DEATH AND HOPELESSNESS ARE CLAIMING LOUISVILLE'S NEGLECTED
YOUNG

BOOKER T. gets it. Three weeks in lock-down more than a decade ago
convinced him that prison wasn't the life he wanted. He took no pleasure in
being trapped 24/7 with men and being told when he could get up, eat, watch
television and go to bed.

"I love being free," Booker T. said while dusting at the Rite-Way Shoe
Repair Shop the other day. "I don't care if it's hard out here, it's better
than being in jail."

Sadly, far too many apparently don't share Booker T.'s aversion to jail.

So far this year, for example, there have been 33 homicides in this fair
city; many of the victims and alleged perpetrators were young. January
alone saw the deaths of three teenagers in what police said were
drug-related incidents. The first, Michael Newby, 19, was gunned down by an
undercover detective on Jan. 3. A few weeks later, 19-year-old Eric Ray and
18-year-old Robert Robbins were shot in a hotel parking lot by their
reputed drug connection.

Last month's young body count included Angela Nicole Nelson-Carroll, 17;
Jeremy Gray, 18; Danta Wright, 19,and Arthur "Mano" Mattingly, 16.
Ironically, the city's 33rd homicide, which claimed 23-year-old Wayne Lee
Hurt, happened last Friday in broad daylight near the G.C. Williams Funeral
Home, where a large crowd had gathered for Wright's wake.

It's madness.

Louisville Police Chief Robert White offers an insider's perspective and
speaks of the three levels of people with whom we must be concerned. First
are the people committing crimes, who must be got off the streets. Next are
"wannabees," who commit crimes, but haven't gone big-time yet. "We have to
come up with ways to reach them" through such interventions as drug courts
and other alternatives that may convince them of the benefits of a
lifestyle change, White said.

Last are those White refers to as "my biggest problem and my biggest hope."
They are the young people not yet in the system, but who will be "if we
fail to create an environment for children to succeed," he said.

White sees this as a broad social responsibility because "everybody doesn't
have the skills to parent responsibly."

Can the police chief get an amen?

Yes, he can - from youth advocates, pastors and the vast network of
professionals who on a daily basis deal with dysfunctional kids and families.

The profile of many young delinquents is that their anti-social behavior
often has roots in the neglect and abuse they've suffered. Too many parents
aren't effectively parenting, because they are hardly more than children
themselves, have few role models of good parenting in their families or are
such serious substance abusers that they can't care for themselves, much
less their kids.

Neglected and abused children are flooding foster care systems, here and
across the nation, and their physical and emotional problems are sometimes
so severe that people don't rush forth to adopt them.

As a result, many languish in the state's care until they're old enough to
be emancipated, by which time, the next stop is too often prison or the grave.

Young people with no expectation that they'll live much beyond their teens
tend not to place a high value on their lives or the lives of others.

They live in the moment.

And let's face it, plenty of parents who end up shedding oceans of tears
over their children's caskets have authorized, tacitly or overtly, the
behavior that dug their children's early graves.

I'm talking to parents - they know who they are, and we do too - who are
too lazy, too ignorant or too high to roll out of bed to get their children
to school, church or the community's many after-school and
summer-enrichment programs. They are parents who, when they finally do show
up at school, come not to support their child's education, but to terrorize
the teachers who know that without positive parental intervention, trouble
lies ahead.

Yes, I'm talking to you parents who know that the money and other gifts you
readily accept from your children could only have come into their
possession through some illegal means.

This is no ordinary value system.

It's a way of existing that values nothing more than instant gratification
and designer-everything, from clothes to fancy automobiles, lately
outfitted with televisions so that the people inside the car and,
unwittingly others who happen pass, can watch porn movies as they cruise.

Sister Souljah's novel, The Coldest Winter Ever, does a credible job
raising the shade on the complexities of this insane lifestyle.

Even many who have grown up in similarly difficult circumstances, poor and
without one or even both parents, are confounded by the destructive
mentality that has become the norm back where they used to live.

Many say that in their worst of times, in abject poverty and hard
segregation, they and their families were never as bereft of hope as people
are now.

What's going to become of us?

African Americans obviously must do all we can to help our own, but many of
the problems are far beyond our lone capacity to solve. Meanwhile, there's
a not insignificant number of white kids, both poor and middle-class, who
don't make the headlines as often, but who also are deeply troubled and
disaffected and who baffle their elders with their self-destructive behavior.

No one group has all the problems or bears all the responsibility. As White
said, extracting our community from this mess is going to take all of us
bringing our particular gifts to the task. "The alternative to crime is to
create environments where children can succeed, and it doesn't matter what
part of town they're from, or how much their parents make," White said.
"None of us can afford to turn our heads because any one of us could become
a victim."

That brings to mind what my old friend the Rev. Calvin O. Pressley used to
say when I worked for him at the Opportunities Industrialization Centers of
New York. He said there's such a thing as "enlightened self-interest," by
which he meant that sometimes we do good not because we're so good, but
because not doing it puts everyone and everything we really value at risk.

The SOS has been sent, and each of us has a choice. We can do nothing or do
something, as White said, to create environments for children to succeed.