The path from victims to victors

DON’T COUNT OUT THE EX-OFFENDERS
Our young men see the bad guys making all that jack and wooing all those women, but what they don’t see is the twenty-thirty-forty years the bad guys spend rotting away in prison. And many do end up there if they don’t end up dead. In California, seven times as many men are in prison now as there were just twenty-five years ago, and way too many of them are black.

We have met with men who have paid their debt to society for the crimes they committed, clear-thinking men, a combination of Black Muslims and black Christians working to heal the inner spirit that has been so badly damaged. It is marvelous to look at the faces of the young inmates as they heed the words of these full-grown men, who speak to them without profanity about the great wisdom that they have inherited but so far mismanaged. And these young men are listening.

This is not the scary ranting we saw in the film Scared Straight. These men know the Spirit. They are talking brother to brother and father to son. The Christian men are talking about how God paid them a visit and how those visits changed their lives.

These men are not afraid to go up to the junior gangsters they see in the street and have conversations with them. This is what we mean by putting a body on these boys. These men provide a counterforce to the recruitment efforts of the Crips and the Bloods and other gangs.

As a society we could do more. We could envision a system in which those who come out of prison wanting help are sent to a local community college. There, at the least, they could finish their GEDs and get reacquainted with the job market.

Those with the interest could complete a two-year program and become what we might call “psychological behavior technicians.” Armed with a two-year degree and some serious life experiences, they could have an important positive impact on youngsters coming up. If these ex-felons wanted to go on, they would not have to stop at two years. They might want to get a four-year degree, or their master’s, or maybe even their doctorate.

There is no reason we cannot save most of them.

The media can help. They can show black male role models across a spectrum of occupations. Right now, sports and entertainment figures predominate. Not surprisingly, many black youth aspire to careers as athletes and entertainers. Who can blame them? But for every guy who makes the NBA, there are a thousand who just dream about it. Dunking over your head is of much less use in the real world than designing a bridge or reading an X-ray.

CLAIM YOUR CHILDREN
We are calling on men, all men, the successful and the unsuccessful, the affluent and the poor, the married and the unmarried, to come and claim their children. You can run the biggest drug cartel in America or win the Super Bowl, but if you haven’t claimed your children, you are not a man.

You can make all the excuses you want, but no one can stop you from claiming your children. It’s not about you. It’s about them. If you have not come to claim your children, you have stolen their hope. You have stolen any kind of feeling that they are worth something. They will likely have no sense of the past, little pride, and even less faith in the future.

They will see fathers at the mall or on TV and they will wonder how stupid or ugly they must be to have driven their fathers away. In going around the country, we have talked to people who create their own solutions, who don’t wait for the government or anybody else to provide funding, who start their own schools and community centers and mentoring programs. Many such programs have already been created by civil rights organizations, settlement houses, churches and mosques, and black fraternal groups. We have to focus on healing these emotionally wounded children.

A word from Mr. David Miller: In the city of Baltimore, with 70 percent of our males dropping out of school, it is very clear we are looking at a community-based tragedy. So let’s talk about a community-based solution—I and some others started our own Saturday schools for black boys. We didn’t wait for the government or anybody to provide funding.

We stepped out on faith and decided to raise the money. This experience is based on the life of Paul Robeson. So we have a very vigorous academic component. We have a vigorous lifestyle component.

And parental involvement is magnificent. You can no longer wait for school districts to do for our children what we know God intended us to do.

So what I would like to see you do is to start a program in your community.

We have to instill fundamental life skills—how to dress, how to act, how to talk, what to do when stopped by the police. We need to do things that will keep our boys close. We also need to teach our boys that they can be entrepreneurs, that they can create their own economic destiny.

As Mr. Miller shows, you don’t stop an epidemic by cursing the world as unfair. You don’t stop an epidemic by condemning yourself as a loser.

You stop an epidemic by becoming an activist and stepping up and being a man. Every male, if he wants to, can be one.

In Baltimore, Richard Rowe and Earl El-Amin led the audience in the African-American fathers’ prayer: First, I will work to be the best father I can be. I will openly display love and caring for my children.

I will teach by example; I will be there for my children at all times. I will encourage them in family values; I will never say negative and discouraging things to my children; I will teach my children to be responsible, disciplined, fair, and honest. As a father, I will attempt to provide my family with love and security. From this day forward, I will hold sacred my role as a father and stop making excuses.

There are great responsibilities parents assume in raising a child. And for a black child, those responsibilities often weigh heavily. Raising a child, in fact, may not be for everybody. But once any adult brings a child into this world, the child’s well-being must come first. And that’s the way it has to be.

Excerpted from "Come on People, On the Path From Victims to Victors" by Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint. Copyright © 2007 by Thomas Nelson. Reprinted with permission of Thomas Nelson

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