Commitment | Dads | Jailed - 9/30/07

[Smartmarriages]

- COMMITMENT PONDERED POETICALLY
- SECOND CHANCE 
- DADS ARE KEY
- THE JAILING OF BLACK AMERICA

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- COMMITMENT PONDERED POETICALLY

Poem: "On Faith" by Cecilia Woloch, from Late. © BOA Editions Ltd., 2003.
To buy on amazon from $8.28: http://tinyurl.com/39zukh

On Faith 
How do people stay true to each other?
When I think of my parents all those years
in the unmade bed of their marriage, not ever
longing for anything else‹or: no, they must
have longed; there must have been flickerings,
stray desires, nights she turned from him,
sleepless, and wept, nights he rose silently,
smoked in the dark, nights that nest of breath
and tangled limbs must have seemed
not enough. But it was. Or they just
held on. A gift, perhaps, I've tossed out,
having been always too willing to fly
to the next love, the next and the next, certain
nothing was really mine, certain nothing
would ever last. So faith hits me late, if at all;
faith that this latest love won't end, or ends
in the shapeless sleep of death. But faith is hard.
When he turns his back to me now, I think:
disappear. I think: not what I want. I think
of my mother lying awake in those arms
that could crush her. That could have. Did not.

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- SECOND CHANCE 
SENIORITY: After 31 years of divorce, man and woman reunite
The Herald Bulletin
Sept 29, 2008 
Neal McNamara

> Keith, now a retired police detective, admitted that his ³running around² was
> probably the main factor in the marriage¹s downfall.  "probably??"

According to June and Keith Minnick, marriage is not a 50-50 deal. It¹s more
like 75-75, or 150-150.

And if anyone is the authority on the pitfalls and joys of marriage, it¹s
the Minnicks. After being divorced for 31 years, the newlyweds re-discovered
their love for each other and tied the knot Aug. 4 in Pigeon Forge, Tenn.

³(The wedding) was outside in a beautiful garden in a gazebo,² said June
Minnick. ³There was no one else there.²

The two first met in 1965, set up on a date by Keith¹s brother and
sister-in-law. On their first date, they said, they ate pizza and watched
classic war movies. They were married one year later, and two years into the
marriage they had a son. They welcomed a daughter two years after that.

But after 10 years, the marriage began to deteriorate. Keith, now a retired
police detective, admitted that his ³running around² was probably the main
factor in the marriage¹s downfall.

June kept living in their Columbus Avenue home, the one that Keith had
bought years prior to meeting her, and continued raising their children.
Keith re-married after their divorce, but 10 years into that he was divorced
again.

But five years after Keith¹s second divorce, he and June again began seeing
each other. They would go to Las Vegas several times a year, and would have
dinner as much as ³five to six² times a week.

June and Keith were officially dating ‹ but Keith wanted to take it a step
further. He had been considering asking June to marry him again for several
years, but didn¹t work up the courage until June 2007.

Sadly, that was around the same time June was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Not wanting June to think he was asking her to marry him out of pity, Keith,
who had already bought an engagement ring, put off asking her. Finally, on
the last day of July, Keith asked her.

They wanted to get married as soon as possible, but with June undergoing
radiation treatment every weekday, they had only the weekends. They drove to
Tennessee on a Friday after June¹s treatment and were married the next day.

There was no family present, but their kids threw them a reception Sept. 22.

³I said I was given a second chance,² said June, 66, a retired daycare
worker. ³I came through the cancer, and I got him back.²

And after ³running around² and divorces, and living together, what have the
Minnicks learned about love and marriage?

³It takes a lot of work,² said Keith, 71. ³Communication. Give and take.
Talking things through. And if you can¹t talk it through on your own, get
help.²

###########################
- DADS ARE KEY

Fathers told they're key to children's success in school
By DWIGHT R. WORLEY
THE JOURNAL NEWS
September 28, 2007

WHITE PLAINS - Working 65 hours a week doesn't leave Bill Collins much time
to help his son with homework and he can't always make it to soccer or
football games.

But with data showing children without involved fathers more likely to drop
out of school or commit crimes, the Mount Kisco father of four is determined
to do better.

"I would like to be more involved. It's been a real struggle," said Collins,
46, a tow truck driver in White Plains. "I know it's important. It would be
nice to be able to change it."

At the Black Father/Black Men Back To School Night at Highlands Middle
School in White Plains, Collins and about 40 other men were encouraged
yesterday to make their children's educations a priority in their lives.

In an audience that included White Plains Schools Superintendent Timothy
Connors, state Supreme Court Justice Bruce Tolbert and members of black
fraternities, speakers talked for two hours about the critical role fathers
play in education and how their absence, whether through divorce or
absenteeism, harms children.

Divine Pryor, the evening's keynote speaker, said the involvement of black
men in schools was more important than ever because of the growing influence
of gangs and a world where their children see a stint in prison as
inevitable. An ex-convict who later became a professor of criminal justice,
Pryor said fathers are needed at teacher conferences, extracurricular
activities and in neighborhood streets counseling youth.

"Women have been doing an extraordinary job bringing up our sons and
daughters," Pryor said. "But men are not there, we're absent. Our future
right now is at stake."

Single-parent households and divorce can limit the involvement of fathers in
schooling. But Frank Williams, director of the White Plains Youth Bureau,
said too many men leave school visits and after-school activities to
mothers. He said fathers need to expand beyond traditional roles and begin
to nurture children to head off problems.

"We want to send this group of men," Williams said, "back into the
neighborhoods to teach, to mentor, to visit our schools, to put your arms
around our young people and to let them know you care."

Charles Shuler, a father of two who came to the meeting, said he frequently
meets with teachers and helps with homework.

"Our kids need a role model who is pushing them or they're on their own,"
said Shuler, a 41-year-old highway maintenance worker from Elmsford.

The event was sponsored by the White Plains Youth Bureau and several other
community organizations, including African American Men of Westchester and
Communities That Care Coalition. Organizers hope it will be the starting
point for a series of talks in different Westchester cities that will
culminate in a summit next summer.

Dads needed in education
Here are some ways for dads to get involved in education:
- Attend parent-teacher conferences. Learn about school curriculum and class
events.
- Join the Parent Teacher Association or other parent groups. Volunteer as a
tutor or field trip chaperone and pitch in during functions.
- Help with homework and read to children. If you have trouble reading,
stimulate the child's imagination by telling stories.

#################################
- THE JAILING OF BLACK AMERICA

Another powerful editorial, one that echoes the Kay Hymowitz book, Marriage
and Caste in America.  Can we heed the call in time?  - d

> The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male
> African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record . . .

> How, after decades of undeniable racial progress, did we end up with this
> virtual gulag of racial incarceration? . . .

> . . .The resulting absence of fathers ‹ some 70 percent of black babies are
> born to single mothers ‹ is undoubtedly a major cause of youth delinquency.

> . . . The circumstances that far too many African-Americans face ‹ the lack of
> paternal support and discipline; the requirement that single mothers work
> regardless of the effect on their children¹s care; the hypocritical refusal of
> conservative politicians to put their money where their mouths are on family
> values; the recourse by male youths to gangs as parental substitutes; the
> ghetto-fabulous culture of the streets; the lack of skills among black men for
> the jobs and pay they want; the hypersegregation of blacks into impoverished
> inner-city neighborhoods ‹ all interact perversely with the prison system that
> simply makes hardened criminals of nonviolent drug offenders and spits out
> angry men who are unemployable, unreformable and unmarriageable, closing the
> vicious circle.


September 30, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Jena, O. J. and the Jailing of Black America
By ORLANDO PATTERSON

Cambridge, Mass.

THE miscarriage of justice at Jena, La. ‹ where five black high school
students arrested for beating a white student were charged with attempted
murder ‹ and the resulting protest march tempts us to the view, expressed by
several of the marchers, that not much has changed in traditional American
racial relations. However, a remarkable series of high-profile incidents
occurring elsewhere in the nation at about the same time, as well as the
underlying reason for the demonstrations themselves, make it clear that the
Jena case is hardly a throwback to the 1960s, but instead speaks to issues
that are very much of our times.

What exactly attracted thousands of demonstrators to the small Louisiana
town? While for some it was a simple case of righting a grievous local
injustice, and for others an opportunity to relive the civil rights era, for
most the real motive was a long overdue cry of outrage at the use of the
prison system as a means of controlling young black men.

America has more than two million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute
and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere
13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country¹s prisoners. A
tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks
are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.

The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male
African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly
two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. These numbers and rates
are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim
Crow era. What¹s odd is how long it has taken the African-American community
to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly
counterproductive situation.

How, after decades of undeniable racial progress, did we end up with this
virtual gulag of racial incarceration?

Part of the answer is a law enforcement system that unfairly focuses on drug
offenses and other crimes more likely to be committed by blacks, combined
with draconian mandatory sentencing and an absurdly counterproductive
retreat from rehabilitation as an integral method of dealing with offenders.
An unrealistic fear of crime that is fed in part by politicians and the
press, a tendency to emphasize punitive measures and old-fashioned racism
are all at play here.

But there is another equally important cause: the simple fact that young
black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent
crimes, which cannot be attributed to judicial bias, racism or economic
hardships. The rate at which blacks commit homicides is seven times that of
whites.

Why is this? Several incidents serendipitously occurring at around the same
time as the march on Jena hint loudly at a possible answer.

€ In New York City, the tabloids published sensational details of the bias
suit brought by a black former executive for the Knicks, Anucha Browne
Sanders, who claims that she was frequently called a ³bitch² and a ³ho² by
the Knicks coach and president, Isiah Thomas. In a video deposition, Thomas
said that while it is always wrong for a white man to verbally abuse a black
woman in such terms, it was ³not as much ... I¹m sorry to say² for a black
man to do so.

€ Across the nation, religious African-Americans were shocked that the
evangelical minister Juanita Bynum, an enormously popular source of
inspiration for churchgoing black women, said she was brutally beaten in a
parking lot by her estranged husband, Bishop Thomas Weeks.

€ O. J. Simpson, the malevolent central player in an iconic moment in the
nation¹s recent black-white (as well as male-female) relations, reappeared
on the scene, charged with attempted burglary, kidnapping and felonious
assault in Las Vegas, in what he claimed was merely an attempt to recover
stolen memorabilia.

These events all point to something that has been swept under the rug for
too long in black America: the crisis in relations between men and women of
all classes and, as a result, the catastrophic state of black family life,
especially among the poor. Isiah Thomas¹s outrageous double standard shocked
many blacks in New York only because he had the nerve to say out loud what
is a fact of life for too many black women who must daily confront indignity
and abuse in hip-hop misogyny and everyday conversation.

What is done with words is merely the verbal end of a continuum of abuse
that too often ends with beatings and spousal homicide. Black relationships
and families fail at high rates because women increasingly refuse to put up
with this abuse. The resulting absence of fathers ‹ some 70 percent of black
babies are born to single mothers ‹ is undoubtedly a major cause of youth
delinquency.

The circumstances that far too many African-Americans face ‹ the lack of
paternal support and discipline; the requirement that single mothers work
regardless of the effect on their children¹s care; the hypocritical refusal
of conservative politicians to put their money where their mouths are on
family values; the recourse by male youths to gangs as parental substitutes;
the ghetto-fabulous culture of the streets; the lack of skills among black
men for the jobs and pay they want; the hypersegregation of blacks into
impoverished inner-city neighborhoods ‹ all interact perversely with the
prison system that simply makes hardened criminals of nonviolent drug
offenders and spits out angry men who are unemployable, unreformable and
unmarriageable, closing the vicious circle.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other leaders of the Jena demonstration who
view events there, and the racial horror of our prisons, as solely the
result of white racism are living not just in the past but in a state of
denial. Even after removing racial bias in our judicial and prison system ‹
as we should and must do ‹ disproportionate numbers of young black men will
continue to be incarcerated.

Until we view this social calamity in its entirety ‹ by also acknowledging
the central role of unstable relations among the sexes and within poor
families, by placing a far higher priority on moral and social reform within
troubled black communities, and by greatly expanding social services for
infants and children ‹ it will persist.

Orlando Patterson is a professor of sociology at Harvard and the author of
³The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America¹s ŒRacial¹
Crisis.²

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