear that they have something to tell me and they'll say that someone has been molesting them. Quite frankly, I worry less about strangers trying to get at them. Instead, I worry about the relative, the friend of the family, the next door neighbor, a coach or someone at their school.

I worry about both the physical effects and the psychological effects such abuse could have on my boys, and I also worry about what I might do to any potential abuser. As in, I worry that I might be that parent who loses it and hires a hit man to take the abuser out.

I've said for many years that I think the death penalty should be a possible punishment for rape, and that's whether someone's been a victim of rape as a child or as an adult. I know there are so many who don't believe in the death penalty and feel that as corrupt as our justice system is, how can we sentence someone to death?

To me it's simple: you rape a child, you die. The jail thing doesn't work for me as adequate punishment because we live in a society where Michael Vick got more jail time than the average child molester or rapist -- because being nice to dogs is more important than honoring and protecting children.

Of course, our Supreme Court disagrees with me. I read today that the Court has rejected the death penalty as a possible punishment for raping a child. Sex offenders don't get rehabilitated in jail and we all know it, that's why we don't want them living next door when they get out. We know the chances of them repeating are pretty high.

I'm sure to millions of victims of childhood rape, this decision feels like it's saying the life of the rapist is more important than the horrors inflicted on the life of the child. I think we culturally have an attitude where we believe it's awful, but we also believe that the child will eventually get over it.

One thing's for sure, the child victims of sexual abuse do not just "get over it". Look at the drug abusers, alcoholics, compulsive eaters, compulsive exercisers, sex addicts and child molesters in your midst. How many of those drug abusers, alcoholics and all the rest are trying to get rid of the pain, the trauma they experienced? How many adult victims have been in therapy for years, trying to get rid of the feelings of shame and worthlessness that plague every single thing they do?

Yeah, I am sure many folks will disagree, but I don't see how raping a child deserves anything less than death.

Barack Went Straight to College

Tomorrow morning I'll be attending my four year-old's Pre-K graduation. "T" is super excited about the ceremony, especially since he thinks college comes next. You see, although he really likes school, he positively loathes homework.

So why the excitement about college? Well, "T" somehow remembered that I told him that you don't get homework everyday at college. So he's decided he's going there next. Forget about K-12!

I tried to be rational with his stubborn, "artistic" temperament. "No, honey, next you go to kindergarten like all the other big boys."

His response? "Nooo! Barack Obama went to college when he was four, so I can too!"

"Uh, no, he didn't."

"Yes he did! He DID go to college when he was four!"

We went back-and-forth before we agreed to play paper-rock-scissors to settle the debate. Fortunately I've noticed that my son always puts the scissors first, so I put out the rock to break them. He was SO mad that he fell out in the floor and started having a fit! Whatever. I ignored him till he shook his fist in defiance.

"Fine then! But I'm still going to college like Barack Obama!"

"OK, that's good. Of course you're going to college."

Our little "argument" was over but it got me thinking about how, for my sons, these days, everything is about Barack Obama.

Do you think Barack Obama ever had pet silkworms?
Is Barack Obama an omnivore, carnivore or herbivore?
Does Barack Obama play with Legos?

Last night my eldest was checking himself out in the bathroom mirror. As I walked by, I heard him say to his reflection, "What do you command, President Obama?"

He was totally pretending he was Obama!

I don't know if all of us who are parents fully realize how potentially having a black President is going to impact our children. I don't think I ever saw even a TV black president as a child, but gosh, my kids might have the real thing. It matters to see a face that looks like theirs up there. It definitely does.

I know for every person that says that Obama can help instill a sense of confidence and pride in black children, there's someone that says that none of that matters if black folks as individuals don't get their acts together and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I'd say people of all colors need to get themselves together and we can't do it in isolation. We need each other.

I don't think Obama's going to be an instant panacea for anything, and he shouldn't have to be. If he gets elected, America still has a tough road ahead as far as true racial unity, let alone gas prices, war, healthcare and education. But gosh, it does something special to my heart to see my sons admiring him and developing this whole superhero-like mythology about him. It's especially nice because most of the popular culture heroes that are put in front of them are not black males. Ironman, Batman, Indiana Jones, The Hulk --none of them look like my sons. They play with Batman action figures but I'll never see them look in the mirror and say, "Gee, I look just like Bruce Wayne!"

It's not just black kids either. Obama also does something for children of all colors. He challenges some of the subconscious, less overt stereotypes that our children, regardless of background, have learned about black men. His wife, Michelle Obama likewise challenges beliefs about who black women are and what we're about.

Tomorrow when my son walks across that stage to get his little Pre-K diploma, I know he's still going to be thinking that Obama went straight to college. And really, knowing I have a child who believes a black man can go from Pre-K to college is alright with me.

When a Black Woman Asks For Help

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday that broke my heart. She's someone I've known since I was nine or ten years old and she's been going through a really tough time for the past year or so. I've often wished I was back in Chicago so I could be there for her more than I have been. I don't want to put her business out on front street but talking to her made me think about something I've asked myself many times over the years: What's the response when a black woman asks for help?

I've been thinking about this for many years because when I was in college, I noticed an interesting phenomenon happening with a few of the young black men who were among my best friends. Almost all of them lived at home with their parents, none of them were going to college even though one or both of their parents was college educated and they were often treated by their mothers and most of the friends we mutually had as an endangered species. Not that that perspective was necessarily wrong because looking at the statistics, they are often in physical, mental, spiritual and emotional danger. I also worry about all those statistics when I look at my own sons and the possibilities of what could happen scare me. It's just that the same care and attention was most often not given to the black girls and women I knew.

Out of the black women I knew, none of them lived at home with their parents. Almost all of them were going to college. Many had more than one job on top of school responsibilities, and if any of us said we were short on the rent and didn't know where the money was coming from, there was no helping hand to assist. If we were hungry, well, we just had to be hungry. We were not regarded as being an endangered species because we're supposed to be the Strong Black Woman -- you know, the woman who has endured birthing babies in the field and going back to picking cotton twenty minutes later.

For so many black women I know, there is a complete double standard in how they were brought up compared to their brothers or male cousins. The brothers and cousins were "loved" and the daughters were "raised". The lives of many of the black women I've known have been an intersection of the real axis of evil, racism and gender inequality. I remember how in high school, guys I know were expected to have girlfriends and their mothers would chuckle over their son's attractiveness to the opposite sex. The more girls calling the house the better.

On the other hand, some girls I knew were called whore and slut and beaten/grounded if a guy called them up. Academics were pushed with girls, and although they might be pushed with the boys, being cool was pushed just as much.

So many of the girls I know, girls who are now women, were raised with the attitude that black women have got to be self reliant, you've got to hold it together and if you're having a tough time, you better hustle and figure it out on your own because you don't have anyone to count on but yourself.

I remember being 19 years old and asking my now husband why it was that he was always getting asked if he was hungry but no one ever asked me if I was hungry. His black male friends were always being asked if they were hungry too. If these guys said yes, somebody would immediately fix them something to eat. Or, if we were out in public and one of my black male friends said, "I don't have any money," someone would buy them a meal or pay for their movie ticket. If they didn't have a ride somewhere, then someone would come pick them up. If they needed a job, hook-ups would happen.

Sometimes this all got particularly weird and seemed to have racial undertones to it because we hung out with a very diverse group of people. The sociologist in me would wonder how much of a role guilt was playing into some of the interactions I'd observe between my friends and those in our circle who were not black. I just knew that young black women weren't being cultivated and nurtured in the same way. Some would use the word "coddled" instead of nurtured. Sometimes my friends made me angry though because at times it felt like they sort of milked some folks' perceptions in order to get a hook up.

The person offering up the food or money for a movie ticket was most often not a black female. Black females would look at these guys and be like, "And? So? I guess you're not going to the movie then."

There was the racially sexualized dynamic between the black males I knew and the young white women of our acquaintance. I remember one college boyfriend brutally explaining to me that he was cheating on me with a white girl we both knew because she would give him, "her car, her cash and that ass."

Funny how some things are said to you and you never forget them.

Anyway, I can't tell you how many times this discussion about the differences in the way black women and men are treated by society has come up when I'm a room full of black men and women. Most often it's turned into a huge, heated argument where the women are sharing what they've been through and how they didn't have, for example, white girls lending a car, buying laptops for them or taking them shopping at the mall and they didn't have a mom at home telling them that it didn't matter what they did, they'd love them no matter what, and if things didn't work out, they could stay at home forever.

The men turn around and say that at least the women don't have to get harassed by the cops and put in special education. At least the women don't have folks grabbing their purse and crossing the street when they see a scary black man coming. The conversation never ends well.

So, like I said, my friend is really going through some struggles and yet many of the same people that would bend over backwards to lend a helping hand to the guys I knew back in the day are blind and deaf to her plight. She's not too proud to ask for help, but listening to her yesterday, her requests for assistance are being ignored.

I can't help but wonder if the response would be different if she was male.

Polygamist Diversity?

Until today I hadn't really paid attention to the whole Texas FLDS polygamy ranch scandal. The minute I hear the word "polygamy", I tend to think of some controlling men who have brainwashed some poor women so that they can have lots of sex and get waited on hand and foot.

Watching some of the wives from the ranch on the Today Show this morning did nothing to change my assumption. My goodness, these ladies need some serious deprogramming, not to mention a few hours alone with Tim Gunn.



At the 2:14 mark, I was totally talking to my TV:

"Do you hear the craziness you're saying? Is your hair for real? Why are you dressed like you're on Little House on the Prairie? Do you know you sound like a robot?"

Even if they want to claim that no abuse happened with their kids, wowzer, they seriously need help in the mental department!

And another thing, I'm just wondering, are there ever African-American polygamists? Asian-American polygamists? Latinos? Or do white folks in these United States have polygamy on lock down or something?

Even on that TV show, Big Love, it was all white ladies as the wives. And instead of the husband looking like the Grizzly Adams we urban elite snobs clearly think they look like, Bill Paxton gets thrown in there as the husband.

Is America just not ready to see some black guy from the 'Sip being stressed by having to manage his relationships with his four wives? Don't we want to see the Chinese guy from the outskirts of San Francisco getting his freak on with Wife #1 on Monday, Wife #2 on Wednesday and Wife #3 on the weekends?

I know some comedian somewhere has probably told a joke at some point about how no real sistah is gonna tolerate being Wife Number Two, let alone being Wife Number Twenty. But at the fine university I went to, there were black women who lived on the south end of campus and tolerated their boyfriends having another girl on the north end of campus. True, the two ladies may have eventually had an ugly altercation in the Tech building over this situation, and said altercation may have ultimately been blamed on one of them being ghetto since she was from Gary, but you get where I'm going with this, right? And in the many years since college, how many times have I heard someone say, "He may creep with her but he comes home to me at night."

So why don't black folks, Asians and Latinos just full on go for the polygamist route? Not saying it should go down like that, because I don't, but why don't we have a little more diversity in our polygamists?

The Devil Made Me Eat That Whopper Jr.

My sons came home from school today with a letter from David L. Brewer III, the Superintendent of Los Angeles' schools. It explained that the school district has ceased serving all food items containing ground beef until further notice.

What brought on this decision?

Well, the meat distributor for district cafeterias, Westland Meat Company, is being investigated by the USDA for, as the letter says, "slaughtering non-ambulatory cattle". There's no denying that these cows were being abused because it was caught on tape.

The letter made me think about how I became a vegetarian.

In a Burger King.

At two in the morning.

It was my freshman year of college and although I'd like to say I was motivated to put down my Whopper Jr. by a sudden desire to save cattle from the slaughterhouse, I can't. Sure, I'd read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"back in eighth grade but I didn't think too much about conditions in meat packing plants. In fact, at the time I had no idea that animal activists even existed.

However, I am a highly competitive person and a gauntlet had just been thrown down.

"You couldn't stop eating meat if you tried!"

Actually, let me back up. I believe the whole of what was said was, "You're such a devil, you couldn't stop eating meat if you tried!"

How did the devil come into the conversation? Well, I was dating a guy whose cousin was hardcore into the Nation of Islam. Needless to say, thanks to mon père irlandais, I was not popular with NOI Cousin. Clearly, if my Irish dad was the devil, I was, by extension, half a devil and therefore a bad influence.

In a college town there aren't many places other than a 24 hour Burger King to hang out at 2 AM. And the security guard, Sam, was a chatty old guy who could play a mean card game of spades. It was not unusual for me to hook up with a couple of friends, go get a bite to eat at the Burger King and end up talking and playing cards with Sam till the sky started to get light.

On one of these nights, NOI Cousin happened to be driving past the Burger King and spied my boyfriend standing up, laughing with two other friends of mine. (I'm now married to one of those friends but that's another story.)

NOI Cousin parked his car and came into the Burger King, full of disapproval for our little late night fast food and card game excursion.

I wasn't too bothered by his critique of our playing cards because I've known people my whole life who believe playing cards is sinful. But I didn't get what the big deal was about eating Burger King. I pointed out that I knew Muhammad had not restricted Muslims from eating beef, just from eating pork.

NOI Cousin explained how as a member of the Nation, he was committed to all forms of discipline. That discipline included avoiding fast food. He then ridiculed my Whopper Jr. to the point that I'm convinced he could have written "Fast Food Nation".

I was barely eighteen and more than willing to challenge his statements. He didn't like my lack of passivity so he started up with his, "Your devilish side keeps you from being able to see the truth!" He began to loudly preach about how I was corrupting the black males in my company by eating poison put out by Burger King, a corporation owned and operated by white devils.

Looking back, I can't believe I sat there and debated whether I was part devil or not. But the discussion escalated to the point where he pulled his final piece of proof out of his back pocket just as I was about to take another bite of my Whopper Jr.

"You're such a devil, you couldn't stop eating meat if you tried!"

I remember saying, "Oh really? Is that right?"

NOI Cousin had no idea that even though I ate burgers, I rarely ate beef growing up. My mom is very health conscious and only occasionally fed us hamburgers. She read Dick Gregory and Adelle Davis books regularly and only fed us whole grains and all natural products. She did not fry food. She did not cook pork. There were no ribs ever served my home. No brisket. No pot roast. Instead, we ate a lot of chicken and fish. I used to joke that she was the first person in the Midwest to eat tofu.

So I put the Whopper Jr. down and announced that I had so much discipline I'd never eat a burger again. NOI Cousin didn't believe me and said that my devilish side was prone to lying and I'd say anything to trick the black man.

Guess he was wrong because I've kept my word all these years. That night was the last time I ate beef.

A couple months after I stopped eating beef, I felt so much better physically. Then I stumbled on an article that described the conditions on a chicken farm and how the chickens were fed a mixture of sawdust, growth hormones and seed. A few months after that, I read something about mercury levels in fish.

Before I knew it, I was a vegetarian. All these years later I have a hard time even looking at meat, whether it's raw or cooked and I'm seriously considering going completely vegan.

But my husband and my children are not vegetarians. They eat poultry and fish. And call it my devilish influence, but my seven year-old loves hamburgers. He only eats them at school because there's no way I would ever cook them. And now it makes me ill to know he's been eating beef from sick cows that are being mistreated.

Earlier tonight, I read that letter from the school district to my son and he's disgusted. He's torn because he doesn't know what to do. He loves the taste of hamburgers but he doesn't want to eat animals that are being hurt. My son is, at the age of seven, more mature than I was at eighteen when all I thought about was whether or not a burger tasted good.

Sometimes I wish I could track down my old boyfriend's NOI cousin and thank him for inadvertently pushing me back in a healthier direction. And then I'd sic him on an LAUSD school board meeting. Maybe he'd be able to somehow bait LAUSD into serving students grass fed, free range beef or more vegetarian lunch options.

But however the lunch menus change, let's all hope the devil stays out of it.