CBS Reports; The Vanishing Family: Crisis in Black America

CBS REPORTS

January 25, 1986

The Vanishing Family- Crisis in Black America

BILL MOYERS: Raise your hand if you're married. None of you are married. Raise your hand if you would like to be married to your baby's father. One. (Laughing) The rest of you don't plan to get married. Why don't you plan to get married? I'd like to know that.

LA DON: You already have your child to think about, and then a whole family to care for, you know-- it's a lot of responsibility. And then you don't want the commitments.

CLARINDA HENDERSON: I wouldn't want no man holding me down, because I think I could make it as a single parent.

MOYERS: But don't you think you might need help in raising that baby, from a man?

LA DON: Not really. I didn't have a father .. My father wasn't in the home. So, you know, it really-- male figures are not substantially important in the family.

TIMOTHY McSEED: I ain't thinking about holding up, far as no sex, my man, you know. If a girl, you know, she get- having a baby, carrying a baby, that's on her, you know. I'm not going to stop my pleasures because of another woman.

MOYERS: What about birth control? What about condoms?

TIMOTHY: I haven't- girls don't like them things! They don't like them things. They'll tell you to take them things off. They figure that you saying that they filthy or they dirty or something.

MOYERS: It's been a startling change in values. Twenty-five years ago, you would not have heard such things said so freely, because they were not embraced so widely. The strong family was still the backbone of black America, and three out of four children had both parents at home. That is true no longer. Most black children are now growing up without their fathers. The result is a world turned upside down, as children copy what they see and repeat what they learn.

MOYERS: La Don says she didn't have a father in her home, and doesn't think her children need one. She's not unusual. Half the black families today are headed only by a woman. Clarinda said she could make it on her own as a single parent. She has never been married and is raising her daughter without a man'shelp~ 0 She's not unusual. Today, nearly sixty percent of all black children are born out of wedlock. Timothy said his children are not his responsibility. He has left them to be supported by their mothers and welfare. He's not unusual either.

For La Don and Clarinda and Timothy, and many more like them in cities all over America, the traditional family no longer exists. It has vanished, and something new is taking its place. Single women and the children they're rearing alone are the fastest growing part of the black population. What becomes of the blaCK family in a world where the values are being turned upside down?

CAROLYN WALLACE: If the parent is seventeen and eighteen. uneducated. unmotivated. fooling around. wandering around--what's the child gonna learn? Who's to teach them? When you learned something. you was taught by your parents. It was reinforced by school and your neighbors. but it was taught by your parents. Well. "if the parents don't know anything. how are they gonna teach the children? So it's not racism that I'm fighting right now. it's the lack of motivation. it's-- you see. I'm not even talking about racism. Maybe later on we'll get back to that. But I think we're destroying ourselves.

MOYERS: This is Newark. New Jersey. one of America's inner cities. "Inner city" is a polite name for ghetto. as in black ghetto. Those of us who don't live in the ghetto are brought here usually by television. and usually only when there are violent pictures to show. But we have to come here if we want to understand those fearsome statistics about the vanishing black family. Now a lot of white families are in trouble. too. Single parent families are twice as common in America today as they were twenty years ago. But for the majority of white children. "family" still means a mother and a father. This. is not true for most black children.

For them. things are getting worse. Today. black teenagers have the highest pregnancy rate in the industrial world. and in the black inner city practically no teenage mother gets married. That's no racist comment. What's happening goes far beyond race. Why then do so many teenage girls get pregnant and have children? Why do so many fathers abandon their families? The answers begin with the people here. They told us what happens to family when mothers are children. fathers don't count. and the street is the strongest school.

CLARINDA HENDERSON: Okay, Okay. Bye-bye.

MOYERS: It is the beginning of another school day in Newark, New Jersey. Another day of class for Clarinda Henderson. She is seventeen and had hoped to graduate from high school next year. But that was before the birth of her baby.

HENDERSON: I think that having a little baby you could just cuddle in your arms and just hug all the time, kiss on it, smell it 'cause it smells so sweet. r thought it'd be fun until I had her.

MOYERS: The reality is different?

HENDERSON: The reality just punched me right in the eye. I like had to pinch myself to see if I was here, 'cause I was like, "This is too much."

MOYERS: Clarinda was only fifteen when she got pregnant with her daughter, Shaquna. She is not unusual. Half of all black teenagers become pregnant. Clarinda has never been married; she's still living with her mother at home, where she's raising her baby daughter. Clarinda goes to a special school for dropouts, after she takes her daughter to a day-care center. She has fifth grade math skills and reads at a sixth grade level.

HENDERSON: When I got pregnant, I said, "Well, I ha-- I'm gonna have this baby, and she's not gonna stand in. the way of my education; I'm not going to let no one stand in the way of my education.· I ain't gonna· be like these other· girls, just dropout, can't get not job; no money, have to be on·welfare.

TEACHER: --when you're ready on the vocabulary. Bingo.

MOYERS: Clarinda learned about birth control in sex education courses; But she still became pregnant.

HENDERSON: Well, I'll say no. Because I wasn't on-- in the, you know, birth control methods, and neither was he, and, you know, and we were sexually active, and when it happened, it just happened. .

MOYERS: When you think back on that day when you learned you were pregnant, what went .through , your mind

HENDERSON: Oh, gosh, how'm I gonna tell my mother? And when I tell my mother, she's gonna make me get abortion. I was really scared, I think.

MOYERS: Why didn't you want to get an abortion?

HENDERSON: Because I wanted his baby.

'MOYERS: ·"W1lat did you like about him?

HENDERSON: His legs.

MOYERS: HiS legs?

HENDERSON: I got a thing for bow-legged boys.

MOYERS: Bow-legged boys? (Laughs)

HENDERSON: I love 'em. They have some gorgeous legs, I just don't know.

MOYERS: Darren Lyell is the father of Clarinda'S baby. He is eighteen and lives in central Newark. He dropped out of high school when he was sixteen. He has never held a steady job.

DARREN LYELL: I spend most of my time listening to the radio, and I don't go to school, I don't work, and I don't do nothing. Just like this, killing time.

MOYERS: Did you want to have a baby?

DARREN: Not now-- I’m no, not really.

MOYERS: It just happened.

LYELL: It just happened, you know: she just popped up pregnant-- and I just--

MOYERS: Were your friends impressed?

LYELL: Lot of-- you know, everybody was telling me, you know, that, you know, she looks just like me, and, you know, she s kinda cute and, you know, kinda pretty. You know, and I was like--

MOYERS: Do any of them have babies?

.

LYELL: That seems-- that's all they are doing around here is making babies and stuff. Making babies. ..

MOYERS: Darren told us that in this neighborhood it's easy to get involved with girls, and easy to get into trouble. Darren has been arrested five times--for stealing, suspicion of homicide, and for possession of a deadly weapon . When you were arrested for carrying a dangerous weapon, what was it?

LYELL: One of those big machetes--

MOYERS: Machete?'

LYELL: Knives, big knives.- .. ..

MOYERS: You mean you just carried it around with you?

LYELL: I used to bring it to school with me.

MOYERS: I mean, that's hard to conceal, isn't it?

LYELL: Nah, 'cause I had like this blue coat, like a blue goose. I poked a hole in the pocket of it, and I just put it right in there.

MOYERS: Isn't that dangerous?

LYELL: That's the way the stuff was going, you know, like that's the way the people was acting towards me. So I felt like I needed a weapon. 'cause, you know. it seemed like, you know, it's like war. really; like Vietnam.

MOYERS: Have you asked Darren to help you with the baby?

HENDERSON: No, because I see he can't even help himself. He can't. It's pitiful to say that, but he can't.

MOYERS: He wasn't prepared to be a father?

HENDERSON: No. And he still isn't.

MOYERS: Were you ready to be a mother?

HENDERSON: Well, no. But now that I am. I just have to take it step by step.

MOYERS: Clarinda relies on welfare to support Shaquna. But it's her mother, Gloria Henderson. who gets the check for the whole family. Gloria, thirty-four, has never been married. She was a teenager when Clarinda was born, just as her own mother-Clarinda's grandmother--had been when Gloria was born.

MOYERS: When you were pregnant, did you assume that you could turn to welfare for help after the baby came?

HENDERSON: Well, yeah. But I didn't have her just to collect welfare. I had her because I felt it would have been a part of me; I would've had somebody to live for and also somebody to love, and love me back.

MOYERS: Is your daughter the first person you've ever loved?

HENDERSON: I really, really love my daughter.

MOYERS: Two months after the birth of their baby, Clarinda was pregnant again by Darren. This time, she had an abortion. She didn't think she could handle two little children while still a teenager herself.. "

Your grandmother was a single woman with a child. your mother is a single woman with a child--now you. W'l:ly is that happening?

HENDERSON: I really didn't plan on getting pregnant. But if I really had somebody to really sit down and talk to, like really express my feelings to them. I don't think none of this would've· happened. And then when it did happen. my grandmother's like, "I told you this, I told you this"--tell me nothing.

MOYERS: Nobody told Darren anything. either. He. too. lives at home with his mother.

MOYERS: Where's your father?

LYELL: Locked up.

MOYERS: Locked up where?

LYELL: Green Street.

MOYERS: What for?

LYELL: Fighting and stuff -- fighting. violence. Stuff like that.

MOYERS: Had anybody ever told you what it is like to be a father?

LYELL: I like watchin' others-- other older. you know. that had kids--

MOYERS: What did you learn from them? What-- how did you-- what did you--?

LYELL: I learned about it taking. like. a lot of patience. take a lot of patience to be a father.

MOYERS: Do you have a lot of patience?

LYELL: I don't got a lot of patience.

MOYERS: Clarinda doesn't always have a lot of patience either.

HENDERSON: You want to fight? Then don't ask me if I want to fight if you don't want

LYELL: Get off my porch then.

HENDERSON: No, you went out. You shouldn't have said nothing to me. You done already pissed me off. - - ~ I

LYELL: What'd I do?

MOYERS: Two months after her abortion, Clarinda and Darren broke off their relationship. They see each other rarely now, but once in a While, Clarinda will take Shaquna to visit.- - -" -

MOYERS: Do you ever think about marrying Clarinda?

LYELL: Not now. I ain't thinking about that now. That's the last thing on my mind .

MOYERS: You ever feel depressed?

LYELL: I don't be feeling-- I don't be like sad. I just be like frustrated. I don't be-- I'm like, really like frustrated.

MOYERS: What are the odds that your daughter will follow the same route? Because there was your grandmother, your mother. and you.

HENDERSON: No. No, I see to that.

MOYERS: How?

HENDERSON: She won't. I will sit down, I will talk to her about her being a young lady, like, "Quna, if you go out here, you have sex, be sure you on birth control or, you know. If you do have sex, make sure whoever you are having sex with care about you. Don't just let them just get-- just like, you know. let them get over on you thinking they got a piece of the action and they-can go tell Tom, Dick and Harry. .

MOYERS: Did your mother tell you those things?

HENDERSON: No.

MOYERS: You tell them to yourself?

HENDERSON: I talk to myself in the mirror. (Laughs)

MOYERS: And you say, "No. No."

HENDERSON: "No. No." Like I say to my daughter, "No. No. No more."

MOYERS: Alice Sondra Jackson is twenty-three. She's the mother of two, expecting a third, and is not married. She, too, lives in Newark. Like nearly half of all black children in America, Alice's children are being raised in poverty. They live a subsidized life in '. subsidized housing. But that's not what Alice wanted or intended.

Alice lives in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Newark, in the project where she was born and brought up. But she hoped that one day she would move out of here. She graduated from high school, went to business college for a year, and worked steadily until she beca~~ pregnant with her first child.

ALICE SONDRA JACKSON: You know, I was doing so good before I was pregnant; I had a little job. I kept money, you know, stuff. But after I had the child, that's when money started going low.

MOYERS: What was your reaction when you found out you were pregnant the first time? Did you intend to get pregnant1

JACKSON: It wasn't-- no, it wasn't planned. But when I got pregnant, I wanted the-- you know, I wanted to be a mother, you know. It was exciting to me. I just thought it-- I had something of my own, a little child that's gonna call me "Morn." But, you know, after you have 'ern, it's hard, you know. You gotta buy them this; gotta buy them that.

MOYERS: Malik is Alice's firstborn. He is now three years old. Soon after he was born, Alice, then twenty, quit her job to take care of him. Sixteen months later, her second child, Antwan, was born. When we met, she was six months pregnant with her third child.

Timothy McSeed is twenty-six, the father of Alice's three children. Though they're not married, "they see each other regularly.

JACKSON: When I first met him, I didn't like him. But when he start talkin' to me, saying like he was like a man that wanted to have a horne, have children, take care of 'ern.

MOYERS: Did you talk with Timothy about how you were going to support the baby when you were pregnant? "

JACKSON: No, that's what we didn't do. No, we didn't even talk about how we was going to support the child.

MOYERS: Timothy McSeed held his last steady job two and a half years ago. He's been arrested several times on robbery and drug charges. He was brought up in Newark by his mother, who-was sixteen when Timothy was born. His father has another family in another city.

Timothy has a talent for drawing, which he has never developed. He dropped out of.high school at sixteen and spent two years in the Job Corps. He was twenty-three when he and Alice had their first child. Timothy does not support any of his children.

MOYERS: How many children do you have?

TIMOTHY McSEED: Six. (Laughing)

MOYERS: He fathered those six children by four women. He also had two more children by two other women, but one died in infancy and the other was aborted. We asked him about the birth ,of his first surviving child.

McSEED: It was kind of a funny experience. because like me and the girl was just messing around, right, and she was involved with somebody else. She used to be an old girlfriend of ~~; she managed to get popped up by me.

MOYERS: ,Okay, that's the 'second baby. The third was

McSEED: Mustafa. He was the third.

MOYERS: That was by another lady.

McSEED:, Uh-huh., Mrs. ,Ward Yes, I go see him every now and then

MOYERS: How old is he now? -

McSEED: He's five, if I'm not mistaken. Five or four, either one.

MOYERS: And the fourth one was'?

McSEED: Simone. I don't- I only saw her twice. Two times.

MOYERS: What happened to her?

McSEED; It's a family problem. You know. the father don't want me to see the mother and all that. you know. so I got tired of running behind her and found me someone else. I didn't have to sweat it because I guess the father was taking care of them anyway, so--

MOYERS: How did it feel to have those--

McSEED: Women?

MOYERS: No. Kids.

McSEED: Kids? Well-- well. you get to see-- if it ain't one thing you done. you-- like artwork for instance. you look at your art., You say. "This is something that I've done." Just like the carpentry, it's something that you've done. You can see what you've done. if it's anything. If you don't do nothing. you can see something. you know, what your life was. you know, what it was to you.,

MOYERS: So the kids are sort of artwork?

McSEED: Well. not really, but, you can-- like they might grow up to be doctors or actors, you know. and you can say. "Look. that's my boy." or "That's my girl." you know. there's, you know. some people that can't have children at all. '

MOYERS: Their mothers raise Timothy's children. and welfare pays for them. On the first day of each month at noon. the mothers gather outside the project's mail room. waiting for the postman to deliver their checks.

JACKSON: Well. I call-- we call it "Mother's Day."

MOYERS: Why?

JACKSON: 'Cause us mothers, we getting our check that day, getting their welfare checks. So we call it "Mother's Day."

MOYERS: Alice's welfare check comes to $385 a month. She cashes it at the corner store. She gets another $112 in food stamps.

JACKSON: I don't think I would have had the second two children if I didn't think welfare was there. I don't like welfare because it makes me lazy.

MOYERS: It does?

JACKSON: Yeah, it makes you lazy just to sit around and wait for a monthly check to come in. You know, I just like to work; I like money coming every week or every two weeks.

MOYERS: Why doesn't Timothy help you take care of those kids?

JACKSON: One thing I do know about Timothy, that if he did have a job I know he would -

take care of me and the children and the bills. But What's holding him back--well this is what he tells me all the time--he figure I'm going to be with another guy, or I'm going to slip away from him while he at work. That don't make no sense to me.

MOYERS: Don't you get mad sometimes?

JACKSON: I get mad a lot of times about financially support from Timothy.

MOYERS: What do you say to him?

JACKSON: I always say it ain't that hard to get a job. Go out there and look for a job. 'Cause I'm sick and tired of just laying back waiting for a welfare check. I said. "And this is not how I want to live the rest of my life. This is not the way I planned for my future to be.

"

MOYERS: Does it make you feel bad that you can't support your kids?

McSEED: Yes.

MOYERS: How do they make it? Where do they-- where do they get the money?

McSEED: Well, the majority of the mothers are on welfare. And welfare gives them the stipend for the month. So what I'm not doing. the-- the government does.

MOYERS: What would happen if the government didn't?

McSEED: (Laughs) Guess it would be a big disaster, I guess. 'Cause you can't give something that you don't have. In order to give, you got to have for yourself.

MOYERS: You see, people out there watching are going to say, "Why didn't he think about that before he brought six kids into the world?"

McSEED: Well. the mother had a choice: She could of had an abortion or she could have kept the child. She- she decided the way that she wanted to have the child. so therefore I guess it's not sweating her or nothing. and it's not bothering--

MOYERS: You think it's her' fault if she gets pregnant? I mean, you popped her.

McSEED: Well. maybe not. They say. "Mama baby, Papa maybe." know what I mean? - ,

.

MOYERS: The baby is born, Alice came for what is only her fourth visit to the doctor during her pregnancy . . .

JACKSON: Yeah, I was very much worried, and I was kinda unhappy being pregnant, you know. to know that I'm having a third child and I'm not doing so good with my- my two I have already.

NURSE: Miss Jackson? Come-with me, please.

JACKSON: But. as you know. the months went by, I just had to deal with it. being pregnant and knowing it's my child, I'm going to have a child, and I'm just going to have to support it the same way I supported them.

Or do better if I could do better.

MOYE,RS: Is that the last one?

JACKSON: Well, I ain't gonna say that, cause I said that when I had my first one. So then I had second one. And I said that with my second one and I had me a third one. So I ain't gonna say that.

MOYERS: Did you think about birth control?

JACKSON: No, I didn't even think about birth control. I was afraid of birth control, because I always heard that birth control gives you cancer. And all that stuff.

MOYERS: What about Timothy? Did you talk to him about taking precautions, about being careful?

JACKSON: Yeah. I talked to him about being careful; about, you know, birth control.

MOYERS: But--

JACKSON: Hmmm?

MOYERS: But?

JACKSON: But?

MOYERS: Did he?

JACKSON: No, he wasn't with it.

MOYERS: On Father's 'Day, Alice and Timothy had their third son: Hakim Lamonte Jackson, seven pounds, seven ounces.

McSEED: Yeah, little boy! Little boy!

JACKSON:" That baby tried to kill me! ,

McSEED: I'm the king! I'm the king! Hey!

NURSE: That's it, honey.

McSEED: How you feeling now? You feeling all right, sweetheart?

JACKSON: No. I feel kind of_sore. My stomach all right-- the pain. (Baby Crying)

JACKSON: Fat-face little baby. You hungry? I know you're hungry.

McSEED: Let me see my little man here.

MOYERS: So many women, so many children. Do you ever think that maybe you shouldn't do it--

McSEED: Who? Me?

MOYERS: Yeah. ---unless--'unless you can be sure you don't have a kid?

McSEED: Not really. 'cause I'm highly sexed. But I have ways of cooling myself down, you know. Because like when you're dealing with one female, and you're not dealing with another female, having sex with her too much is bad. so you have to like, you know, set a schedule when you should do it and when you should not. '

MOYERS: You seem to break your schedule sometimes.

McSEED: Well, most women say, "You a baby-maker." I just got strong sperm, myself. (Laughs)

MOYERS: Would you have had these kids if you'd thought about them in advance?

McSEED: No.

MOYERS: All were an accident?

McSEED: Yeah. You could say that.

MOYERS: Were you just having a good time?

McSEED: Yeah. a lovely time. I enjoyed myself.

MOYERS: And you didn't think about marrying any of these women except the first one, the first girl?

McSEED: Yes. Well. I'm going to marry Alice.

MOYERS: Sondra?

McSEED: Oh, yes, we're going to get married.

MOYERS: Do you love Sondra?

McSEED: Yes, a lot. A great deal.

MOYERS: Does she love you?

.

McSEED: The girl crazy about me.

MOYERS: Then, tell me, why don't you get married?

McSEED: Well, see, I'm old-fashioned. I want a big wedding, that's that. And my uncles and my aunts, you know, they all had their little tuxedos, and I'm going to have mine, too.

MOYERS: I thought you were going to say to me, "Because I can't afford to at the moment."

McSEED: Oh, that ain't it. Because I'm going to find me something, and I'm going to get something. .I'll find something.

MOYERS: When?

McSEED: Whenever. I'm going to keep on trying. I'll never give up.

MOYERS: You know, you feel very responsible for your children. and Timothy doesn't. What does that say?

JACKSON: Hmmm. Sometimes I think like that. I said "There-- "Here I am, I got two children," one on the way" -- well, this was before the first one. I'm doing this all by myself, and sometimes, you know, if you sit down and think about that, I know I really get very upset. Because I don't think he really understand that I'm here. you know, taking care of all this by myself. If he get that and if he think like that, I think he'd do something; I don't think he really understand that I'm doing that.

MOYERS: Why do you let him off the hook? Why do you put up with it?

JACKSON: Sometimes I be like telling him leave me alone, it's over with. But every time I do that, when he not with me, even that same day or the next day, I feel, you mow, lonely without hUn. So like, you know, I just get angry and say them things, I really don't be meaning 'em. So-" "

MOYERS: Do you love him?

JACKSON:" Yes, I love him.

MOYERS: Does he love you?

JACKSON: Yes, I think he love me, too.

MOYERS: There's a famous book about the black experience in America called The Invisible Man. Ironically, the young black man today is anything but invisible. He's the one who shows up in the highest unemployment rate. He's right there in the top of the crime statistics. He's the one most threatening to his black neighbors and the one most feared in the mind of white America. Every teenage boy growing up can go either way, but the son of a young single woman in the ghetto is pressured to go the wrong way every time he steps onto these streets.

MOYERS: What do you see for your future out there? You're how old now?

BERNARD WARDRICK: I'm fifteen, and right now if I keep going like it's going now I really think I probably will make it, and then again I probably won't have all the things that I really want in life right now. But I think I will have most of the things I want.

MOYERS: For teenagers like Bernard Wardrick and his friends Bosky, "c" and Mike, there are no familiar road maps for the way up and out. It is the street and the media that teach a boy here how to become a man.

Bernard dreams of making it as a rap star. He and his friends have formed a group, "The Educated Three."

ANNOUNCER:. . I like that. Now here they corne, Newark, New Jersey, your own "Educated Three."

MOYERS: What is rapping?

BERNARD: To me, it's like poetry because, you know, I could just sit down and write it. I can sit at the table or whatever or wherever-- wherever I'm at and 1- and I can just think of it.

MOYERS: What does it take to be a good rapper? What's the skill?

BERNARD: You gotta have style, class, and originality. (Laughs) Anybody can rap. You just got to put yourself into it, and make it mean something. (Rap Music)

MOYERS: "The Educated Three" tell the 'story of the only life they know--the life of their block. They were born and raised here. in homes without fathers, and most of their time is spent here. The world they describe is no nursery rhyme, as Bernard's friend "C" told us.

"C": (Rapping) "All the people got guns,

They're tryin' to stick up kids

While their mother is at home, sheddin' tears

Because the son that she thought she had brought up right

Is on the streets leadin' a terrible life.'

He's walkin' down a road headed for nowhere. From my point of view. he don't even care,

Because the attitude he has makes him care about nothin'--

Not his mother, his brother, or even his cousin.

He think life is all about for the streets,

Bein' a two-time loser and a petty thief.

But everybody knows that you're the thief of the week

Because you're no good for nothin',

It's where you're good for somethin'

But, boy, the only thing you good for is frontin'."

MOYERS: You wrote that?

"C": Yeah.

MOYERS: Who'd you write about?

"C": I judged a lot on myself, 'cause I used to be out there, man.

MOYERS: Out there on the street.

"C": Yeah, eighteen years. I've seen a lot happen that I'd never thought I'd see.

MOYERS: When you're out on that street, is it dangerous?

BERNARD: It's dangerous, man; it's dangerous. Any day you can go outside, anything can happen to you. . -

"C": Yeah, but it's how you make it that.

MOYERS: Can a guy get killed on the street easily?

"C": Sure. You see how you blink your eye? Like that. Yeah.

BERNARD: Can get killed just like that.

MOYERS: The leading cause of death for young black men is murder. One in twenty-one will be killed bef()re the age of twenty-five. Bernard was shot and robbed by two teenagers when he was fifteen. Four months later, he was arrested for carrying a gun. That is not unusual -- nearly half of young men in the inner city are arrested before they reach eighteen. Trouble, Bernard told us, waits at every corner.

How does a guy keep from falling into that trap you described in that rap?

"C": If you see everybody else robbin', man, or selling drugs, you supposed-- it takes a wise man to learn from another man's mistakes.

BERNARD: The adults gotta set an example for the kids. If they see the adults do it, you know, that's what they gonna do too, eventually.

MOYERS: Who would be an example?

BERNARD: My family, my mother.

MOYERS: His mom is Brenda Wardrick, thirty years old. The mother of four children by three different men. She has never been married. She raises her children alone. in a daily

tug-of-war with the ,street." , •.

BRENDA WARDRICK: It's a battle. It's almost like-- and I think most parents feel the same. that you fear for your children leaving home. They can leave out and walk right across the street and trouble can get in their way. .

MOYERS: What's the hardest thing about being a single parent?

WARDRICK: It's hard. you know. understanding them sometimes. And they have difficulties understanding me. 'cause I'm a young parent and sometimes they act like I'm their sister as well as their mother, you know. .

MOYERS: Brenda was just' fourteen when she became pregnant with Bernard. her first child. ~ Bernard's father was fifteen. By the time she was in her early twenties. there were three more children. each unplanned. To support them. Brenda works on and off as a nurse's aide. but she could not make ends meet without welfare. None of the children's fathers give her any financial support.

I don't understand what happens that causes so many fathers not to take responsibility for the kids they created. or helped to create.

WARDRICK: It's easier on their pockets if they can-- most of the men today don't. you know, assume their responsibilities as they should.'Not that they can't. They ust don't.

MOYERS:" Well. I'd get very mad if I were a mother. I think I would.

WARDRICK: Oh. I get angry. But getting angry isn't gonna solve anything. And then sometimes. you know. their fathers. they feel like if they're gonna support them then. they have to have more time with me. And I don't feel that that's really necessary. you know.

MOYERS: You'd rather take the burden of the children alone than to have to-- WARDRICK: I wouldn't rather. But I have.

MOYERS: What do-your children mean to you?

WARDRICK: My friends. They're my world. you know. When I wake up in the morning-- see, you know. if you don't have a husband or a man with you. your children are always there. So you have someone to call your own. See. your children will smile when nobody else will.

MOYERS: Do you want your kids to get married? ' -

WARDRICK: Sure. especially my daughter. My boys. they'll probably be--whatcha call it--freelancers.

MOYERS: Freelancers? Like their fathers?

WARDRICK: Yeah. Maybe. I don't know.

MOYERS: That does seem to be the pattern.

WARDRICK: Yeah.

MOYERS: Once a single mother like Brenda would not have been so alone in raising children. She was born here in rural North Carolina, surrounded by an extended Baptist family. But her father went North looking for work, and Brenda was raised in Newark. Many summers she carne back South to visit her kinfolk. They still live here, and every year hold a family reunion. With her present boyfriend, Lamonte Banks, Brenda brought her children down for the occasion.

She wanted Bernard especially to see a world different from the streets of Newark.

WOMAN: (Sing) "Jesus fed me when I was hungry.

Oh, ask the Lord; come a long ways."

(Applause)

(Speaking) Thank you.

WOMAN: .Jhank you. That was just beautiful. She told us how we made it to the family reunion.

MAN: Let us pray. "Almighty, all wise and eternal God ... "

MOYERS: The church was part of the extended family. It was sanctuary, community, comfort; brothers and sisters in faith and consolation.

GROUP: (Singing) "--Fellowship. What a peace of mind--tI

WARDRICK: Being away from people that you love and care about, these reunions sort of just makes up for the distance, you know. Spend a little time, and you go back, and you look forward to the next time. Keeps us together; it keeps me goin'.

BERNARD: I'm lighting this for my great-grandfather, and my great-grandmother, Cora Wardrick.

WARDRICK: And I'm hoping my children will get together and give reunions to keep the flow, to keep close.with their family.

MOYERS: More than blood, place, and faith held these families together through hard times. There was memory, never more alive that at the old family burial ground. Brenda's three aunts brought her and the kids to see where their roots rtlll--far from the main highway; farther still from Newark.

MOYERS: Did you have to work, work in those days in the field?

WOMAN: Sure. We worked in the field. But now, they got so much equipment now, people don't have to work hard now.

MOYERS: What was the hardest?

WOMAN: Pickin' cotton, I think. Pickin' cotton -- that was the hardest.

MOYERS: You all really have strong ties here, don't you, to this piece of earth?

WOMAN: Oh. of course. sure.

MOYERS: Is this cemetery all

WOMAN: As far as I know. yes.

'

MOy'ERS: This is the old family--

WOMAN: This is the Wardrick family. . . .

MOYERS: Now. that would be Bernard's great-great-grandfather?

WOMAN: Right.

'MOYERS: What kind of man was he?

- WOMAN: Wonderful.

. (;-:;

WOMAN: Wonderful.

WOMAN: Wonderful.

MOYERS: Brenda, do you try to tell your kids about the family?

WARDRICK: Yes, I do, as-- as much as I possibly can. And whenever I come home I always ask questions. There's a lot that I don't know, and I'm still learning a lot about them.

MOYERS: There's a lot you want to know?

WARDRICK: Yes.

MOYERS: Yeah.

WARDRICK: Yes. And I want my children to know.

MOYERS: Why?

WARDRICK: 'Cause I think they should know who they are, and where they come from, -and what we all stand for. And I just get a good feeling when I'm here-; you know, and I want to share that with my kids. .

WOMAN: Together we stand; divided we must fall .

MOYERS: 'Together we stand

WOMAN: Yes, sir.

MOYERS: Do you think that's true as a family?

WOMAN: Yes, sir. Yes.

MOYERS: It's hard to hold a family together, though. isn't it?

WOMAN: True. 'That's true.

MOYERS: Think it's harder today than when you were little?

.

WOMAN: Seems to be. I can remember years ago. when if something happened over here, our family in Virginia was right here.

MOYERS: Everybody pitched in.

WOMAN: Right. And now you never hear of that. But now it's up to us to try to keep it together, 'cause this is what we were taught. love and affection. That's the only way we can make it.

MOYERS: Bernard, this is such a change from Newark. What do you think when you're here in this-- in this place?

BERNARD: Urn, I enjoy coming to visit. But. you know, I don't really-- I wouldn't like to live here, 'cause--

MOYERS: Why?

BERNARD: The environment isn't the same. You got about twenty or thirty houses all on one block, and down here, you know, you've got like a half a mile (Laughs) you know, before you see--

MOYERS: A lot more action up there, right?

BERNARD: Yeah. Yeah, I enjoy when I come down here, I love to visit. but I wouldn't like to live down here. -

MOYERS: What do you think your life would be without if you-- if you didn't have these folks here and didn't come to these reunions?

WARDRICK: Empty. Maybe almost not belonging somewhere. I just couldn't imagine not having this here, you know.

MOYERS: Of course, you have these reunions and this place and these people to fall back on. What do you think your children will have to fall back on?

WARDRICK: nus is what I'm trying to share with them, so that they will have this, too. MOYERS: But it's this, not Newark, isn't it?

WARDRICK: No, they won't-- they're-- they're misSing a lot. Because this is where I was born, and they were born in Newark. I don't think they have-- they're not as fortunate.

MOYERS: But Bernard calls this home and doesn'tfuiSs the extended family that means so much to his mother. His notion of extended family is something different--the- rap group, friends from the street, and Brenda's boyfriend. Lamonte Banks.

Lamonte is thirty-one years old, and much of what has happened over the last generation to the young black man who grew up in a broken family in the inner city is reflected in his experience. Lamonte was raised in Newark by a single mother and grew up on the street. Now he has two children of his own who live with their mother in another part of town.

He works when he can cleaning oil drums, but does not support his children or Brenda's. He has become one of Bernard's acting role models. He told us what it was like to spend his teenage years, as Bernard is doing, in the school of the street.

LAMONTE BANKS: I grew up hard.

MOYERS: Hard?

LAMONTE: I grew up basically being the man of my family at thirteen. Mommy was there, but Mommy was like always saying, well, she needed this or it was hard, and, you know, sometimes we'd go in the house and didn't have no food. You know what I mean? And I couldn't take that sometimes, you know. So I would take to the streets.

MOYERS: And?

LAMONTE: And whatever was necessary, so I could bring my mother some type of relief or help.

MOYERS: Steal?

LAMONTE: If it--

MOYERS: Hustle?

. LAMONTE: If it took that .

. MOYERS: How did you, as a kid, get caught up in that street life?

LAMONTE: Hanging with a crowd.

MOYERS: What happened? Give me some examples.

LAMONTE: I was-- basically, I was-- I was going with this girl, and, at twelve years old, and these other guys liked her, and they jumped me. And I got me a bat, and I put me some nails in this bat, and I taped this bat up with these nails in it .. And I went lOOking for these guys, and' each one I caught. I hit them with this bat. and I hurt them with this bat, you know.

MOYERS: What happened?

LAMONTE: They parents came to my mother with the police. and they locked me up. Several years-later. I shot a guy. Out of anger.

MOYERS: Anger?

LAMONTE: Anger. What he had done to me had maybe hurt my feelings. but not so much to the point where I should have did what I done:- .

MOYERS: What'd he do?

LAMONTE: He spit on me.

MOYERS: And you shot him?

LAMONTE: And I shot him. Not that I probably couldn't beat him. but I was just that angry. to the point where I wanted to kill somebody .

• MOYERS: And you had

the gun on you? LAMONTE: I had a rifle. Not a gun, a rifle.

]

,

MOYERS: Was it normal to carry a gun when you were growing up?

LAMONTE: Yeah, to protect yourself.

MOYERS: What does a kid need to know to be smart on the street, to be a big man?

LAMONTE: To be hateful, be mean. Don't care about the next person. lf you get in my way, I don't go around--I go over you ..

MOYERS: A doctor told me yesterday that one out of every fifteen kids on the streets of Newark could be dead by the end of this year, there's so much violence.

LAMONTE: It's-- it's-- it's-'::it's a lot, you know.

MOYERS: How are you going to keep Bernard from being one of those?

LAMONTE: Well, basically, with Bernard, you give him a-- you give him a strict rule, and hopefully he follows it. You know, he ain't no special child or nothin' like that. But if you tell Bernard something, Bernard will listen, and Bernard will do it.

MOYERS: ". Is there a tug-of-war between the street and what you imagine yourself becoming one day?

BERNARD: Yes, because I really be hoping to get up out of this. And it be times I be wondering, well, how I'm going to do it and if I'll be able to do it. But I really think I'll be able to. Because I'm strong.

MOYERS: The street's strong too, though, isn't it?

BERNARD: Yes, it is. It really is. Because it's a lot of things that's out there that be, you know, pull you back. But you stand to the right things, and do the right thing, you-- you can make it.

MOYERS: I actuaRy get the sense talking to Bernard that he's still a little boy struggling to be a man, and is more boy than man. .

WARDRICK: Yes. Yes.

MOYERS: Do you think he has a chance to get out of here to a good environment? Fresh start?

WARDRICK: I hope so. I hope so. And that's all I can say as to hope.

MOYERS: Does your heart sometimes beat twice when you see him walk down those steps and out into that?

WARDRICK: Every day. Every day. I wonder if he'll make it, reach his destination safely, and then return back home. My relief is when I hear his key turn in the door in the afternoon, and I know at least he's back home.

MOYERS: You won't find in these neighborhoods the prime time family of Bill Cosby. There are successful, strong black families in America--families that affirm parental authority and the values of discipline, work, and achievement. But not many live around here. Still, not every girl in the inner city ends up a teenage mother. Not every young man goes into crime. There are people here who have stayed to fight for these kids. They're outnumbered by the con artists and pushers; it's not an even match. But they stand for morality and authority and give some of the kids a bracing dose of unsentimental love.

CHILDREN: (Chanting) "P-A-L. P-A-L."

MOYERS: When their own fathers are missing, kids need someone else to stand in--to practice damage control, lest the streets take over. For these kids. that someone is Detective Shahid Jackson of the Newark Police. He came by his street smarts the hard way.

DETECTIVE SHAHID JACKSON: Well, I came up out of the streets. so I know how to get around a lot of that stuff, and I guess the older you get the more you learn. I was fortunate enough coming up that I never got caught. And I grew out of the streets, but yet, I still have some of the street in me.

MOYERS: There was a time when he wasn't sure he would make it off those streets. He was ari unmarried father at eighteen, and he had his share of troubles. But he was raised by two parents-his father was a Baptist minister--and they pushed him to make something of himself.

DETECTIVE JACKSON: On Sunday morning on my block, you would see each family, almost, coming out, going to c~'1urch. You know, you don't see that anymore, the family unity.

MOYERS: When he was twenty-one, Shahid Jackson joined the police department. Although he handled security for us while we were in Newark, his beat is the kids of the neighborhood, who look up to him as if he were their father. What he can do with them here, he knows, is just warm-up for what they face out of the ring and out of his reach.

DETECTIVE JACKSON: You're goin' for the title. Work. work. work, work, work. work--time!

MOYERS: What have you learned about these kids.

DETECTIVE JACKSON: That they need somebody to love 'em. You know, they identify with us because we don't-- excuse the expression, we don't take any crap. You know, you come in here, you gotta be disciplined, you gotta. you know, follow the rules and regulations. Because when they go out here and deal with life, they gorma have to follow rules and regulations in life.

MOYERS: Self-control and self-esteem, far more important than a good left hook. That's his message to kids like Bernard Wardrick. He's been coaching Bernard for the past four years.

DETECTIVE JACKSON: There's like a big brother/father· image with me and Bernard. There's been times when he's gotten me mad. and I've spanked him. you know. And his mDother knows I'll spank him, and he knows I'll spank him. 'Cause sometimes that's what a he needs to know.

Freedom is a lot of times destruction. The more freedom a man has, a lot of times he'll just self-destruct. So I try to. you know. keep 'em in a little cage--

MOYERS: Somebody--

DETECTIVE JACKSON: --keep 'em in my arms.

MOYERS: Somebody has to say, "No."

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Yeah. Somebody has to say, "No, you cannot do this."

MOYERS: A lot of these kids grow up with nobody saying, "No."

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Right.

MOYERS: And you think it's important for them to have men around?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Yeah, I think, you know, if you have a one-parent family and it's a mother, she can not teach all of the things that a man can teach a son. There's no way.

MOYERS: So where do they learn the routine techniques of just daily work and living? They don't?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Unless they get it from their parents, they'll get it from the streets.

MOYERS: How do these kids on the streets make it?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: He could either be a stick-Up man-- if he stays in the streets. He could be a mugger, he could be a drug dealer: There's so many different things. Like, you get a kid who's a good boxer, and a drug dealer may say, "Hey, you want to make so much money a day? Just make sure nobody stick up my man here." .

MOYERS: He becomes a soldier for the drug dealer?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Or a strong-arm, you know.

MOYERS: Helping to protect the drug deal~r.

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Helping to protect him. 'Cause if he can make $100 a day, or $60 a day just standing , there watching' something, and, you know, he does iC That's the battle you gotta deal with; you know, that's the war. To try to convince them that stuff isn't- in the streets, isn't what's in their best interest.

MOYERS: Does it worry you that Bernard could fall into that?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: I think that he could go either way. But I think if he does, it'd be something that would really hurt me. So I don't think I'll let him go that way; you know, he's like a son to me.

MOYERS: What do you think's ahead for kids like Timothy and Alice Sondra?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: It's going to be rough. It's like hell where they live, and Alice is sweet as hell, but she loves Timothy. I would say if Alice had a husband that was strong she could do something with her life.

MOYERS: Is a kid like Timothy-- you know, what happens to a kid like that down the road?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: He's like a guy on a trip without a road map. Timothy's just out there. Timothy doesn't know which way he wants to go, what he wants to do. Timothy is a guy-with great talent. As far as art, the kid can draw anything. But Timothy is a ladies' man.

MOYERS: Is that a point of pride with him, accomplishment?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: To him, I would imagine, yeah, it's an accomplishment.

MOYERS: Where does he get--any money, Shahid? He doesn't work; he told me he hadn't had a job in two years.

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Oh, Alice gets her assistance, I imagine.

MOYERS: Welfare?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Yeah, welfare and stuff. And--

MOYERS: That happen a lot? The mother gets public assistance and helps a guy on the side?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Oh, I don't know if you would say they help 'em, but, you know, it's a lot of guys that I know that just goes around lookin' for welfare mothers. And they may have six of 'em like that and get a little piece of money out of each of 'em. That's their job; you know, that's their hustle.

MOYERS: What do you think about welfare?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Welfare to me-- some people need it. You know, I'll be for real. Some people really, actually need it. And then others take advantage of it.

MOYERS: Sondra-- Alice told me yesterday that she thinks welfare has made her lazy.

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Yeah, because it's there. You know that your-- your food is going to be there every month, 'cause with the welfare finance come food stamps. Then you get Medicaid to cover your medical expenses.

Welfare is doing everything; you're married to welfare. A lot of the womens. They're more married to welfare than the guys 1 ayin , in the bed ne}..1: to 'em. 'Cause he's just a physical thL"'1g. The whole backbone of the family is coming out of downtown or out of uptoWn offices.

MOYERS: Government offices.

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Yeah.

MOYERS: Does this cycle of dependency-- I mean, what does it do to the values of these

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Oh, they see it as a game, you know; somebody owes me something, somebody's gonna take care of me. There's not the self-esteem.

MOYERS: What do you think's ahead for kids like Timotht=y?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Maybe he'll get shot at; he'll pick up a gun to protect himself and he'll get shot by a police officer, pulling it, or he'll get arrested.

MOYERS: Some of these kids are just losers, aren't they? Sad as it is.

DETECTIVE JACKSON: I mean, yeah. you-- you-- you're born into a dead end. You know. And you're in that rut. If you're born into that cycle situation. how do you escape? That's the biggest question that I would like to answer so I just started gettin' these kids to know it.

MOYERS: Why do they have kids so early? Why do these children have children? This is a dead end; that's a perfect description for it.

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Well, when-- when I was growin'-- growin' up. sex was almost a dirty word. Now, sex is what'S happening. You know, they see sex on TV. sex in the movies, sex everywhere, you know. And some girls think it's cute walking down the street, pregnant.

MOYERS: Don't you ever get discouraged?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Oh, I get discouraged. I lock people up, I get in fights-- MOYERS: Don't you ever want to walk away from it?

DETECTIVE JACKSON: Yes, but I feel like so many people has done that. To me, I'm-- I hate to lose. I hate to lose. And I never would have started workin' with ldds if- I mean, you know. for me to walk away from it, I'd feel like I lost.

MOYERS: Dr. George Jackson is a practicing psychologist who teaches at Howard University. He is blind. Three days a week he counSels Newark kids referred to him by the courts and the social workers.

Dr. Jackson cannot·see. But he has heard <?ver and over what the breakdown of the family means to children.

DR. GEORGE JACKSON: We see depression. we see terrible anger. We see a lack of expectancy.

MOYERS: What are they angry about?

DR. JACKSON: Children are born without any understanding as to how to manage their feelings. And it's through the training and teaching that these foundations are· set. Children who are the children of children are not being trained to understand how to manage their feelings. So they want when they want what they want it when they want it--and when they don't get it, they get angry.

MOYERS: I talked to a young man yesterday, thirty now. but he described what happened to him when he was fifteen, how he took a baseball bat to somebody who'd messed with his! girt"riend, ho~ he actually shot somebody who had spit on him. What causes that hair-trigger emotion?

DR, JACKSON: If you have no respect for life, you then will try to destroy or dismantle another person: it won't matter to you. Such a person doesn't have a conscience. And I think that, again, we don't have the foundations. The foundations weren't set.

MOYERS: We've talked to one twenty-seven-year-old father. He has seven kids he's not caring for: seven kids by several different women. Why? Why does that happen?

DR. JACKSON: If you're a rolling stone, and if the father before you was a rolling stone, or there are no values to constrain you from this behavior, then you have-- you do this, and you do this with impunity.

MOYERS: It becomes a badge of honor?

DR. JACKSON: Right. And it's the only badge of honor that you expect to get. MOYERS: Do they feel any sense of guilt over their impotence as fathers?

DR. JACKSON: No. Not the klnd of guilt that would be appropriate to changing the behavior.

MOYERS: Are we breeding a new outlaw society?

DR. JACKSON: We're breeding a society more that will destroy itself.

MOYERS: There are people saying, "Well, that doesn't bother me. I mean, as long as they stay in Newark and shoot each other and mug each other and screw each other--so what do I care?"

DR. JACKSON: But what goes around comes around. It may appear that these individuals are on reservations, they're isolated, but you cannot really divorce yourself from what happens to other people in this country. And if you de-- design a society, a sub-society where people will annihilate themselves, it won't be long before this becomes a disease and infects the entire population.

MOYERS: You don't think we can run to the suburbs anymore?

DR. JACKSON: No. I think you can run, but you can't hide.

(Children's voices)

JAMES WALLACE: All right, who would like to go on the field?

MOYERS: James Wallace chose not to run or to hide. He learned in his own youth that one person who cares can make a difference.

MR. WALLACE: When I came up, I wasn't what you call an angel; 1-- I did little things. I was a one-parent family. I only had a mother. That's why I can relate to these kids, 'caUSe there was another old man that took an interest in me and showed me the right way.

MOYERS: And he said to you, "You matter."

MR. WALLACE: Yes, yes. He said, "You have more to offer than what you're doing." ... :.

MOYERS: Twenty years ago, James Wallace began telling young people they mattered. At first, he ran after school programs.

MR. WALLACE: Nice talking to you. Nice talking.

MOYERS: Now he and his wife, Carolyn, head the International Youth Organization, a community center in the heart of Newark. If James Wallace is a surrogate father to many kids, Carolyn Wallace is a surrogate mother. She's seen too many children grow up and stumble not to be angry.

CAROLYN WALLACE: If the parent is seventeen and eighteen, uneducated, unmotivated, fooling around. wand erin' around -- what's the child going to learn'? Who's the teacher? When you learned something, you were taught by your parents. It was reinforced by school and your neighbors, but it was taught by your parents. Your parents said. "Bill, you'd better not do that, don't put that plug over there--you gonna geta wuppin'." right? Your parents did it. Well, if the parents don't know anything. how are they going to teach the children? Now. if we have a generation of that kind of thing happening and the kids that are up-- coming up under that, then we got another generation of lost young people.

MOYERS: Why are there so many single parent households?

MRS. WALLACE: Have you been walking the streets of Newark lately? All our young men are out on the corner--just absolutely doing nothing. That's the problem.

MOYERS: Why? What's happened to those young men? What's happened to the black man?) .....

MRS. WALLACE: It's like they've given up; it's like they're really not a part of what's going on.

MOYERS: Why are they not-- why-- why have they given up'?

MRS. WALLACE: There aren't that many jobs, okay, for the laborer like there used to be. And they're just totally unmotivated. And society has made living, for the woman without the husband or without the male, easy.

MOYERS: Oh'?

MRS. WALLACE: Yeah, welfare. I think. welfare is not the best thing for everybody. MOYERS: Tell me why.

MRS. WALLACE: Because it provides you with some kind of income that you sooner or later just settle for. I know, I was on welfare. I've been on welfare.

MOYERS: Are you suggesting that we do away with welfare?

MRS. WALLACE: No. I'm saying it has to be upgraded. For instance, I have some young people here that are on welfare, okay, but would like to work. But they can't work and make a coin because everything you make is taken away from your check.

MOYERS: Can you push the solution even further back? Is there any way to stop the cycle of teenage pregnancies?

MRS. WALLACE: That's so difficult to even talk about. In my heart, I think 1-- I have a solution. And I know now it may rub people the wrong way. But I believe that teenage pregnancy cannot be stopped by programs; it has to be morals, and morals come from God. And somewhere along the line, the black family kind of strayed away from that. And I believe we need it.

MOYERS: You say the moral values have changed?

MRS. WALLACE: Oh, yes. It's morally acceptable to have babies. It was not morally acceptable years ago. That's hurting the black family.

MOYERS: What I hear you saying is that even though racism may have brought about these circumstances, even though society may have created conditions that-- that are terrible, you're saying you have to be responsible, you have to practice discipline and self-restraint?

MRS. WALLACE: That's right. We are destroying ourselves. Now, it might have motivated and-- and plotted and seeded with racism, but we're-- we're content to be in this well now, okay; we're just content to be in this mud, and we need to get out of it. There aren't any great white people running around in this block, tearing up stuff. It's us; we've got to stop doing that.

MOYERS: Does the civil rights movement, which came to its peak in the Sixties, have anything to say to this?

MRS. WALLACE: Well, "civil rights" to the young people now is a foreign word. What does it really mean to them? They don't have any knowledge about it. r don't--

MOYERS: The issue now is different, isn't it?

MRS. WALLACE: Yes, it is. I'm quite sure it is. If Martin Luther King were alive, he would not be talking about the things I think he was tal1'".Jng about--labor and all that. I think he'd be talking about the black family.

MOYERS: And you're worried about the survival of the black family. You think it's precarious?

MRS. WALLACE: I think in-- it's all gonna be an endangered species.

MOYERS: Even though the messages that kids are getting from society seem to say, "Do anything you want to," the United States government, the government of New Jersey, a white man like Moyers cannot step in and say to young black kids, "It's not right to have children out of wedlock; welfare needs to be changed; you've got to take responsibility."

Who's going to say these things to these kids? .

MRS. WALLACE: Why can't you say it?

MOYERS: They won't listen to me.

MRS. WALLACE: It doesn't make any difference; you gotta say it anyway. They may not listen to me, either. But I'm saying if you say it in your corner and I say it in my corner, and everybody is saying it, it's going to be like a drumbeat. And sooner or later it will sound. But it-- it's not just for me to talk about, it's for all of us to talk about. And it--

and I think it's going to surpass colors. And you're not going to be safe, I'm not going to be safe, and nobody's gonna to be safe unless we all send out this drumbeat -- hey, let's deal with it. Let's deal with the problem.

ANNOUNCER: In just a moment, four distinguished black leaders will discuss the documentary you have just seen, and the issues it raises. Stay tuned for the continuation of "Crisis in Black America".

ANNOUNCER: This is CBS.

MOYERS: So far, we've listened this evening to the people who were actually living the experience that was the subject of this broadcast. Now we want to hear from some people who come at the issue from different angles.

With me are: The Reverend Jesse Jackson; Charles Knox, who was born and reared in Newark, and is now Director of Police there. He introduced me to Shahid Jackson. whom Director Knox personally assigned to the Police Athletic Program in Newark; Eleanor Holmes Norton. who once chaired the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. and is now Professor of Law at Georgetown University; and Dr. Glenn Loury, Professor of Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a member of the Council For a Black Economic Agenda.

Dr. Loury, as you listened to those voices, what went through your mind?

DR. GLENN LOURY: Well, I was deeply moved. I was impressed with what I perceived to be the great strengths of character in some of the individuals. I was dismayed at what I perceived as the profundity of the problem that confronts us. I was encouraged by some of what I heard said, particularly the emphasis on values. The strength and the helping hand that I saw coming from some people indigenous to that community made me hopeful about the possibilities that we can, even at this late date, still make a significant dent in the problem. But, realistically, I was also chastened by the sense of the fact that we've got an awfully long way to go. It will be decades before we can actually turn the circumstance ar01md.

MOYERS: What do you think, each of you-- what do you think can be done to break the cycle of children born of children born of children--the third generation, as you saw in the film~ of teenage mothers in one family--what can be done practically? Specifically. .

DR. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: This is not like any other social problem that has ever arisen in this country. This is not like unemployment. This is not like teenage delinquency. This is not even like children who can't read. This is a conundrum.

CBS REPORTS

The Vanishing Family - Crisis in Black America MOYERS: What-- (Indistinct)?

1/25/86

(9:00-11:00PM) 29

DR. NORTON: This is a- well, I'm, I'm-- I want to, I want to get to it. 1-- I want to describe the beast before I try to-- try to get to the remedy. What-- when you have a phenomenon as complex as to have cut to the very heart of the most basic institution in society, the family, you have got a real problem on your hands. There's no question that the mobilization-internal mobilization of the black community as if their life depended on it, because it does--is the first priority.

MAN: Right.

DR. NORTON: But we've got to understand as well what the conte}...'t is. The social and moral context goes against what is happening in the United States today. Sex and crime and undisciplined forces surround the black community. do not-- do not emanate from it.

MOYERS: Comes in through the tube every night.

NORTON: Comes in through the tube. Comes in-- is-- is piped in in a thousand different ways. So-- so that the black community is going against-- against the grain. But go against the grain-- grain it must. It's got to do that itself. But, again, in order to avoid the-- the- the cynical connotation that this can be done in a self-made fashion without, for example, the jobs for the teenage boys to go to, is to create the possibility of an- of an even worse situation. One thing I think we who prescribe remedies forget, and that is that virtually none of us are truly self-made people. Somewhere you can find something that made-- made a difference.

When ,you say to a boy that's fifteen--the last boy, for example. We don't know which way he's-- he's going. If-- if that boy is born of, let us say, a functionally illiterate mother, grOVlS up surrounded by a pathological environment, and we say, "Hey, go out there and make something of yourself," we are in effect saying, "Recreate yourself," in a way that nobody I personally know-- know has done. At the very least

MOYERS: This is not--

NORTON: --society has some responsibility.

MOYERS: This is not an easy society in which to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps. NORTON: Not any longer.

MOYERS: No, it's not.

REVEREND JESSE JACKSON: My point is on this issue of sex education and sex discipline and self-respect, there must be a massive counterculture movement by no less than the people who have the ears of the masses of our young people. This first generation by about age fifteen has watched 18,000 hours of television. About 700,000 murders. Twenty-odd thousand hours of radio. Less than 11,000 hours of school, and" less than 3,000 hours of church.

So who has the-- the maximum access to our children's minds? Mass media has more access and makes a greater impression than home. church. and school combined. That's a kind of centralization of our society where very central messages are being fed in. saying that babies making babies--the idea of a girl thinks that-- that being pregnant is a beautiful profile as a sense of-- of being-- of looking all right. That says that the decadence has hit a point where we must en masse join hands and stop finger-pointing and go another way. .

MOYERS: We've started--

DIRECTOR CHARLES KNOX: Not only that. It's-- it's the music, you know. Even our music. Every, every song you hear, there's no-- no-- no real message except more sex. more lowering of your values and morals. You can't even hear a good song. A song has a good beat. but you listen to the words; the words are outrageous.

MOYERS: Director Knox, you heard in the beginning of the broadcast some of the young women say male figures are not essential. They don't think their children need a father. Did that ring true to you, on the basis of your experience with these kids?

DIRECTOR KNOX: I think that a family means a husband and a wife, yeah. So I'm very, very perplexed. you know, to hear females say that they don't believe that they can that they need to have a man around.

NORTON: I think people say what they have to say. These women don't have any prospect· of marriage. And so they have rationalized their lives, the way they see them. We saw women who are surrounded by other women in the prior generation who also had no husbands. And this has become, therefore, intergenerational and expectable. And thus. they say what indeed turns out to be, at least for them. quite realistic.

REVEREND JACKSON: That's one concern. Secondly. there are some areas in there of moral degeneracy. The young man with all of the- of the babies without any sense of responsibility; that is-- that is moral degeneracy. And it's not genetic; it's environmental, and. therefore, we have some obligation to speak of the need for moral regeneration.

DR. LOURY: The danger is that in the process of giving this problem--which I think is a discrete and identifiable problem--too much attention, we will stigmatize the individuals involved. and we will adversely affect the way in which the rest of the American society perceives this problem. The danger is well-founded, because there are people in this society who would make use of these kinds of images in order to legitimize certain mean-spirited policy inclinations that they have, and not deal seriously with the problem.

But what I want to say is that there is a discrete, identifiable inner-city context, such as that described in Newark, which is repeated in many, many other communities around the country, and which is in some ways different if not better or worse, but different in its particulars-from the situation of West VIrginia or of rural Arkansas, or whatever. We could see in this film the importance of peers, the importance of what might be called the local culture, the values and the interactions between people that were happening in that particular context.

REVEREND JACKSON: You know, Bill, the reason I keep trying to keep this issue broader than just the black situation: A) for the reason that Dr. Loury said it. I remember once speaking at a Washington, D.C. school about the impact of drugs and liquor, and babies Ii.laking babies, and violence. And I challenged the youth in that environment to make a choice~ as to whether you choose hope or the dope, and to give life a chance, and those who could really hear me with their inner ear to come forward. Six hundred-- about three hundred came forward, having experimented with some form of drugs. And it was traumatic to see that many boys and girls come forward. "

And the ne>.."t day I went to Montgomery County, and then went to the Latin School just outside of Harvard there in Boston. And when white children came forward in even greater numbers, it shifted from "they got a problem" to "we got a problem."

MOYERS: I said in the beginning of the program that white families are in trouble, too. The single-parent family is twice as common in the country as it was twenty years ago. But in the 1960s, when this issue of what was happening--the breakdown in the black family in particular--was raised, we all retreated from it. And as a consequence of that, blacks, in meetings that I've attended and read about and listened to, are debating the issue within the black community. And the facts are there--they come from the Census Bureau, they come from the Children's Defense Fund--that the rate of birth to black teens is twice that for whites. Women head 50% of all black families with children under "eighteen, compared to 15% for white children. Only 41% of black children are living with both parents, compared to 80% of white children, and 70% of Hispanic children.

"So, while it is true that white families are in trouble, that blacks are not the only ones who have children out of wedlock, the reality says that it's pronounced, it's exaggerated, -it's concentrated, in many respects, among black families. Are you willing to admit that? Are we-" "

NORTON: I'm not only willing to admit it, I think we've got to sound the alarm about it. And I think increasingly that alarm is being sounded from within the black community, and that is the important change, I think, that has occurred. There is no question that this is a phenomenon that stretches across the face of the United States. And I couldn't agree with Jesse more that we have to deal with it in its national context. At the same time, I think it is "clear that it has reached crisis proportions in our community when half of our children are being born to single women who are disproportionately poor. We see the faces of the next generation of black people. And if we keep this up, if we don't find a way to intervene ......... and it is so complex ,that intervention has got to take place on a number of levels--but if we do not find a way to intervene, we are going to see progressively greater disadvantage with each generation of black people, which is the antithesis of the American imperative.

MOYERS: There is a study at the University of Chicago that says if action is not taken, the year 2000 will--the year 2000, fourteen years from now--will see 70% of all black families headed by single women, and only 30% of black men employed. Now, that's the future you're talking about.

REVEREND JACKSON: And, you know, in some sense, when we had the lack of government support mechanisms in days gone by, the only bulwark we had really was a sense of moral resistance, a sense of discipline, a sense of hope against hopelessness.

MOYERS: What's happened to that?

REVEREND JACKSON: Well. in some sense. that hope has-- many of the grapes have been turned into raisins. and a lot of despair has set in. And I remember some years ago. about,1976. you might recall that Attorney Norton and I began to talk about it in our schools. about the-- opportunity was about to outdistance effort. And that the formula of effort to the third power plus opportunity represents a breakthrough. And somehow. we must keep this. this balance between effort and opportunity. And one senses in this film an awful lot of-- a lot of despair. And in our analysis of it, we must not give the impression that we are defending it or trying to justify it. Because it really is unjustifiable.

I go to schools. Bill, and I'll ask four to five thousand children-white, black, and brown--"How many of you know someone who is in-- who is dead because of drugs?" Almost every hand will go up. "How many of you know someone who is in jail because of drugs?" Every hand goes up. "In your generation-- how many know someone at this school who has taken drugs?" Hands up. "How many know someone who has brought a gun or a knife to school?" And I tell you, whether it is the suburbs of Montgomery County, or San Diego. or Newark, or Boston, it is a pervasive threat to this generation of young people. And the most fundamental question--when I ask them, "Do you believe taking drugs and babies having babies is morally wrong?"--there's a split opinion. There's no absolute ethic of moral resistance--

MOYERS: Mrs. Wallace said that

REVEREND JACKSON: -to taking drugs, or the baby. I say, "Do you think drugs will kill you?" "Well, we're not sure." "You can afford the baby?" "Not sure." So there is neither the moral nor the mental resistance at this point to the drug/alcohol phenomenon. or the babies making babies.

MOYERS: Now, let's take three specific issues that were raised by the film, and we'll start with welfare. Charles Murray, in his book Losing Ground, called for scrapping the entire federal· welfare and income support structure. People who can work-ADFC. Medicaid. food stamps, subsidized housing, and so on--he says this would leave the working age person With no recourse whatsoever except the job market, family members. friends, and public or private locally funded sources. Do away with it altogether. force people to look for help from their peers and from whatever sources are nearby. And you saw in the film that one woman. one mother said, "Welfare makes me lazy." You heard Shahid Jackson. your compatriot, say that it's become a way of life for many men over there. What do you think about welfare as a specific factor in this problem? Director Knox?

DIRECTOR KNOX: Well, I don't think we should do away with it. I think some people need it. I don't think that we should allow it to be a self-perpetuating institution. though. What-- what happens is there's no steps taken to provide any incentive for people to get off of it. The result is you end up with people who are hopeless, who feel that that's the easy way out, and--particularly in my profession--it creates a real problem for me ..

MOYERS: How come?

DIRECTOR KNOX: Because I find that some of the kids that you saw in those films--guys like the slick one who walks around and he makes all these babies, and he has no sense of responsibility--is the same stick-up guy that I have to arrest every day, you see. Not only does he impact on me, but he impacts on everyone else in our community. And the result is that we don't have any place to put these guys. And I'm a firm believer that some of them--some of them are unsalvageable. As much as I feel--

MOYERS: They're lost, like Shahid said. Some are lost--

DIRECTOR KNOX: That's right. As much as I feel compassion, you know, for--for trying to salvage kids that can be salvaged, you know, by providing other alternatives for them except for this crime and stuff--I believe that some of them aren't salvageable. And I base that on twenty-one years of police experience.

MOYERS: You put your pencil down on the table when he said that. Were you disagreeing or agreeing with him? Are we going to have to give up on some of these and try for the next generation?

DR. LOURY: Well, I hate to say we have to give up, but I agree that we are sometimes confronted with individuals whose behavior compels of us, as a pragmatic and moral matter, that they be dealt with accordingly. And people who are violently brutalizing their primarily black neighbors in the central cities of these countries, of this country, it seems to me warrant that kind of response.

MOYERS: We'll come back on that point in just one minute, after this message.

MOYERS: Is there anything that can be done that would use welfare to promote self-reliance, but not hann the children who really do need it?

NORTON: We already have some idea of what to do about the welfare system, because we have some models that are beginning to emerge-and emerge, I must say, out of state and local levels, because the federal government has abandoned any effort to reform the welfare system, even as it tries to destroy it.

We see in the Massachusetts example:--the so-called ET example, Education and Training.,..-where welfare recipients sign up for education or training, and we're told this was voluntary. Except that Massachusetts found itself overwhelmed with volunteers who wanted to sign up and get off of welfare. And this program, by al1 accounts, has been unusually successful, and indeed it's now being copied in, in other states. Mew York and California have adopted versions of it.

Indeed, if your tape, if your film had any glaring fault, it was the failure to render the black women who in fact are going out here-though they do have children--and working, who are leaving their children catch as catch can with whoever in the neighborhood. can take care of them rather than go on welfare. And, of course, that is the average black female single-headed family. Not, not the family on welfare, although the family on welfare is-- it certainly abounds in-- in the most desperate parts of, of the black community.

The fact is that our welfare system really needs to be redesigned altogether. Not, not-- not as Murray would have it--to increase not only misery, but pathology in the ghetto by undergirding female-headed households with no support--but converting the welfare system itself into a work and training system. Every poll that has ever been taken of women on welfare has shown that they wanted to work, and yet the great failing of the federal government for at least the twenty-five years it has been on notice of this has been to, in fact, reform the welfare system into a-- into an education, trai.ning, and work system.

REVEREND JACKSON: Bill, you know, the first thing we really must establish--that this problem is not genetic or natural. It is social. And therefore, it is not racial in that sense. It is important to establish for the persons watching this, you know, in rural America and suburban America, that this is not genetic or racial. We'll need to dig those studies back up again. This is a social situation, and--

MOYERS: What is it? Is it-- is it a cycle that just keeps beaming itself back like a mirror, and these children learn it and they repeat it?

REVEREND JACKSON: An environment with limited options that retreads itself. --That kind of feeds upon itself.

DIRECTOR KNOX: The opportunities aren't that great to get out of it. Some people escape it. But most people don't, and I think that it's time for us to really, really become very serious about doing something about the ghettos.

REVEREND JACKSON: That's right.

People really have four options to make a living. One is-- the first option's a private economy. People would rather have a good-paying private job. If that does not work, a good-paying public or a government job. If that does not work, welfare. If that does not work, then the illicit economy or the hustle or the underground economy. So people really kind of got four options in that sense. The-- the pain when we -look at the bottom of it--when my son, sons, Jonathan and Jess, and I went to jail over the Free South Africa issue, I counseled about twenty-five young men that night and saw some of this, Dr. Holmes, face to face. Neither had a father at home. Only one had a dream. "I would like to be a policeman," he said. "But then, since I been arrested, I don't want to be a policeman, either."

So J ohnny-- Johnny said-and this was the son of mine that went to high school in Chicago, and was a pallbearer at twelve funerals in three years, ten, eleven. and twelfth grades--he said, "Dad, you don't understand. These boys can't lose." I said, "Johny, they've already lost. They're in jail, at fourteen and fifteen." He said, "No, Dad. See, one, if they rob a bank and get the money. they win. If they're caught, they go to jail. It's warm. They're with their friends. They can eat. Get medicine if they're sick. If they get killed they're out of their misery. -And Dad, to have a-- a generation of young people living under these kind of conditions is dangerous. We must wake up." ..

When you dehumanize people to the point where they have lost their sense of conscience. their sense of" moral responsibility, we- we cannot confine this predicament to that ghetto. That's again why everybody has a vested interest in addreSSing it. To some of them, art is- a way out. For some, athletics is a way out. To some, music is a way out. For some others, it must be trades training; it must be jobs and education as ways out.

MOYERS: You come back- you come back often to what government should do. Mr. Knox mentioned it. You raised it in-- indirectly in the welfare reforms. but that goes against the grain of so much that you have written and said. You--you said just recently dealing with behavioral problems. with community values. with attitudes and beliefs about responsibility. work. family. and schooling is not something government is well-suited to do. Teaching of "ought" properly belong in the hands of private volunteer associations--churches. families. community groups. Did-- did-- will more government programs help?

DR. LOURYL: I think it depends on what those programs are. I mean. there have been White House conferences on the family or on families. There was one back in the mid-sixties that was gutted of any substantive content because of the few who were around talking about the black family. President Carter finally managed to hold a White House conference on the families which. too. was fairly weak by virtue of the fact that the enormous number of interests--from gay rights activists to radical feminists--who had to have their imprint on the agenda was such that it was impossible to focus it on. if you will. the kinds of traditional values that we heard so many people in that film hark back to.

I think government is involved by virtue of the fact that the safety net kind of support that welfare and other programs provide is absolutely essential for a decent SOCiety. and that it has a Significant impact on the lives of the people who receive the benefits. Mr. Murray, in my judgment, is wrong to call for the draconian solution of cutting all benefits to able-bodiedpers-ons. but I think he is right--and profoundly so--to call our attention to the extent to which the way in which we try to help may sometimes undermine the moral fiber of the persons. people. that we're trying to assist.

REVEREND JACKSON: Bill. I don't think that you should try to over-polarize our points of view. Really. Because so many--

MOYERS: Are they polarized?

REVEREND JACKSON: Well. no. no. I mean-- (Indistinct crosstalk) Much of what he is saying--the sense of compassion he is mixing with the government situation. which could curb dependency syndrome--has a sense of soundness right around thiS table. The system itself is now beginning to hurt people by not having ways out. If there's no incentive to earn--if you make a dollar. they take a dollar--that's bad. Or. if you got a tenth grade education and get 'a GED. there is no incentive to go further--that's·-bad. So if you're locked in without earn or learn your way out. if the father does come home. you lose that which you do have. So keep him away. You get another baby. you get a little more increment. That's a terrible inducement. you see. That system must give way to a human-development system that has positive presuppositions about human beings rather than negative presuppositions. .

MOYERS: The issue is that we passed legislation in the sixties. We started these programs. We enhanced welfare. We did a lot of things. and the situation has gotten worse and worse. There are more-

NORTON: Well, obviously, welfare hasn't contributed much to that, since welfare has lost more than 30% in actual dollars since the early seventies. I think one's got to start talking about values. As the, the last lady said on the tape.

MOYERS: Mrs. Wallace?

NORTON: She said the drum beat's got to go out-- look. just like they're listening to the rap. we've got to have this rap go out, but I fear that. for example. a society that says to the woman with three children. "You ought to be out here working." and she says. "I feel lazy when I'm not working"--what makes it absolutely impossible for her to work without throwing her children in the streets

MOYERS: And isn't she already--

- . NORTON: --creates grave cynicism in her about values. If the holier-than-thou Eleanor Norton says you ought to work, but of course Eleanor Norton has somebody to take care of her children, and I don't, we've got to be very careful during this period that we make it. make it clear that we expect more from the very poor. and we're willing to do something to make that more happen. That's why I say that the Massachusetts experiment--

experiment is an important one, because what Massachusetts said was, "Look. we want you to sign up for work." It-- it was sai-- it was trying to break through this notion that the-- the lady on the tape had. that you sit home and- and-· and wait for a check. People signed up in such huge numbers that they had waiting lists to work. They have saved millions -of dollars in Massachusetts in welfare. and what this means is that. with the same money that was being put into welfare for women to set- sit home. women are now out and working with- with real jobs ..

MOYERS: What happened to their children. while they were out there? NORTON: Well. they provided day care for a year.

MOYERS: Bec2use there is the argument that you shouldn't expect welfare recipients to work. since they are doing a more valuable service by raising their· children. You saw from the film it waS the women who were raising the childfeI1~·-· .....

DIRECTOR KNOX: But they're not raising the children. They're not raising them. NORTON: That is.the answer.

DIRECTOR KNOX: You know. what's happening is these- these- these women are young. They keep having babies; and. at some point. guys, like the guy that was projected in the film-he leaves. And then they have to go out and find some other guy. So the result is, in many instances, the children are neglected. And then the children are raised by their peer group in the streets. Okay. And the result is more problems for me. And

more problems for you ...

REVEREND JACKSON: It would be important, Bill, to note that some of those programs you talk about in the sixties did work, and they've not been defended adequately. 1 mean, Head Start did work. Preschool education. Breakfast and lunch programs helped to wipe out malnutritIon substantially. I mean, that did work. Many of my generation otherwise could not have gone to college without a paid scholarship grant. It-- it did work. If the War on Poverty program gave many of us the first on-hands administrative jobs we'd ever had, it did work. So when we try to resolve the problem, we should not throw out the baby with the water. We should save that which has worked and build upon it, and not just say it is lost, because, you know-- it was working even better, but money designed for the War on Poverty went in even greater resources to the war in Vietnam.

DR. LOURY: If I may, I would like to return to this question of values, because I think there's an aspect that hasn't- that hasn't been touched upon. We look at the inner city of Newark and many other communities--they happen to be black and urban communities. As I say, they have their own texture, their own feel, their own history and their own culture, and many of the people there who were doing good works have stressed how important it is that we send out right messages about what appropriate behavior is; but that's not easy to do in our society, and it's not easy to mobilize the forces of government behind it, because there are other people in our society--some of them civil libertarians, some of them radical liberationists of one sort or another--who put considerable political weight behind propositions that we ought not to say one thing is right or Wrong. Try to teach in a sex-education class in New York City that having a kid out of wedlock is wrong, and the value-clarifications people come at you out of the woodwork, telling you, "Well, no, what we should do is let kids find out for themselves; let's just help them along the way," as it were. Try to deal with kids taking guns into high schools in Detroit, where people get shot into the chest by, let's say, using metal detectors to find out whether the kids have guns on their persons when they come into a school building, and the civil libertarians are all over the Federal District Court finding that that can't be done because it violates someone's conceptions of someone's rights.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not an attorney. There may be very Significant issues at stake here that ought to be litigated, and so on, but what I'm saying is the thrust of trying to instill values in this kind of community comes into tension with some other thrusts in our society, and it's so easy for people to appropriate the poor en masse in legitimation for their particular conception of how it is that our society ought to be ordered that this kind of experience ought to call to mind for us that maybe what's really needed to get at these hard-core poverty problems is not the same thing as the contemporary agenda of the National Organization for- of-- for Women. . -

MOYERS: You've said there is-- excuse me.

NORTON: Well, I say- I just wanted to say that. I can understand Dr. Loury's frustration. In a pluralist society, there are gonna be many messages and counter messages. By the way, I'm less worried about the messages that come from the National Organization of (for) Women or the ACLU than I am about the messages that come from within-- within our own community, some of the rap· music, for· example, and--and not the remedial or curative type, but, but some of the type that young man himself made-- made up. That's one reason why I think that the leadership on values here has to be taken by the black community. The black community has a very- has very deep-rooted values that have survived over years that would have eroded the values of a lesser people.

,

MOYERS: Well, Dr. Loury said the responsibility for the behavior of black youngsters lies squarely on the shoulders of the black community itself. That's a pretty strong statement. Why is it only a black responsibility?

DR. LOURY: It's not only a black responsibility, but it is a black responsibility. Do you see what I mean? We are a republic. We are a nation of persons of many different ethnic groups. As a political community, we have obligations to each other, including the provision of minimal subsistence for those who otherwise wouldn't have. it. It's not a racial issue. But we are also a pluralistic society. Culturally, sociologically. we're a many-layered complex interweaving of-- of distinct traditions. And those traditions being distinct and being important to some and not to others also have a role to play in this problem; and so, when I say, as 1-- as you quoted me saying about blacks, I'm not speaking to the public question about what we as the nation, the U. S. of A., ought to do with respect to how many dollars should be taxed and given to others, but I'm speaking to, if you will, the private question of what this particular community--and the .urban, central-city black poor constitutes, as I say, an integral context that we can look at--I'm speaking to that, and I think that's a, that's a-- a field of endeavor in which blacks have a preponderant advantage in conveying the messages that we want to get conveyed to these kids.

REVEREND JACKSON: You know, Bill, somebody must say that babies making babies is morally wrong. Babies and young people taking drugs is morally wrong and physically destructive, and We· shouldn't be equivocating and hee-hawing about that. That's very clear. It runs across lines of race and sex. ._ ..

DIRECTOR KNOX: That's right. We should be concerned about the, the-- the number of crimes that are being committed in our communities by our own people, and- and we have to take a tough-- a tough stance on that.

REVEREND JACKSON: I want to pick up on that, because I accept his drift. I was in Detroit a few months ago. Twelve children had been shot and/or ruled in the course of that week. There was a sense of outrage about it. We spoke to twenty thousand youth in Cobo Hall, with the support of Dr. Jefferson and the school system. A great response. And there was a call for metal detectors in the hallways, because-=-just as we have them in the airports--to stop guns and knives from interfering with pilots flying the airplane, in some instances they can be used to allow teachers to- to fly in classrooms- without being interrupted by the threat of guns and knives, or a young man with a machete running down his suit, and there. was a kind of outcry. It may have had a legal technical basis, but it made no moral sense, and- and we may-- can't stop in that instance the technical libertarian from arguing about the student'S right to have his gun, but they could not stop us from the right to argue that having metal detectors in that conte}..'t--not metal detectors for blacks and not for Whites, and for girls and not for boys, and all of that-having those metal detectors to serve the purpose in that instance--equal protection under the law and all of that of making the school environment -a· more safe place ·in which to operate.

MOYERS: Well, on that note, we have to finish this discussion, because we're out of time. Thanks to each of you for coming here.