Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 22, 1994 TAG: 9402240005
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES P. BEATTY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The first article broke my heart. How could anyone be proud and happy about relegating herself to a self-imposed prison with little opportunity for parole? What kind of future is in store for those offspring? The work force of the 21st century will be highly competitive and high-tech. Without the skills to master those positions, we are in for a welfare state.
Up to 85 percent of the young men who father children in high school eventually marry someone else. Once a young lady has a child out of wedlock, most fellows see her not as a potential mate in matrimony, but as fair game to exploit. Many women, if honest, will attest to the validity of this statement.
Please understand, I am not putting anyone down. I grew up extremely poor in rural North Carolina in a family of eight children. However, I always dreamed of a better life for myself and future family. I learned early on, without sex education, not to involve myself in any situation, no matter how tempting, that would shatter my dreams., no matter how tempting. My parents did their best for us. However, I wanted more.
Every second Sunday, I speak frankly to the few young people who are a part of our congregation about sex, peer pressure and obtaining a sound education. That is why I am somewhat appalled that more of my fellow and sister clergy have remained silent on this issue.
When I look back at the history of Afro-Americans, when slavery was the law, when Jim Crowism was the law, when separate and still unequal was the law, when segregation was the law - and finally we were paroled, but not set totally free - I realize the stigma of that slavery still exists despite tremendous gains made by a people who were separated by their oppressors and forced to learn a new language.
No other ethnic group in America has been so badly treated. No other ethnic group was not allowed to communicate with each other, or forced to abandon its native tongue, or had its families sold away, or had healthy, strapping males used as breeders to sire offspring for the slave plantation (when the master wasn't doing it).
I am sorry to say, America, you created this mess, by all of the above. And now, despite your wonderful magnet schools, welfare systems and general change of attitude toward Afro-Americans, the stigma just won't go away. Every ethnic group that arrived on these shores of America is treated with more dignity and respect than your former slaves, who have been and still are the best friends that the Caucasian race has ever had. The very groups that killed your sons in wars are now treated better than the Afro-American who stood by you in every war America has fought.
Being young, pregnant and proud, and Afro-American is part of the slave mentality that, unfortunately, has been passed down to this generation through drugs, pregnancy and violence, such as black-on-black crime and early criminal records, which will be used as a means for non-selection for positions in areas such as firefighting, clerical, police, and middle and upper management, areas where minorities are in great demand.
As people of color, we bear much of the blame, by allowing ourselves to become victims again of the same slave system that crushed the spirit of our forefathers. But we are now the slave master and the slave.
We are making the decision to become drug addicts, to be babies having babies, to make our streets killing fields, to drop out of school, to hang in the streets, to cop attitudes, to show no respect. This feeling is depicted in a sign observed on a Caucasian-driven vehicle, "If I had known then what I know now, I would have picked my own damn cotton."
I still see a ray of hope among our young people. I have witnessed this during my 16 years on the Business Advisory Board for William Fleming and Patrick Henry high schools, as well as at the City School downtown. Under the able guidance of Nancy Patterson, it has produced some bright, serious students who are attending many of the nation's challenging colleges and universities. Why not feature some of them, as they are young, proud and achieving?
Inasmuch as I have opened up some unpleasant cans of worms, I suppose I should at least offer some possible solutions. I see five simple possibilities:
Return to real parenting.
Adopt higher moral and ethical standards.
Stress the need for education.
End violence, drugs and sexual misbehavior.
Foremost, keep God ever present in your life.
Real parenting begins at conception and should be the guiding light throughout the maturation process: teaching by example, setting limits, being disciplinarians who foster good behavior, showing a genuine interest in your children, and not overly compensating for what we didn't have growing up. Send the school a product that can be molded into a strong, able and capable student, ready to learn and be taught.
Higher moral and ethical standards will eliminate unwarranted and unwanted pregnancies, the taking of human lives or property, and drug abuse and addiction. Higher standards will encourage a return to common sense.
Education must be instilled in our youth early on. Reading, writing and arithmetic still represent the foundation for building a sound educational pyramid. Parents should not expect teachers to assume their role. A well- disciplined child can be taught and provided the skills needed to be successful in our ever-changing society.
Being young, a minority, pregnant and proud is a cop-out - and, if printed, should be relegated to an area of the newspaper that is inconspicuous, as this sends a negative message to young females that this behavior is condoned by the minority community. While I can't speak for the minority community, this behavior is not condoned by my peers and more particularly by myself.
Put an end to violence, drugs and sexual misbehavior. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has said that more Afro-American males have been killed by each other than by lynching in America. It is that slave mentality, driving brothers to killing brothers, influenced by enslavement to drugs, that has destroyed a generation of young Afro-Americans, coupled with deviant sexual behavior that is producing another generation of children with little opportunity to reach their potential in life.
Babies having babies, many seeking public assistance with one and two babies tugging at their side with another developing inside the womb - I see these young ladies lined up in City Hall and it pains my heart. Also, I see my own daughter in these young ladies, slaves and prisoners to the social-service system.
God and church are vital to undergirding values, which coincides with a quote, taken from Malachi, used by Attorney General Janet Reno during her speech before the National Urban League: "Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the Earth with a curse."
\ James P. Beatty, personnel administrator for the city of Roanoke, is pastor of Bethel A.M.E. Church in Roanoke.
by CNB