Watching the footage of angry, oppressed Muslim teenage boys vandalizing and burning everything in their path in France this week, I am haunted by the same recurring question. It is the same question I had during the L.A. riots in the early nineties. It is the same question I ask when I learn of yet another gang shooting.
WHERE IN THE HELL ARE THE GROWNUPS? If one of my brothers had come home with his ball cap tipped to one side, perp rolling down the sidewalk, checking his pager, enjoying the looks of horror from passers-by, my father would have put him in his place in a heartbeat. The mere perception of thuggery was forbidden, real criminal activity would have been unthinkable. My mother and neighbors would have held down the disrespectful teenager while Dad made sure his son understood who was boss. No one would have questioned that such discipline was administered out of love, not just anger.
I can't imagine a teenager shrugging off his mother when she asks, "Where are you going? Who are going to be with? When will you be home?" If I had done the same as a teen, I would have been sent to military school.
I was in a southside grocery store last summer and was privileged to witness the following episode between a mother and her teenage son.
Mother: "Where you get all that money?"
Son: Shrugs, mumbles something inaudible, clinches fist tightly around big wad of cash.
Mother: "I SAID, where you get all that money?!"
Son: Shrugs, starts to walk away.
Mother: "Well, you better give ME some of that money!"
Son: Continues to saunter out of store. (Probably to steal my car stereo.)
Gosh, Mom, are you thinking he might of earned it babysitting or mowing lawns while your head was turned? I don't think so.
I know there are a myriad of reasons, some of them justified, as to why teens are angry and lashing out. However, as JoJo on Nanny 911 says in her British accent, "That behavior is unacceptable."
Burning a public bus is not the way to cure social injustices. It only serves to cement the sentiment, "See,
those people
are pigs."
I know some, perhaps many, of these teens have no fathers. Tragic, but no excuse to allow thuggish behavior to prevail. If my Dad had, God please forbid, died when I was a kid there was an entire neighborhood of adults more than willing to keep me in line.
Growing up, I heard lines like this from neighbors, "Polly, I am not your mother, but I know I speak for her when I say, YOU BETTER KNOCK THAT OFF THIS INSTANT OR I'M GOING TO COME OUT THERE AND WARM YOUR HIDE."
If I had come home in tears with a "warm hide," whining that Mrs. Gunderson had spanked me, I could count on my parents saying, "What did you do?" Not, "Go call my lawyer."
I'm not sure of the exact moment the tide turned and grownups lived in fear of their kids, but I am sure that it is the most unloving thing a parent can allow or society can condone.
We reap what we sow.
