BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer
RED BANK — The final session of three panel discussions on issues pertinent to the African-American community held on June 17 focused on the role of African-American men within the family structure.
Jacquelin Bingham, who recently graduated from Red Bank Regional High School and who organized the panels, set the agenda at the outset.
“Why do so many African-American men spend so much of their childhood and adulthood in jail,” asked Bingham, who will attend Monmouth University beginning in July.
She then turned the floor over to Gilda Rogers — a counselor at The Source at RBR, a school-based youth services program — who mediated the discussion.
Panelists were Kevin Daniels, a defense attorney in the Neptune area and former prosecutor in Essex County; Terence Wilkins, principal of the Red Bank Middle School; Sean Macon, a counselor at the Source; Phillip Thomas Duck, a graduate of RBR and author of a novel that deals with the importance of the role of fatherhood; Linda Coles, executive producer of “Another View,” New Jersey Network’s award-winning public affairs program; and Kevin Marshall, a teen counselor at the Community YMCA of Red Bank.
Rogers said she believes the African-American community is in “dire straits right now” as reflected in the deterioration of the family.
“With the demise of the family comes the demise of society,” she said.
“Most young black males,” said Daniels, “and now more females, don’t have a sense of legal consequences for their conduct. There is a disconnect when it comes to responsibility for their own behavior.”
Daniels said he believes there is an inherent anger in many young people who are getting into trouble with the law and that anger has a lot to do with their relationship with their parents.
“A lot of young people are coming from broken homes,” he said, “or they are on the streets raising themselves. They have the view, ‘If I get in trouble, I will get some attention from my parents.’ ”
Daniels said that last year, 15 to 20 juveniles in the Neptune/Asbury area were charged with armed robbery, most often using a baseball bat or a knife, and came away with only small amounts of money.
“If they are 16 years or older, they can be exposed to adult time,” Daniels said. “The maximum for a first-degree crime for a juvenile is four years. The maximum for an adult for the same crime is 20 years.”
Daniels referred to this criminal behavior in young people as “social suicide.”
“We’re not seeing criminals,” he said. “We are seeing young people who have given up on life.”
Wilkins said that this criminal, and often violent, behavior is learned.
“Everything you do has to be taught to you,” he said. “That’s why role models are so important. Kids need to be taught to appreciate education.”
Wilkins said that it is the community’s role to pick up where some parents may have left off.
“The children are watching everything we do,” he said. “They watch what we value.”
Macon has headed The Source’s Rights of Passage program for African-American men and their families for the past three years.
The program deals with issues such as peer pressure and peer mediation, as well as many family and health issues.
“It was pretty successful,” Macon said. “But you’d think it’d be easy to find 10 families to get together and do this. We had five families the first year, and six families the second year. This year, we have six or seven. We could not get 10 men.”
He said that the participants who have stuck with the program have shown an increasing amount of dedication to their families.
“I was raised by a single mother and my extended family,” Duck said. “My daughter was 5 months old when I started writing this book. I realized that there are so many young men who have children whose focus is not on their children, but on their careers or other things.”
Coles, the panel’s sole representative of single African-American women, said, “My parents have been married for 62 years, and I can’t even get off the starting block.”
Coles discussed how, socially, there are not many available African-American men.
“Socially speaking, the pickings are slim,” she said. “Maybe I’m not as visible as I should be. It’s really frightening when you look at our community because social suicide is a reality.
“There’s a knot in my stomach when I start wondering where our community is going.”
Rogers, who is also a single woman who said she has had a difficult time finding someone, said that there is a sense of hopelessness hanging over the African-American community.
“Our mission is to overcome this hopelessness,” she said.
Coles said that society looks to protect African-American women, but still sees African-American men as threats.
“The standards are a lot tougher for them to move forward,” she said.
Marshall said that while he was living in New York, he saw no hesitation on the part of his peers to commit murder or rape.
“In the ’60s,” he said, “we knew who our enemies were. They wore white sheets. Now our enemies are wearing red bandannas.”
Marshall said although his goal is to attend college, he has a younger brother who is in the penal system and he can see its flaws.
“How can you be a father if you’re in jail,” he asked. “A father is someone who teaches his son to be better than he is.”
Daniels said that he believes that it really does take a village to raise a child.
“I began to understand that my children’s peer group had more influence on them than I did,” he said. “So, I had to have more influence over the peer group.”