Common Knowledge

Pearls of Wisdom

“To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.”

--Anatole France--

“You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’"

--George Bernard Shaw--

“I do not want to die... until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and cultivated the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown.”

--Kathe Kollwitz--

The month of May is almost over, which means June is right around the corner. June usually means graduations. I can remember my eight grade and high school graduations. I can also remember thinking I knew so much about life, although I knew very little. I wish I knew then what I know now. Well, I am going to use the next three articles after this one to share a little of what I know now with the young brothers and sisters out there.

My advice can be summed up in three short sentences. Find your passion and make it a part of your life. Education is a tool that is to be used for a life time. And failure is a lesson not a stigma.

I am not asserting that my three little jewels of wisdom are the keys to success for every young man or woman. I am not asserting that I have figured out life and therefore am the world’s greatest authority on life. I am not asserting that because I am well beyond my teen years that I can not learn anything from young brothers and sisters. I can only state that my advice comes from many years of observing habits of people, including mine, that have lead to success and failure.

I will discuss each concept in an article that is dedicated to that subject over the next three weeks. I have no illusions that my advice will dramatically change the lives of millions of young brothers and sisters. However, I am hoping to maybe inspire someone to look beyond what is in front of them and expand the options that they think are available to them. If I knew then what I know now, that is what would have happened to me.

Time to Make a Change

“The only cure for grief is action.”

--George Henry Lewes--

“The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.”

--Ben Stein--

“The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people.”

--Proverb from Ghana--

My prayers are with the Holt family.

After the senseless shooting that took Ronald Holt away from his loved ones, the radio waves were crackling with suggestions on how to deal with the sad reality of gang violence in our community. I heard caller after caller on WVON give suggestions on the air that ranged from more men in our community “stepping up” to “going back to the old ways.” While the suggestions that I heard did touch an emotional cord with me, I realized that I have seen this type of situation before. There is a tragedy that stems from gang violence, people vent to their neighbors, their friends, and on talk radio. But after several weeks of venting people seem to forget and go back to their normal lives. Well, I hope this time will be different. I hope this time all of “us” in our community will challenge ourselves to start down the road to change.

I am not going to assert that change will happen over night. I am not asserting that change will be easy. I am not asserting that I have all or any of the answers to how best to effect change. I am hoping, asking, and begging for the effort by all of us to start looking for real solutions to making gangs a thing of the past in our communities by giving children other alternatives and making them mindful of making good choices in life. Although I am more than open to suggestions on how best to accomplish those goals, it seems to me that the best way to go about it is by attacking the root causes of gangs on the macro as well as the micro level.

There are many reasons that gangs exist in some of our communities. I do not pretend to be an expert on gang psychology or the mindset of the typical gang member, but I have had some experience with interacting with young men and women when I was a school teacher before I went to law school. I gleaned a few basic reasons for why some young brothers and sisters are drawn to gangs. One major reason that gangs exists is the allure of the drug trade. Another is the appearance of belonging to something powerful. Yet, another is the lack of belief in their future.

Whereas I am certain the reasons that I listed are not the complete list of reasons why people join gangs and why gangs continue to flourish in some of our communities, it is my starting point for this article.

Many of the reasons that people join gangs can be attacked on a macro level by advocating for policies that can counteract them. What do I mean? Well first let me explain the difference between micro and macro behavior. Micro behavior is what we do as individuals and macro behavior is what we do as a society. We all make choices on a micro and macro level. I believe the first step in fostering gang free neighborhoods is by making sure our communities are safe without giving away our civil liberties. We as a community must also choose to pursue policies that have been proven to foster a gang free environment like more youth job opportunities, more youth sporting activities like little league baseball, basketball, football, and better schools. I am certain these as well as other policies if implemented may help to decrease gang activity over time, but attacking the gang problem on just a macro level is not enough.

We also need to free our minds. We need to dedicate ourselves to attacking the root causes of gangs on a micro level. We may be able to accomplish that goal by helping them to understand that where they stand in life is a direct result of all the decisions that were made by them. We must make sure they understand their reality is what they make it. Good decisions in life usually yield good results and bad decisions in life usually yield bad results. Of course the best way to convince children of this concept is for us to follow it ourselves. We must do a better of job of persuading our children, our nieces and nephews, and our brothers and sisters that for all that gangs may seem to offer today, they always eventually offer a ticket to despair. If more of our children were convinced of the futility of gangs, gangs would still exist, but on a lesser scale.

Gangs have been around for a long time. Gang violence has been around as long as gangs have existed. They are not going away anytime soon, but we must start now towards the goal of gang free neighborhoods. There is an old saying that Rome was not built in a day. Well, maybe it is time to start putting the blocks in the road to gang free neighborhoods today.

How Do You Define Character?

“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

--Abraham Lincoln--

“The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.”

--Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.--

“People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.”

--Ralph Waldo Emerson--

“People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.”

--Eleanor Roosevelt--

 I have argued with friends of mine for years that we as voters should pay less attention to things like how faithful a politician is to his/her spouse or how good or bad he/she appears to be as a parent instead of how honest they are with the American people or how much sense their plans make or how they have conducted the affairs of their office. My friends have steadfastly advocated the idea that how a person conducts himself/herself in their private life reveals their character and character is of paramount importance when it comes to choosing a leader. Well, the events of this past week present me with an opportunity to highlight the difference between public as opposed to private behavior.

Ever since this country was born we as Americans have been more than willing to make and pass moral judgments on one another. It is not surprising that most of “us” conveniently ignore the directions given in the New Testament of the Bible that says “why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Luke 6:41) Yet that does not stop most of “us” from getting on our moral high horse and passing judgment on everyone else but ourselves. I think that is why we love to delve into politicians’ past and their personal life, which in my opinion makes it easy for politicians to avoid issues of importance by selling “us” an image of the perfect family man or woman. It does not matter whether that image is in fact true because how well they handle their family life or their children or how much they love their spouse or how pristine their past is does not usually address the issues that will affect me and my family.

I elect politicians to affect matters of policy that affect me and my family. It is the decisions that they make around policies, regulations, and laws that affect me and my family. That is what I am concerned with the most. The situation with President Bush and how he handled the warnings before 9/11 and whether he lied to country to get “us” to invade Iraq is a perfect example of what I am writing about.

President Bush was elected after President Clinton. Many people believe that the whole affair with Monica Lewinski and President Clinton may have played a role in President Bush being elected. I have heard many people pass judgment on President Clinton, and by extension Vice President Gore, regarding Clinton’s lack of character for having the affair (and for lying about it, which I can understand). The contrast of these two Presidents and the nature of the two scandals illustrate my point. The best way to summarize the difference between the two situations is to say that in one situation there was a President that was unfaithful to his wife while in the other situation there is the argument that there was a President that was unfaithful to the American people. The bottom line is that no one died because of President Clinton’s affair, while we as a country have spent hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of soldiers have died and their lives have been irrevocably changed because of the decision to go to war with Iraq by overstating the threat of WMD by the Bush Administration. Which one do you think had or has the most impact on the American people?

I want to be clear. I am not trying to apologize for President Clinton’s stupid decision to cheat on his wife. I am not trying to argue that it is morally okay for people to cheat on their spouses or that President Clinton was a better President than Bush. That is not what this article is about. I just want to raise the issue that maybe if we as Americans, and especially as African-Americans since we have so many issues to address in our community, start to pay more attention to the things that a politician can or will do in their capacity as an elected official that affects “us” directly then maybe we will have less tragedies like the Iraq war.

By the way, two very good Presidents in our country’s history were unfaithful to their wives but had the character to steer us through some tough times. They are JFK and FDR. One kept us out of nuclear war over the course of thirteen days and another steered us through the great depression and the Second World War. I am so glad the moral police did not keep them out of the White House because if they had who knows where we all would be today.