Some time ago I was a participant on a TV panel discussion about the Effects of TV on the Family, Child Rearing and other issues. It was a two-hour program hosted by Dr. Barbara Cannon. As the experts and the audience discussed raising children and listening to them, I felt a need to insert a cautionary note about raising children today, after hearing some of the advice given.

An idea floated at that program by a participant was that children have some type of innate knowledge of how the world works, and since these are new times, new paradigms for child rearing should be employed. That idea has some merit just some.  

New Times
These are new times, that s for sure, and new times may require new methods, if the old ones do not work. For example, the spanking method that my mother employed on me and my siblings, and many other Black parents also used, doesn t seem to be the most effective or the most expedient method for today. So I am not recommending spanking although I am not barring it as a parental tool of correction, if done properly. But there is an old philosophy, paired with a seemingly new one for many that should not be dismissed because these are new times.  

A child is not born with any innate worldly knowledge that equips him or her with the necessary knowledge to navigate this world and its challenges. Of all creatures born, a human child is one of the most helpless and requires extensive care and training before he or she is able to function in this world. That is a reality only the neglectful parents do not realize. Yet, I have seen too many children coming from neglectful parents, and those children, without fail, have trouble understanding how to function in socially acceptable ways.

The world has become increasingly complex that is part of these new times. And in order for one to survive in these times, careful attention must be given to the training and the development of the child. 

Educated to Ignorance
I am often amazed at the bright young Blacks who have come out of the best American universities and do not have a clue to the mind that has possessed them.They have never seen the danger that lies just beneath the surface of the western educational model. Remember, one of the original purposes of education in this nation was to homogenize a diverse people into one; much like globalization is attempting to do today. That ethos is still present in the standard educational systems. Consequently, many of our bright young, educated Blacks have been educated and unbeknown to them, they also have been acculturated into thinking that things White are things right and intellectual. As a result, they see old ways that are Black as somehow antiquated and wrong. Of course, that may be a witting or unwitting way of separating themselves from their history and culture and the obligations they demand. 

I am saddened to see this type of ignorance of educated Blacks, because they have actually been educated in a subtle way to hate themselves and think that their thinking is really intellectual enlightenment. These bright, young Blacks identify with White thought because that's what they have been fed in the schools they attended and were never able to or never had a mind to look beyond the standard western thought to see the dangers involved. They come out of the schools so intoxicated by the fact that they have completed the rigors of the university, having been told therein that they are different from other Blacks and many Whites--they are the intelligentsia. And now they make a conscious effort to identify with those who are intellectually compatible to them. They see the Black community as most Whites see it--from a prism of the 27% underclass. They do not see the Black community as equally educated as they are, but with a correct knowledge of self and the world around them. Because many of them have been inebriated by the notion that they are unique and apart from other Blacks, they avoid all aspects of race discussions or identification that is not intellectually based.

A discussion of race is not a discussion they will involve themselves in. On all other matters that affect life and society, they will offer their intellectual opinions without hesitation--for they think they have something to offer--but a hush settles over them at a discussion of race. Yet Race and White Supremacy are, as Dr. Tony Jackson, Haki Madhubuti, and others have stated, the most dominant and pernicious forces in the world today. These young Blacks fall into the western trap that implies to not talk about it is to make it go away. That is a method many Americans have used concerning racism--they have convinced themselves that racism and discrimination are not too bad for Blacks, having never walked in Black shoes. 

A Clear Head
Black Americans must see things clearly, not as Whites see them that may not be clear at all, as the latest poll on White perceptions of Black well-being showed.  And certainly, when it comes to issues of child raising, a White frame of reference cannot work for a Black child, especially a Black male child. 

A Black Panamanian friend of mine asked me about a possible marriage to a White man. She had a 10-year old male child by a Black American who was dead. My response surprised her because she had never thought of me as a racist, and, indeed, I am not. But my answer was that I discouraged her from that marriage. I did not discourage her because I disapproved of their affairs of the heart; I discouraged her because of the negative impact that marriage would have on that Black male child.  She asked me; I did not offer this advice without solicitation.

Her situation should be distinguished from a person who marries out of race and has a child who is biracial. These situations are worlds apart.

I know how young Black males grow up and the peer socialization that transpires. At some point in his young development, approximately 13 years old or so, a peer recognition of that child s step-father would happen, and he would face the idea given to him by other Black children: his White stepfather is sleeping with his Black mother. Not only would it be raised, it would be a hook by which he would be hung daily. That would be torturous for that child, and in the climate of today, it could even be deadly. 

Were the circumstances different the family lived on a farm, and the child was home schooled until he went off to college; the child was in an environment that was identical to his own, etc. then his difficulty would not be as severe.  Young Black males talk sex, and they play the dozens with a vengeance. And the mother is given a special and elevated status in Black culture; one need only imagine what this child would face daily. What he would have to face would breed hostility and hatred toward the mother s husband, who is not the child s father and who is White, and who is sleeping with his mother nightly. And it would also breed hostility in the child toward the mother for placing him in such an undesirable situation.

These are new times, so there are new issues that must be dealt with. And the above is one of those issues. However, as discussed in another article, biracial parenting has issues that must be dealt with also. Both sets of issues are realities that must be considered today.

The idea that children have a major contribution to offer to their raising, and that parents should pay more attention to what children are saying today is an idea that is sound but one that needs to be approached with caution. If this idea means that children should be allowed to share joint tenancy with parents in control and say-so over the home, there are problems. If that idea means that children should be allowed unlimited freedom and privacy, there are problems; if that idea means that children's reasoning should be validated and given credence when it is weak and flawed, that has problems.

Old Paradigms
The idea that parents should relinquish parental control is certainly new, and it is also harmful to children needing guidance to understand the world and how to reason critically. But to many, the very idea that children need guidance is antithetical to their system of parenting.

Parents should not give up control of the parenting process to children because children cannot raise and guide themselves. Too often they do not know their right hand from their left (metaphorically). Parents have greater sight, insight, and vision--and if they do not, they need to get it as soon as possible. Since they have this wisdom, and since the child's life is so important and so needy, they must be protectors of and guides to the children committed unto their care for a few years.

A White parent friend came to me once with her personal example of a failure of this idea that children have certain innate knowledge. She had wanted her child to make her own decisions about religion and God, without any undue pressure from her. When the child was about 16 years old, she went to her friend's house to spend the weekend. Her friend and her friend's family went to church, blessed their food before eating it, and asked her to participate. The child had no knowledge of things religious or Biblical, so she couldn't participate. That child came home hurt and embarrassed; she was angry with her mother and exclaimed: "Mom, you should have taught me something. I didn't know anything about the Bible, about religion, about God. You should have taught me something, mom."

The friend said to me, "I wanted her to make her own decisions about God." This very educated woman felt that her child could make decisions having been give no knowledge with which to make those decisions. It is problematic parenting that assumes a child has a storehouse of knowledge given him/her as some primordial wisdom from the ages, which manifests itself at birth. That innate knowledge or primordial wisdom is called parents.

In the African American community, we teach that it take a whole village to raise a child. This concept was applied fully when I was a child. Any neighbor could take it upon himself or herself to correct me in my mistakes and guide me when they saw me go astray. That did not mean that they would spank me or verbally abuse me; some things that did occasionally occur, but it meant primarily that they felt an obligation to chastise me and report the chastisement, as well as my transgressions, to my parents.

That was the essence of it takes a village to raise a child. These older people had greater knowledge than I had, so I felt safe with them; they knew the way I was trying to go. We respected those who were older and accepted their guidance and correction. I didn't dismiss their words simply because they were not my parents. Those children who did dismiss the older people's words because they were unrelated also dismissed their own parents' words, using other reasons to justify it.

A friend of mine took her degree from a university that was all White. She was in a part of the Midwest that was also all White. She felt lonely for other Blacks, and one day she was going into town from the school, and she saw an older Black man. She ran to him, hugged him, and cried in his arms. He comforted her and understood perfectly what she felt. He knew her, although he had never seen her before. He parented her because he was a part of that village, and she needed parenting; she needed Black love that is so unique to a Black child.

The concept that children have innate abilities to know matters they have not been taught is a perverse concept that will harm children. Parents should instill in their children all the wisdom and knowledge they have. It will take all of that, along with guided education and the financial legacy we leave to our children to position them, helping them develop into the men and women who will be able to function and to become leaders of this changed world and the world that is to come. To give our children less than that, in the name of some new paradigm, is not intellectual but deadly. It's fools' gold. []

FAJ
7/23/01

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