Young, Black and in Danger

YOUNG, BLACK AND IN DANGER
 MEN IN PRISON, ON DRUGS, IN THE STREETS AND
 IN THE MORGUE: THE NUMBERS ARE ALARMING.

Jul 15, 1990

By Thomas Ferrick Jr. and Jerry W. Byrd , Inquirer Staff Writers

 In relentlessly increasing numbers, this generation of the city's poor, young black men is ending up on drugs, in shelters, in jail or in the morgue.
 They show up so often and in such great numbers in the statistics on crime and drug abuse, homelessness and homicide that alarm is spreading among those who work with the poor.
 Some public officials are using drastic language to describe the situation.
 Louis W. Sullivan, the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, calls black males a "species in danger. "
 Bilal Qayyum, a gang worker turned city housing official, fears "we are witnessing self-genocide taking place. "
 Today in Philadelphia there are almost 101,000 black males between 15 and 34, the age range most frequently used to define young people in statistics kept by the U.S. Census Bureau and others. These men represent a small slice of the city's population: 6 percent.
 Yet they show up in vastly larger proportions in statistics on drug abuse, crime, homelessness and homicide - data that, taken together, could be called the "Distress Index. "
 Poor black men have always been a large part of these statistics. But never in numbers like these:
 One out of five of all young, black men in the city is under the supervision of the criminal justice system. They have been convicted of crimes and are serving time in jail, on probation or parole, or in juvenile detention.
 Seventy-five percent of those on probation or parole for robbery in the city, and nearly 80 percent of those in juvenile detention, are young black men.
 Only one out of every 16 Philadelphians is a young black man. But that group accounts for one out of every five adults in homeless shelters. And two out of every five city residents enrolled in city-run drug-treatment programs.
 Then there are those who end up dead. In the nation and in Philadelphia, homicide is the No. 1 cause of death among young black men.
 More than 1,500 black men aged 15 to 34 have been killed in this city in the last 11 years, a rate five times higher than that of their white male counterparts, 19 times higher than the statewide average. In Philadelphia, these men are slain at a rate higher than the already high national average for young black men.
 "Black people always killed each other. . . . The difference today is the rate we're killing each other," said Qayyum, who became so concerned about the increase in killings that he recently organized a group to combat black homicide.
 Almost 26 years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed what has become a landmark in American history: the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Take that year as a beginning point, measure the progress made by American blacks since then, and it becomes clear that strides have been made - economically, politically, on almost every important scale.
 Yet, many black children born in those years of promise have ended with histories like the one told by Randolph Herbert, one of the street people of Philadelphia.
 Herbert is a high school dropout. He spent time in jail as a juvenile and as an adult. He is the father of two boys born to a woman he never married. He doesn't know where they are. Maybe in a shelter, he says. He has lived in the streets off and on for six years. He has used drugs. His job, if it could be called that, is scavenging trash.
 All this and he is only 27.
 "I could steal, take money, stuff like that - but I was raised better than that," Herbert says, then corrects himself. "I have done it, see, but I haven't done it lately. I might get high now and then. But I'm out there hustling, getting copper and iron. "
 This is just one man, one case. There are many others. These young blacks have become the Nowhere Men: not at home, not at school, not working, not getting married, not raising families. Going nowhere fast.

 Most of these young men in trouble come from the poorest of the poor black neighborhoods. Data usually are not kept on the income level of prisoners, parolees, probationers and homicide victims. But the evidence there is, and the overwhelming testimony of those who work with these men, indicate that the problems are most heavily concentrated among the city's estimated 40,000 young black men who live below or near the poverty line - not the 60,000 or so 15- to 34-year-old black males who are not poor.
 The problems of these poor, young men disturbs those who have worked with black youth for decades, among them Sister Falaka Fattah, founder of House of Umoja in West Philadelphia.
 "I think we are in a storm with this generation," she said. "It is worse than it was. "
 How to measure the intensity of that storm? One way is to look at the number of 15- to 34-year-old black males from Philadelphia who are on probation or parole, in juvenile detention or in state prisons.
 One in five.
 There were 12,955 on probation, parole or both last July. In December 3,560 were serving time in state prisons. In January, 3,829 youths aged 15 to 19 were in juvenile jails or on probation.
 The total, 20,344, is 20 percent of the black men in Philadelphia between ages 15 and 34.
 Statistics from criminal justice agencies were not available for the same month, although officials say the numbers do not vary much from month to month.
 At the same time, one out of 28 white males in the same age range in Philadelphia was under supervision of the criminal justice system. According to the latest estimates, there are 158,000 white men aged 15 to 34 in the city.
 Again, these statistics measure age and race but not economic class.
 "What's wrong with the statistics," says James Zellars, 27, "is that everybody gets lumped together. I see role models, I see people looking inside themselves and wanting to be better. Despite what people say, I see this from a grass-roots level. "
 Zellars, who grew up in North Philadelphia and still lives there, works for the IRS. He is like the majority of black men - certainly, of middle-class men - who are not part of these numbers. They have never been arrested or spent time in jail. They are fathers, workers, husbands, students.

 But an effect of all these problems - as the parents of young black men often testify - is that the behavior and actions of the most troubled shape public perception of the whole group, as people rush to make generalizations. This, in turn, helps define what young black men think of themselves.
 "Part of what confronts black males is the perception of the larger society that they are criminals," explains Fred Shack, who has worked with troubled youths as a counselor and executive at Southern Home Services in South Philadelphia.
 "A lot of young people buy that image. They don't have the ego strength to shut that off and say: 'That's not me. '
 "When people cross to the other side of the street just because they see you coming, and that's constant, it's everyday - it's very subtle, but it makes a difference. When you have that and you don't have a lot of support systems and a lot of positive role models, you begin to say:
 " 'They're the adults, they're the larger society; it must be true. That must be what I'm about, what I should be doing. So why try to prove the whole world wrong? I'm just a 14-year-old kid. You're telling me I look like a crook, I look like a thief, I'm someone to be feared. ' "
 Those who work with poor, young black men insist that something must be done, their problems somehow addressed, if poor communities are to be made whole. The absence of young black men means more than simply an economic loss.
 They point to just one aspect, the impact of so many missing fathers.
 "I look at how poor, black males get caught, and they get caught at a very early age - very early," says George Davis, director of a program for drug addicts at Gaudenzia House in West Chester. "I'm talking preschool, elementary school. They get caught with no role models, no identity, no traditions, no family unit, no belonging.
 "When you look at that piece that is supposed to be gotten in the home, if you don't have the father figure there - that leader, that role model, that person who is going to guide the family - you have lost something. Something that child is supposed to have.
 "So, the child grows up with the values he learns in the street. And for the most part, those values are anti-system. They are: 'Only the strong survive. ' They are: 'You need to do whatever you need to do to make it. ' "
 Or, listen to Asa Anderson, 27, one of five children, who grew up fatherless and poor and is now a recovering drug addict.
 "When there's no man around, you automatically go out searching for some type of manly figure," says Anderson. "But what you usually see on the streets of Philadelphia are drug dealers, numbers writers, somebody getting something illegal. "
 Most blacks have an acute awareness of the seriousness of the problems of poor, young men.
 Some look at drugs, crime, infant mortality and dropout rates, the soaring prison populations and the newest scourge, AIDS, and attribute them to a single source, called "The Conspiracy" or "The Plan. "
 In its most extreme version, it is a theory that there is a plot to exterminate blacks, a plot devised by white leaders and directed from the sub- basement of the White House.
 There are other places to search for answers, though, places closer to home - in the streets and the shelters, among those who tend to poor, young blacks. Among the men themselves.

 It can begin in a cell at Graterford Prison, where Kevin Mines sits, a lean and tall, angular, black man, dressed in the light brown slacks and shirt of an inmate.
 Mines has had a lot of time to think about how he got into trouble. He is four years into a life sentence for murder conspiracy.
 He is 28, grew up in North Philadelphia, held a number of good construction jobs, had a mother and father who warned him of the dangers of drugs and running with the wrong crowd. To no avail. Mines took to both.
 "I went as far as the 10th grade," he recalls. "I didn't like school
 because my peer group wasn't in school. That's the thing that holds a lot back - they want to be with the fellows. The guys I considered to be role models, the ones I was influenced by . . . I thought selling drugs, hanging out was right. "
 Mines was robbing a man one night in 1983 outside a Germantown club when the victim shot him in the stomach. The man was then shot and killed by Mines' accomplice, who is serving a life sentence, too.
 Mines has converted to Islam in prison and, if he had the chance, would tell every 16-year-old "to realize the existence of God" and avoid the temptations to which he succumbed.
 As he stresses, that is easier said than done.
 "I grew up around 15th and Venango," he says. "It's worse now than it used to be. There's no respect in the community anymore. We used to not sell drugs on the corners if we knew someone's parents were looking. It's not like that now. The community is ravaged. Families have fallen apart. "
 There are psychologists and drug counselors, professors and politicians who say much the same thing. Mines' statement is merely more succinct.
 Racial discrimination and the lack of jobs have long been seen at the root of the ghetto's most serious problems.
 But those causes have been joined by others: Widespread use of drugs, particularly cheap and potent crack, is the most recent. The steep climb in the number of unmarried mothers is another. High dropout rates among the poorest of black males; the persistence and increased violence of crime. This list could go on.
 Those who work to help the poor say they sometimes feel the bottom has fallen out of the bottom. Some talk nostalgically of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the biggest worry was gangs.
 "I was working in the gang era, and gang members were 100 percent more respectful than these youngsters," says Herman Wrice, now active in anti-drug efforts in the city's Mantua section. "Gangs would only fight once a week, over turf. The rest of the time they were playing, and most could read and write. "
 "When we were dealing with gangs, there was a certain kind of tradition," adds Fattah. "I don't like to use the word subculture, but Philadelphia is one of the cities that put the 'G' in gangdom. So, there's certain traditions that were adhered to strictly. Nowadays you can't find it. "
 As Mines put it, the ghetto was not a garden spot when he was growing up, ''but it was better than it is now. This is getting ugly. "
 Look at the changes that have occurred in his lifetime.
 In 1961, the year Mines was born, three out of four black women in Philadelphia who gave birth were married. Since then, that figure has been turned on its head: now three out of four are single.
 By the time Mines was ready for kindergarten, an exodus was under way from his and other older black neighborhoods. The area around 15th and Venango Streets lost 37 percent of its population between 1960 and 1980.
 To the south, lower North Philadelphia lost 28 percent of its population during the 1970s alone.
 A lot of those who left were members of the black middle class. Hemmed in the ghetto for so many years by housing discrimination, they were freed to look elsewhere in the mid-1960s by federal open housing laws.
 In Mines' neighborhood, while the population was dropping, the number of people living in poverty doubled between 1970 and 1980. In the city, the number of underclass census tracts - those where 40 percent or more residents are poor - tripled in the same decade.
 Black neighborhoods, once segregated by race alone, became segregated by race and class.
 Families and neighborhoods, the walls that hold many troubles at bay, were crumbling - sometimes literally so.
 As the ghetto emptied, the housing stock deteriorated. In some of the city's poorest neighborhoods, as many as four out of 10 houses are abandoned or have been torn down. Children play in the rubble.
 Those who help and study the poor, measuring the change over just the last 25 years, are increasingly dismayed.
 "When you talk to kids who make it, they say they were involved with somebody who inspired them," explains Robert Sorrell, president of the Philadelphia Urban League. "Now in the neighborhoods, while there is still some of that going on, it is hidden. People are more transient, more isolated. Communities are not as close as they once were for a lot of reasons. "
 Inez Bruce, a counselor and director at Southern Home Services, remembers when "black people thrived on neighbors who said: 'I'm going to tell your momma when she comes home. ' Now, I've got grandmothers and mothers and daughters who are all using crack. "
 Elijah Anderson is a University of Pennsylvania sociologist who has studied why poor, young, black men father children by women they do not intend to marry or support. He believes most of the ills in the black community can be ascribed to economic causes, but adds:
 "I think there is a problem even without the economy. . . . There are no significant sanctions against this kind of behavior. It may be we'll be able to relate this to the exodus of the black middle class and the black working class. All of this undermined sanctions against this behavior. "
 It would be incorrect to ascribe these ills exclusively to poor blacks.
 For instance, while the black rate for out-of-wedlock births tripled from 1960 to 1988, the rate increased more than 10 times among white women in Philadelphia. The white out-of-wedlock rate is still much lower than the rate for blacks: 31 percent compared with 75 percent.
 The evidence, the statistics, the testimony of experts point to the fact that problems such as the out-of-wedlock rate are worst in black neighborhoods, exacerbated by poverty.
 Take just one example: the absence of eligible men.
 Women everywhere complain how hard it is to find men to marry. Social scientists have actually developed an index that provides a crude measure of the pool of marriageable men - they define "marriageable" as any single man, aged 25 to 44, who is employed.
 Using 1980 census data, Paul A. Jargowsky of Harvard University recently developed a marriageability index for neighborhoods in a number of communities, including the Philadelphia area.
 Among whites in the area's better-off neighborhoods, the rate was 85. That means there were 85 "marriageable" men for every 100 women. In the poorest white neighborhoods, the index dipped: The rate was 64.
 In middle-class black neighborhoods, the rate was 66.
 In the poorest black neighborhoods there were only 33 eligible men for every 100 women.
 This data is 10 years old. Once data from the 1990 census becomes available, it may show that the marriageability rate has improved because more black men are working today than in 1980.
 Ten years ago, 22 percent of all black men over the age of 19 in Philadelphia were unemployed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That unemployment rate was down to 10 percent as of 1988, the last full year for which figures are available.
 This is good news, but the numbers fail to take into account several factors: They do not include so-called discouraged workers, people who have been out of work for so long, they have quit looking for jobs. They also do not reveal the kinds of jobs and salaries available for unskilled men.
 The city's economy has changed drastically in a short time.
 When Kevin Mines was born, nearly 40 percent of all the jobs in the city were in manufacturing. By last year, it was down to 12 percent.
 Not that black men in the 1960s all worked on the assembly line. There was a long history of excluding blacks from prime manufacturing jobs. A lot of them were relegated to the kind of work the father of Inez Bruce did.
 "My mother was a domestic and my dad worked at Allied Chemicals for most of his life," Bruce recalls. "He was a house builder - he built our house - but he couldn't do that at Allied Chemicals. He had to sweep the floors. "
 During the 1960s, those barriers began to break down - at exactly the time the manufacturing jobs were leaving town, as plants shut down, went south or overseas.
 "Black men got piped aboard a sinking ship," said Roger Lane, a Haverford
 College social scientist who has studied the city's black community. "They finally got the job opportunities when the job opportunities were leaving.
 "Now, we've got this new post-industrial service economy, with its enormous premium on education. The growth in terms of jobs is for people with better than high school educations.
 "The black male population wants the jobs their grandfathers weren't allowed to have: 'Give us the macho jobs,' they say. Those jobs are not there. "
 Macho jobs.
 Young black men used the same phrase in describing to David W. Lacey the work they wanted. Until he left for a new job recently, Lacey was president of the Private Industry Council, which recruits and trains young, poor people for jobs. He says there are jobs that go begging, but they are in the service sector.
 "I've got to tell them, in this labor market, at this time, fewer than two in 10 jobs could be defined as 'macho,' " explains Lacey. "The problem with service jobs, among minority males, is that they say it's women's work. "
 The result is that a lot of young, black men have yet to find their niche in the new economy.
 Anderson, the Penn professor, said this, in turn, led to "economic dislocation" - which is another way of saying people find themselves without jobs, living in poverty, with limited prospects for employment.
 "The change from manufacturing to service is really quite profound," he said. "We are still trying to deal with it. But I would submit that those changes have really helped to undermine the stability of poor communities, and the black community in particular. "
 The change has had a profound effect on society as a whole. But its most drastic impact has been on poor, black men.
 "Anybody who prepares themselves should be able to lead ordinary, if not extraordinary lives, but we can no longer say go to school, get a job, raise a family and retire on Social Security," said Thad Mathis of Temple's Graduate School of Social Administration.
 As an issue, the fate of young, black men isn't "sexy enough to command attention," Mathis says. "Prospects are looking gloomier," he adds. ''Even kids in school are losing ground. "
 There is more to it than plain and simple economics. Lacey said poor, young black men come to the Private Industry Council with more baggage than simply a disdain for service jobs. He talked about three hurdles they have to clear:
 "The first is that there is, in many instances, no (recent) family history of working. So, it is a real act of courage for a young black man to say, 'I want to split with the past, get myself trained and prepared, so I can go to work. '
 "The second hurdle they face is derision from their peers, who say: 'Oh, fine, you go into a training program, you end up working at McDonald's.' Or, who say: 'You get your GED, you know what's going to happen to you? You're going to end up working at McDonald's.'
 "The third thing young minority males have to overcome is what I would call the pain of being poor.
 "What I mean is, many of these young men live where the housing is not particularly favorable, where there's lots of crime, where there's lots of drug stuff. There can be robberies. There can be beatings. So, you are living in an environment that is a painful one. It takes time, it takes courage to make a break from that. "
 That kind of courage is hard to come by in poor neighborhoods, where temptation sits just outside the door. Or parked at the curb, like the sleek Cadillac owned by a friend of Mesoin Williams'.

 The friend cannot understand why Williams won't sell drugs. Look at what you can get, he tells his friend: a car like mine, lots of money, hand- tailored clothes. Why wait for the good life, Mesoin? Get it now.
 Time was when Williams, who is 22, would have listened to those whispers. He was, he says, a "ruffian" as a teenager, the kind of guy who started fights.
 He came from a broken home in West Philadelphia, was thrown out of two high schools, was far along the path to trouble when he stopped for a minute to think.
 " 'Hey, is this who you are? Is this what you want?' " he recalls asking himself. "I realized I wasn't a dumb guy. I had never really thought about it because I was too busy doing other things. But, when I decided to become serious about it, I found out I wasn't that dumb. I was sort of bright. Bright enough to enroll in junior college - he is a student at Community College of Philadelphia. Bright enough to go to the Wharton School, where he will start taking courses this fall. He also wants to go to law school someday. Being on this new path makes it tough to be with old friends.

 "As I became more serious about school, just day-to-day relations became awkward," he says. "My aspirations were to do well in school, to pick up a book, maybe speak better, to stop using slang.
 "When you start to do that, it's sort of like people say, 'You're trying to disassociate yourself,' when actually you're not. You're just trying to better yourself. But, of course, it's not viewed that way. "
 Williams is optimistic about the future. He has set aside immediate reward.
 Fred Shack worries these are attributes many poor, young black men lack.
 Shack has worked for years with juveniles here and in New York and remembers once asking a 17-year-old where he planned to be in five years.
 "And this kid, with the straightest face, with absolutely no remorse, said to me: 'I'm going to be in prison. '
 "He didn't have a criminal record, was not into a lot of street crime. I said, 'Why is that your vision? Why is that the outcome? ' And he said most of his brothers, cousins and uncles had gone to jail.
 "He had completed the eighth grade but was basically nonfunctional in school. He had no real vocational skills. He realized that in another year he was not going to be able to stay in the child welfare system. And he just knew that would be his fate. "
 Shack has not seen the young man in years. He bets he did end up in jail.
 Pessimism and impatience. Those who deal with young, poor black men often stress such intangibles. People like Shack worry as much about these young men's lack of values as their lack of education, the absence of positive role models as much as the absence of the right kind of jobs.
 For instance, Davis, the director at Gaudenzia House in West Chester, worries about the pervasive effects of a ghetto environment.
 "In looking at black males, you are talking about individuals who, more often than not, have a criminal history, limited employment skills, and when they leave one institution, they go right back into the environment they came from. They can't find a job. They get caught up in the environment. . . . And the one thing that hasn't stopped is that they are still making babies.
 "These babies are growing up and they don't have any leadership. They don't have any role models. They don't have a culture - to learn, or to relate to. And what happens is, they get caught up in that cycle. They have nowhere to go. They have nothing to do. They see no out. "
 Elijah Anderson also is concerned about poor, young men who make babies. They do it, he says, not with the intent of marrying the girl or supporting the child, but because it makes them bigger men among their friends. 

 "The problem is that within the lower classes, there is this profound ignorance of one's body, of birth control and all that," Anderson says. ''There is profound sexism - in that a woman is responsible to protect herself. It is not seen as a male responsibility. Yet, the male requires sex. Yet, sex results in babies. Yet, a lot of the boys are not interested in 'playing house. '

 "The boys who impregnate the girls often are older. Sometimes the fact that there is an older man of 21 is very attractive to a girl 15 or 16. So, he has a certain advantage in playing the game. His behavior results in babies and it reflects on him in a positive way. "
 Herman Wrice expresses the same concern in a different way.
 "In neighborhoods where there is much promiscuity, we're working with kids 9 to 12 trying to cut down on the number of unwanted pregnancies," he says. ''We're shooting for the second level of kids, 12, 13, 14.
 "Most over 21 are not too open. They got caught up in the fantasy game of gold, fast track, no respect for country, elders, just leaving kids any place they can. Like it's a badge of honor. "
 Gold and drugs. The fast track. For many poor, young, black men that track ends inside the prison gate. Donald Vaughn sees them arrive.
 Like many of them, Vaughn, 47, grew up on the streets of North Philadelphia. Unlike them, as he put it, "I worked my way through without going to jail. "
 Vaughn said he walked through gang territory all the time but never became a member.
 "My father always made me wear a white shirt and a tie," he recalled. ''Most of my friends, the mothers or - in most cases, their grandmothers - were raising them. I'd be teased. I didn't realize then that I was better off than many of them were. They'd be staying out late, down on the corner, but not me. My parents had to know where I was. "
 Vaughn met some of those guys in prison later. They were inmates, he a guard.
 Today, he is superintendent.
 Now, he sees their sons come in.
 "Father's already here, and the son comes," he says. "I have one case where a mother, she only has two sons and both are here doing life. She asked me one day, 'What did I do wrong? ' She had been trying to raise them herself. What can you say? It's depressing sometimes."

From the Philadelphia Inquirer