THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510060225
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
Meet Peedog Johnson. The focal point of Nancy Lewis' must-read cover story today, Peedog is 19, jobless and - except for a ``40,'' a girlfriend, cable TV and his buddies on Lake Edward's streets - aimless.
Peedog is one of hundreds of young African-Americans, mostly male, who for lack of anything better to do congregate on the sidewalks day and night. Wittingly or not, they scare their neighbors, wear out police, intrigue sociologists, anger taxpayers, confound Council and Congress.
Across the nation, a third of young black men are somehow caught up in the criminal-justice system. Their chances of dying violently before they reach 25 are the highest of any demographic cohort. They are prominent among the fathers of that two-thirds of black babies who are born to unwed parents.
They are seldom the first generation of their family - or the last - to be born into poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, welfare dependency, and a volatile mix of arrogance and impotence that perpetuates this cycle.
The Lake Edward community, correspondent Lewis reports, is home to one of the city's highest concentrations of these ills: of teen pregnancy, of households headed by unwed mothers, of households with ``low'' income, of unemployment, of rented vs. owner-occupied homes, of crime.
But that's not the whole picture of Lake Edward, any more than the underclass is the whole picture of African Americans. Two-thirds of black men aren't in trouble with the law, two-thirds of black America is solidly middle-class in income and outlook.
Lake Edward has plenty of hard-working, home-owning residents. They see their neighborhood teetering. They want help in arresting its decline, and the help they want aims primarily at cleaning up their streets.
They mean the teen loiterers as well as the litter.
The city can help with the litter, with street lighting, zoning and law enforcement, and more and more visible police. But what more could, should government do to occupy/supervise/redirect these idle kids?
Attorney General Janet Reno, in town the other day to extol Crime Stoppers International, pleaded for more programs to treat the ``root causes'' of such social ills as afflict Lake Edward's kids.
There are very effective programs for that. They're called family, church, school. And archaic as media may make them seem, they're still the most effective ways in which majority and minority America instills in its progeny the values we share: work, discipline, respect, integrity, responsibility, self-reliance, cooperation, charity, compassion and such.
But they can't work if you aren't a family, which a 16-year-old and her infant are not; or never set foot in a church, mosque or synagogue, which share values of human interaction; or don't study in school, where despite the latest pedagogical fad you can learn basic skills and basic rules for productive human behavior. Both will take teens farther faster than the quickest dribble, day or night.
But what do these guys want? A place close by with a pool table, video games, burgers. Who pays? Like others in Lake Edward, Peedog can't find a job. Why? Because they lack the skills, the self-discipline, the necessity to hold one?
If so, whose fault - yes, fault - is that? And who fixes it? The Police Athletic League tried to help teens in Lake Edward. It failed. Try as they might - and Beach police volunteered $591,147 worth of time to city programs last year - a PAL is not a parent.
And a rec center's no substitute for a home. Parents, homework, rules, jobs, keep other neighborhoods' kids off the streets. Parents, teamwork, part-time jobs could run a bus to the Bayside rec center or oversee a study hall, ball team or science club at a school closer by.
How much must the world adapt to the Peedogs? How much the Peedogs to the world? It makes a big difference, between people expecting to help themselves or expecting government always to provide. by CNB