...And Four To Go

Starting Too Late

Mayor Frank Jackson is to be roundly applauded for his efforts in regards to making community college available to every young person who graduates from a Cleveland high school. But the old adage, “You can lead horses to water, but you cannot make them drink,” kicked in and a good percentage of those students who took the mayor up on his offer didn’t make it through the first year. That has to be extremely disheartening to the mayor (as it was to most everyone else)… but, it also was so predictable. Most were the first in their families to go to college, and many struggled just to get out of high school. Clearly, what they needed were remedial tutors, coaches and mentors — and even then the failure rate might still be unacceptably high.

The simple fact is, intensive mentoring that guarantees a good outcome for inner-city kids should start at the beginning of their lives, not when they are about to enter college, high school, or even kindergarten for that matter. What’s so hard to grasp about starting at the beginning of life, or as Geoffrey Canada does in his hugely successful program, “The Harlem Children’s Zone,” starting even before life begins. When underclass women (many mere girls) get pregnant Canada enrolls them in “Baby College” where they are given proper prenatal care to assure a healthy, normal birth weight baby, and they also are given classes on how to raise the child. After the birth, they are given 24-7 mentoring. In essence, Canada’s program is raising both the mother and the child at the same time. How long will we continue to expect young mothers from dysfunctional inner-city homes to have a baby, take it back to the same brutal environment that failed them, and raise a success all on their own? It quite simply can’t be done. We might as well ask these young mothers to cure cancer and find water on the moon while they’re at it.

When I asked my wife, a 30-year social work administrator, what it would take to tackle this problem on a massive scale she gives a wane smile and a two-word answer: “Political will.” She assures me that what Canada is doing in Harlem is not new or groundbreaking … professionals in the field have known for years that the method he is using is the only sure way to eliminate the underclass in America once and for all.

I pressed on: “Then why haven’t we done anything about it, why don’t we have the political will?” I asked, becoming agitated. She gave me the look wise wives give dense husbands that ask stupid questions and calmly said, “You already know the answer to that, now don’t you?” as she rubbed the back of her hand.

Playing the Race Card

Last week I wondered in print if the backers of Issue 3 (the measure to bring casino gambling to Ohio) were playing the race card with some of their literature. Most of the slick pieces I’ve been receiving in my mailbox at my inner-city Eastside home only have images of black folks on them. The suborning and patronizing mailers purport to tell us how much power and control we have over the fate of the referendum. Yeah, right, black folks with some kind of serious statewide political power in Ohio — now there’s a real joke.

If one-hundred percent of blacks voted in the affirmative to bring casinos into the state, still, when the jobs are filled — if the historically racially biased hospitality industry is any indication — the only ones we’ll likely get (other than a token here and there) are as busboys and maids.

But my question was, if only black faces were in evidence on the mailers sent out to black neighborhoods, what would the ones being sent to white neighborhoods look like? A loyal reader and friend showed me an Issue 3 mailer that was sent to his suburban Westside home and — you guessed it — all of the images were of whites. In mixed neighborhoods, the mailings feature a racial mix of individuals … as all of them should.

In an America that is still struggling to overcome its racially stratified past, is this ploy by the proponents of Issue 3 on some of their literature what we really need, to be divided by race in an effort to win? Couldn’t they make their case without stooping to the playing the race card? As the character in the movie Bullworth said: “White people got more in common with black people than they do with rich people.” The “rich” people in this case being the casino interests. Shame on them.

The Giveback

Why did opponents of Issue 6 have to “out” Bill Mason before he suddenly decided to give back the contributions made to his political war chest by people that worked for him at the Prosecutor’s Office? The fact is, campaign finance reform was put on the table early on by some people who were originally in the room, but those driving the process wouldn’t allow it to be added to the so-called reform. Why? That’s one of the reasons some people walked out on the meetings.

The fact is, there are a host of other issues (especially surrounding the Courts, criminal justice, and fair play) that also were not addressed. Maybe those will be dealt with after the fact also, like they are now promising to deal with finance reform at some later date… and then again, maybe not. This “Trust us to do the right thing later on” brand of reform only plays well with a panicked, uninformed and lazy public — one all too willing to let someone else do the heavy mental lifting. Thinking for yourself requires real effort.

It’s simply a question of morality: What Mason has been doing for all of these years certainly isn’t illegal, but does that make it right? And, if it was right, then why is he giving the loot back? Ditto on the morality question for one of the other leaders of Issue 6: If Kevin Kelly and his misdeeds make him the poster boy for the reform movement, when will you tell the public just how many casino junkets you went on with good “ol Kelly? Methinks these dudes are trying to have it both ways.

We Really Showed that Brat Braylon, Didn’t We?

I may be missing something here, but how is banishing a football player from a 0-4 team and sending him to a 3-1 contender considered punishment? However, according to all of the sports commentators I listened to, we really fixed his wagon for acting like the ill-raised, over-paid, spoiled little bastard we collectively made him into. He’ll rue the day he was booted out of Cleveland, right? NOT!

I’m certainly no up-to-date football expert — I quit being a Browns fan when they traded Paul Warfield back in the day … yeah, I do hold onto a grudge for a ling time— but I do know a little something about crime and punishment. And the kind of “punishment” the Browns dished out to Edwards just might have the rest of the players running around town bitch-slapping everyone in sight, in an attempt to get themselves traded to a team that has at least a chance of compiling a winning season.

The problem just might be that LeBron has set too high a standard for adult behavior by a sports figure in Cleveland. Few players will measure up to his mature behavior on and off the court (or playing field) and we just might need a coaching staff that knows how to handle highly talented — but problem — players. We got rid of Kellen Winslow for not being the perfect little gentleman, and the way things are going the Browns are going to wind up with a whole team of well-mannered, well-behaved athletes that can’t play dead in a gangster movie. It always takes a few bad boys for a team to win the Super Bowl, Dawgs.

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier's From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.frombehindthewall.com.