#Fail
I apologize to every Woman in the world. My heart Cries! We have left you a world with far too little Warriors, and even fewer Men. #sorry – @NeticRebel
courtesy of Cespedes Studios
The realm of social networking is quite interesting at times. At times. Most of the time its filled with people’s thoughts and ideas about all sorts of random things: what you were eating for lunch, vacation pictures, interpersonal conversations that have evolved from passing notes in school – to the telephone at home after school – to cell phones outside of home – to texting – and now passing notes on either twitter or Face Book. Again, at times, you come across something quite interesting.
So amidst the clutter I saw this message from my brother Netic via Twitter:
I apologize to every Woman in the world. My heart Cries! We have left you a world with far too little Warriors, and even fewer Men. #sorry – @NeticRebel
Seems like a very random thing to announce to the world (or at least the world that follows Netic), but then he followed it up with a twit explaining the reason for his disdain. But by then I had already seen several people post a link to the source of his troubles: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/27/california.gang.rape.investigation/index.html
If you’ve read the article or heard about this atrocity then you can empathize with Netic’s feelings. I’ve always seen rape as an act of forcing a person to live with a murdered corpse that they will possibly psychologically carry around with them for the rest of their lives. A piece of the victim dies. Sexual assault is crime against humanity. I don’t think you’ll find too many people who will disagree with this.
What struck a cord within me was the line, “We have left you a world with far too little Warriors, and even fewer Men.” I’ve had several conversations in the last few months about manhood. Usually it’s a complaint about the action of some male doing something childish or selfish or in this case, savage. And it usually ends with, “…I don’t understand that man.” To which my response is always, “That’s not a man.”
And to me, that’s a very important statement, because as someone who sees himself as a man, it’s necessary to draw a line in the sand and call things for what they are, or in this case, what they are not. Men (and Women) take responsibility for their actions, hold themselves and those who they surround themselves with in high regard, value their name and value their word. They admit mistakes, make amends, and refine their thinking. They work through their issues. They defend their families. They understand that one of the best ways to defend your family is to see your community as your extended family and become a positive influence within it. Men do not play games. Men are not irresponsible people. Men do not commit atrocities.
Besides the fact there were 3 or 4 “boys” committing this crime, there were allegedly 15 “children” or so watching it all happen. WATCHING. This leads me to ask: who failed these children? How in the world did that many people see this happen and were either too afraid or too callous to take action? Any action. I have an idea who failed these kids. Their parents. I cannot judge any of these kids individually, because I do not know their circumstances or their story, but on a whole, I can say without issue that somewhere down the line a lack of parenting and mentoring had led to a point where a teenage girl could be raped for over two hours and not a person attempted to stop it.
How does this happen?
I have a seven-year-old son and am a co-chair of the Parent Diversity Forum at his school. One of the understandings that our group attempts to convey to parents is the idea that even though we consider ourselves cultured and worldly and non-discriminating people, if we do not speak to our children about these issues they will not learn them. They do not learn through osmosis. We have to become comfortable talking about things that are uncomfortable. We have to be willing to reflect on our own challenging life experiences and understand where we need to make adjustments in order to Teach The Babies.
So I appeal to all the Men and Women out there: please educate your children or the children on your block. Talk to them. Listen to them. Become a part of your community. If not you, then who? Who better to teach these kids how to become Men and Women if not Men and Women? My closest friends and family do this. Netic always has the youth around him.
On a positive note, as I said earlier, at times you come across something inspiring or thought provoking on the social network wires. My man GB (@electusunus), who coaches young kids, posted this earlier this week. Take note.
“Against all of these intellectually dismissive critics, I would argue for the necessity of continuing to search for the ‘common good’ of a city if only because, without such a conception, there can be neither a sense of local identity nor a political community. This society must strive for more in an effort to be great because without this vision, society would really be bleak…the city is ultimately ‘the people’, and the cliché notwithstanding, it is the people who must find a way among themselves to define, time after time, in what specific action agendas the ‘common good’ of the city may be found.”—Friedman
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Here are some of those that I’ve come across during my travels on the social networks that share insight and information and live to change something. Follow them: @cdtbk @daoudabeid @dahkillah @neticrebel @electusunus @game_rebellion @lifecoachdavis @stillwriting @dreamhampton @getinhershoes @ahlot
Live To Change Something, Teach The Babies, Word from The Creators | Dahkillah October 28, 2009
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By Daoud *Brooklyn Sheikh*, October 28, 2009 @ 5:21 PM
Thanks for posting this brother, this breaks my heart, I’ve been walking around with the weight of this particular incident for days now. I have so much to say in regard to this, for now i will just leave it with a thanks to you, for sharing and teaching. and walking the talk. consistency in examples is imperative, if we want our babies to stand for something we must show them that men/women live for what they believe is right, and we realize that its just important to speak, fight, die or live to defend it.
peace
By Bintou, October 28, 2009 @ 9:01 PM
So sad. I have a 14 years son and feel so uncomfortable reading this story. No matter how hard is to talk about sex with your kids, they have to be aware of what’s wrong early as possible.
By Molaundo, October 29, 2009 @ 12:08 PM
Enlightening the youth starts at home. The community either makes the lessons learned by youth at home easier or more difficult to embody.
If the lessons at home are on point then it’s the community’s job to supplement that education.
If the lessons at home are wrong, inadequate, or non-existent, then unfortunately the weight of educating the youth falls completely on the shoulders of the community.
Our society has increasingly drifted away from the philosophy of “It takes a village…” In its stead we find parents who blame the education system, schools that blame parents, and a “justice” system more than willing preside over it all.
In my opinion, all of the aforementioned played a part in this tragedy.
By Dahkillah, October 29, 2009 @ 8:45 PM
Indeed. There is just not enough communication. There seems to be two extremes of parents who are VERY involved but yet over protective to the point that they want to shelter their children from this reality, and then the other end of the spectrum are the parents who are either so over worked that they are not paying attention or just don’t care.
We need to be more in the middle. We need to get over this feeling that “the world is ugly” and therefore the children need to be shielded. Or that just because you are a positive person in the child’s life that somehow the kid will just “know” how to be a great person.
One thing that I like about our current president is that he’ll take a seemingly disasterous situation and turn it into what he calls “A Teachable Moment”. The night after I wrote this piece my son’s mother and myself sat our kid down and spoke to him about its important for him to listen to the things we are telling him because this is how you learn how to be an adult, piece by piece. And I brought up the rape case and put it into a context I thought his 7 year old mind could comprehend.
And it wasn’t fun.
But it was necessary.
Because THIS is how children learn that is not okay to stand around and watch someone be sexually assaulted.