29 Year Old Grandmother

Today I ran across an article from the Quad City Times, which covers Iowa and Illinois about a 29 Year Old Grandmother or rather her 15 year old daughter who had just given birth. The upside of the article was information that teenage pregnancy rates in the area (and across the nation) had fallen in the last ten years. The bad news was that the teens who were getting pregnant may be getting younger. In this instance the new mother was more interested in shopping, rapping and getting back to playing basketball that taking care of her son. It is not that the girl is mean or uncaring, she ia simply a self-centered teenager. By the way, I should add that her mother has three younger children.

This type of story is fodder for ghetto humor, but on the serious side...what will be the fate of both of these single mothers and their children? Is it really blaming the victim to point out that the likelihood that these women, both young and undereducated will be able to develop financially and emotionally stable homes is very slim? Moreover, is it too defeatist to predict that without some major intervention, these children will replicate the lifestyles and choices of their mother and grandmother?

Barack Obama is getting a lukewarm reception from many Black folks. Personally I think that his bi-racial background is irrelevant and is not the cause of the resistance to him. I think that the problem for Obama (and the new vanguard of Black leadership) is that in order to appreciate their success, many Black folks will have to look at their own failures. It is easier to call another Black a sell-out or to say that he/she is not "black enough," or cry about racism rather than admit your own bad choices and short-sided thinking are largely responsible for your situation.

Obama and his peers are not talking about "Black issues" as if Blacks are a separate species from the rest of America. This is disconcerting to folks to believe that without concessions from Whites Blacks can't make it. Whether Obama's universal political message is right for this point in remains to be seen. However even if he does not become our next president, he spells the future of Black politics. With so many Blacks achieving and doing well, it becomes more and more difficult to contend that the majority of our interests and concerns distinct from those of Whites, Asians and Latinos.

A great majority of the new Black middle class have humble roots. Most obtained whatever they have through hard work, luck and a lot of prayer. However many of these same people have friends or relatives who made choices that landed them in jail, poverty, single motherhood or worse in the grave yard. As one kid decided to go to school and get a job after school, his classmate dropped out of school and decided that robbing or hustling was the fast-track to riches---now he's locked up. In another neighborhood, one girl was too invested in going to college to be swayed by her boyfriend's pleas for condom-less sex. Her best friend, not interested in anything but her boyfriend took that bait; gaining a child and lost the boyfriend. A single woman looking for love kept having children, with different men, although each successive child plunged her and the other ones deeper into poverty. While no one is saying the racial discrimination is dead, some have managed to keep moving forward. Unfortunately others make one bad decision after another.

There are no easy answer to stemming generational poverty, but we might start by having some serious talks in communities around the country. Not moralizing, but getting real about how quickly a few bad moves or careless nights can cripple your for life.