Gotham City: Poverty Real Cause of School Turmoil

Gotham City: Poverty Real Cause of School Turmoilby Frank Pizzoli

Economic segregation has replaced racial segregation. Harrisburg School District students are not immune from the ravages of hopelessness. Poverty weighs down a child’s dream like a storm-soaked blanket worn 24/7.

Instead of committing to economic development and/or life skills programs aimed at preventing juvenile crime, adults in charge publicly battle over who can carry guns, where, and for what purpose.

We’re teaching children that force, guns, and their presence and use, if necessary, is the way to solve conflict. Community leaders have performed a public drama that sounded like schoolyard bravado: "My old man can beat up your old man." We’ve lost track of what’s important. Instead, we could be asking ourselves, "Why are we in this mess at all?"

Meanwhile, about 250 children are not being schooled in the 3 "R’s," but in the nuances of the criminal justice system. At home, their parents, mostly African-Americans, cannot buy a car, get a loan, or conduct other routine business with an African-American colleague. In a city with an African-American population of 56 percent, the doors to economic development for that community are locked.

Make a visit to 13th and Market streets (Yes, I have — dozens of times.) This is Ground Zero in the African-American community. A black market of incense and clothing earns more dollars than a storefront. There are no African-American storefronts. If you don’t get the picture, then you don’t want to understand. It’s the economy, stupid.

As long as we accept economic hell — and keep our prejudices alive with pieties about "bootstraps" and all that nonsense — we might as well put all our school children on juvenile probation and make it their job to "get off." That approach would be administratively more efficient and likely please juvenile probation authorities for a simple reason — that’s what human service agencies do, they get bigger. They nurse a vested interest in surviving. I call it my "Sociology of Agency" theory. The organized religion version says: God loves poor people. That’s why He made so many. We need them to earn our salvation through good works.

The secular version says: Since we will always have troubled kids, agencies will always exist. That is a true statement, but not incompatible with asking a more important question: "What conditions in the city do we allow to fester and as a result produce 250 kids who end up on juvenile probation?" The answer is poverty; it’s not even a Double Jeopardy answer. It’s not that hard.

The media does little to advance our understanding of the realities of families. The chance that a mother of dependent children depicted on prime-time network television holds a paying job is one in three, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families. The chance that a non-fictional American mother with children does is two in three. One in 18 black woman living in the U.S. will be a victim of violence this year (1999), according to the U.S. Justice Department.

Son of Kinder and Gentler, George W. Bush, Jr., describes juvenile "superpredators" as "fatherless, jobless, fearless, and godless," according to his campaign committee. No, I’m not an egghead liberal, but I do know that such rhetoric feeds our worst, not our best, impulses. Why would we act surprised when a group lives up to the worst expectations we could possibly have of them? Is this rocket science?

James Carville said that between Paoli and Altoona it’s like the state of Alabama without the black folk. How can we pretend that racial hatreds are not alive and well and contribute directly to the ongoing misery faced by many children in the Harrisburg School District?

Several members of Harrisburg City Council in last month’s MODE interviews noted "racial healing" as a much-needed goal. I agree. I was recently hosting guests at lunch when someone who recently moved here said she was repeatedly warned by "professional colleagues" to pick a suburb instead of the city. Why? "Only blacks and gays live in the city," she was told. To her credit, she disregarded others’ warnings and moved into the city. And she likes it.

Meanwhile, the school situation reflects our larger culture. We’ve got "jail on the brain": One is 20 Americans born this year will spend time in jail, according to the U.S. Justice Department. The U.S. has more citizens, 1.8 million, behind bars than any other nation on the planet, including Communist China. The fastest growing line item in two-thirds of state budgets is the building of prisons. As one elected official told me "That’s where the money is. That becomes our mentality." Another said "we have this jailhouse, law and order mentality around here. That’s not going to work. We must help people solve problems not only punish them when they fail."

Three Suggestions

First, I think that if the juvenile justice system had to both "prevent crime" and "retain offenders," then maybe we’d have a better understanding how to prevent kids moving into probation. More likely you’ll hear human service administrators honk on about "funding streams" and "categorical funding" — gibberish for "I’m not allowed to provide those services under my appropriation" or "That’s not our mandate or mission." I ask, "Why isn’t it your mission or mandate?" Surely you must see the situation deteriorating. By what rationale would we allow this festering sore to infect even more children?

On the other hand, volunteer board members who manage agencies and quasi-public/private programs resist giving firm direction to executives because "We don’t want to micro manage," the popular seminar buzz phrase now taught to those willing to step forward and serve.

Second, I think that the soon-to-be Civil War Museum presents a splendid opportunity to promote healing. In Indiana, a museum charges visitors $15 to spend 90 minutes as a runaway slave. During re-enactments, the ratio of white to black runaways this year is two to one. Somebody must be learning something useful by "running" in a different pair of shoes.

Third, it is time to organize an African-American Economic Summit with the goal of building investment capital for the community.

I think these three suggestions — and others readers may have on how to heal racial hatreds — are better than arguing over symptoms while ignoring the illness — poverty. Otherwise, let’s just be honest and admit we have a crisis of leadership that has rendered useless our ability to make tough choices.