I reminisce on the stress I caused, it was hell
Hugging on my mama from a jail cell
And who’d think in elementary?
Hey! I see the penitentiary, one day
And running from the police, that’s right
Mama catch me, put a whooping to my backside
–Tupac S
Recently there has been a nostalgic longing for the good-old-days exemplified by television shows like Father Knows Best, Wait Until Your Father Gets Home and Leave it to Beaver. In those white suburban utopias, life was all about respecting dad and, by extension, everything else — including Mr. Wilson’s rose bushes (Dennis the Menace). The shows with single parents were largely about men (My Three Sons, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father & Family Affair spring to mind) with great support systems (Uncle Ernie and Mr. French).
For me, this world was a reality as well. I grew up on U.S. army bases around the world, where the cornerstone of existence was respect. The Pledge of Allegiance was said each morning in school, the U.S. flag was saluted twice a day, officers were saluted throughout the day and even empty cars with general’s stars were given the respect of attention and a firm salute. Giving and showing respect were givens. Only on rare occasions did it need to be taught as well.
Once at the movie theater on base, I was horsing around during the playing of the national anthem and unceremoniously kicked out. It was hard to make that phone call to my father. I knew how disappointed he would be. Respect was part of the aura on the military bases on which I lived, and violating it didn’t reflect well on anyone — especially parents.
My parents divorced when I was 12 and my mom and three brothers moved from a two-story house in idyllic Petersburg, Virginia to Harlem, New York.
Culture shock is the best way to describe the stark differences I encountered between those two locales. A primary one was the notion of respect. The same message of respect — for your parents, community, elders, teachers and the police — was drilled into children on a daily basis in Harlem. It was the cornerstone of existence in many households. Initially, I was confused hearing my friends’ mothers tell them:
Parents in black neighborhoods don’t suffer bad-ass kids gladly. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to see a black kid under 10 having a temper tantrum in a Target store. In many ways black parents might be too strict.
Just days ago while waiting to board a plane at the airport in Atlanta, a couple of young white kids were playing and running around loudly and obtrusively. They were oblivious to the world around them, and certainly to the agony of adults waiting on yet another delayed flight.
Two older black women on the janitorial staff were making the rounds with cleaning contraptions that consisted of a large plastic garbage can and cleaning materials on a set of wheels when the two kids darted in and out of their paths. On the of the women looked at her co-worker and asked out loud, “Where the parents?”
For these older women, children acting out in public was an outrage not unlike the horsing around that got me kicked out of a movie theater years earlier.
It wasn’t long before my mother started giving me and my brothers the same stark warnings that I heard my friends’ mothers give when we first arrived in Harlem. They were a necessity of raising children in a ghetto like Harlem in the 1970s. And we listened…most of the time. The problem and reality is that in the so-called ‘hood there are competing notions of respect — especially for single mothers.
The lure, lesson and demands of the street’s version of respect soon rival and, more often than not drown, out those from inside the home. When young boys are in the process of becoming young men in black neighborhoods, they learn that respect isn’t something to be given but something to be taken.
This is when life becomes more dangerous. The chances of going off the rails and dropping out of school, taking drugs or getting locked up grow exponentially.
The narrative that black parents aren’t talking to their children about how to interact with police is shockingly inaccurate. The talk begins at an early age with the lessons of general respect. The talk changes, however, as boys get older. It becomes more about how to stay safe when interacting with police.
I wish I could say as adults we are the complete sum of the lessons our parents taught us but if that were true there would be no murder, no hate and universal harmony. I wish life for black children was as simple as saluting empty cars and keeping baseballs out of the curmudgeon neighbor’s rose garden. But it’s not.
Whether we like to admit it or not, life is more complicated in America for young black men than it is for non-black youth. There are things that we in the black community can do to help simplify things — beginning first and foremost with dads stepping up and being good fathers. As it stands, mothers are shouldering too much of the burden by themselves. They are talking the talk every single day, but can’t do it alone.
Charles Payne is the host of Making Money with Charles Payne on the Fox Business Network & CEO of Wall Street Strategies.