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As a black pastor, leader, educational consultant, husband father and man, looking at the cultural landscape and interacting at ground level with a varying amount of young people, I am uncomfortably conscious that our major crime against this present generation, has been in developing a value suspect, non- directional perceived cultural package that they have no power to control or manage. Many if not all the young people we work with, on one level or another are infected by this whole sense of dislocation from a set of directional and inclusive values that act as building blocks of self image and maturity. I remain very stubborn about young people finding alternatives to their present plights and not options, which in my understanding is merely a different choice of the same thing.
Out of the ‘How to Be a Player’ workshop and ‘Food for da brain’ we’ve developed 7 directional and inclusive values that help to focus the men and women we work with. We call it ‘7 definitions of a man and woman’
They take seriously their responsibilities
One of the hallmarks of maturity is the taking seriously the responsibilities we have placed upon us. They learn through the process of social interaction, friendship and mentoring to ‘handle their business’ not try to pass it on or side step it. They see it by the example of others and by being taught how to manage their own responsibilities.
Does not live for the moment only
It was Mohammed Ali who once said “If you do at 30 what you were doing at 15, you’ve wasted 15 years”. The pressure for this present generation is to live for today ‘cause tomorrow you die’ and the music and street culture that they’re daily caught up in reinforces this whole mindset. They do not think long term because they see no long-term picture to work toward. So while encouraging them to live in the moment and enjoy it to the full, we stair their minds toward a long term picture of their lives, with goals and vision casting and general belief that what their minds can conceive with hard work they can achieve.
Has a deep sense of self-respect and respect for others.
The homophobia and misogyny prevalent in popular black culture along with a disregard of any and all authority, backed up by a legal system that defends the indiscretions of youth rather that holding them responsible for the decisions they make, has produced in them a self-respect that is affirmed in the demise and humiliation of someone else. When self-image is shot the image of others follows suit and rises no higher than the false image you have of self. Hence it is imperative that they begin to see others from a new sense of self-respect. Reflecting back on them all the sexist, racist, homophobic, and stereotypically obvious stereotypes that they have developed and flippantly use without thinking, enables them to see that the a truer sense of self worth comes with the understanding of another persons worth.
Does not settle for 2nd best in their personal development.
It has become thankfully hard for young people to fall out and settle for 2nd best because there are a few more services available here and there, than of late. But if settling for 2nd best is part of the mindset then no amount of services that do not address this issue will help them. All we do is to encourage them that at what ever level they find themselves educationally, vocationally, spiritually, personally or otherwise, be the best at that level with the view to rising to the next level in personal maturity.
Willing to stand up and be counted.
It was Martin Luther King Jr who said, “Until you have found something for which you are willing to die, your not yet fit to live”. We’re not asking young people to go die for something, but we are asking them to live for something outside of the everyday ‘same old same old’. We want them to become attune to the world outside of their area and borough. They must be allowed to feel like they are part of a whole bigger picture of life, with the confidence and skills to interact with it on a level footing.
Willing to love and be loved.
Love has become a culturally, politically, racially, and individually charged and loaded word. It’s a dice that no one wants to role but everyone wants to gamble with, a tune that we’re all sick of but a sad song we all secretly love to sing. So much, maybe too much, emphasis is placed on being sexually sensible among young people, without the counter balance of being emotionally mature. Its almost as if we’re expecting the two to naturally go hand in glove, an assumption we make to their peril. At least 80% of black child born today are from single parent homes. Now before you think that I’m getting on some moral high horse about single/lone parents, let me just qualify that I’m the youngest of ten kids, nine living and my mum hand to raise the last five of us on her own, one girl and four sons with me at the end of the pile. She worked two jobs to keep us all together, so I ain’t even trying to go there! Once my father left the family home- I was 6 yrs. old at the time, I’m 42 now- my mother never brought another man under the roof of our house, not in deference to my father but due to the fact that once was and 10 kids were enough. Hence I, like most of the present generation of young people, have never seen an emotionally stable and functioning relationship between two parents modeled for me. The kind that builds emotional maturity and acts as a model to work with, rather than the total break down we see all around us. It’s about helping them to form, emotional identities and relational priorities as much as it is reminding them to carry a pack of condoms when they go raving.
Never “Punks Out” on life.
In his book the road less traveled M. Scott Peck opens with these words:
Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. (Peck 1978, p15)
The difficulty of life many of our young people know first hand in ways greater than those of us who work with them. It becomes more difficult when you don’t know how to mange its difficulties and deal with its cruelness. It is all too easy to give up (‘punk out’ on life’s dreams, goals and aspirations when it all goes pear shaped, however the truth that they are made to learn is, that’s exactly how life is. They can do their utmost best and life’s unpredictability comes along and kicks them in the asse and stamps in their face and they lose heart because they think that they failed. They learn that they can’t ‘go around thinking that the world owns you something cos your’re here’ as the Stable Singers said, but that failure is not from trying and finding out that it didn’t work but in not trying at all.
‘Ways forward’ taken from Manqoba ©2004
