When I first read about Demrick McCloud, the young man a jury recently acquitted of kidnapping and assault charges, I immediately wondered if there was relationship between him and Brandon McCloud, the 15-year-old that was killed by Cleveland police officers in his own bedroom back in 2005. Turns out they were brothers.
Three of the jurors in Demrick’s case were so moved by what they perceived as an unjust prosecution (that PD columnist Phillip Morris wrote so eloquently about last week) they donated their one-hundred dollar jury duty pay to the young man on the condition the 9th grade dropout earns his GED. An obviously heartfelt and noble (albeit useless) gesture indeed… but one they should not have felt the need to make.
The young man should already have a high school diploma, and offering him three-hundred dollars is, in all probability, not going to suddenly serve as a wake-up call for this societal failure… in all likelihood he’s already too far gone.
But we just love fairy tale endings: Wouldn’t it be great if young Demrick got his act together, went back to school and not only got his GED, but continued on to college and earned a master’s degree in education, and then goes back to teach at the inner-city school he once dropped out of?
Excuse me for a moment while I wipe the tears out of my eyes.
Fact is, the odds of the above scenario occurring in this young man’s life is roughly the same as him hitting the lottery for $100 million. But it’s this kind of bullshit dreaming — our thirst for heroic outcomes — that prevent us from implementing real solutions.
One fact is glaringly obvious for anyone who wants to confront it: These two McCloud boys’ mother was totally clueless as to what it takes to be a good parent… they might well have been better off being raised by a pack of wolves — the outcome for them could not have been a whole lot worse.
But all too often our solution of choice when confronted with information like this is to beat up on these uneducated mothers (as conservative commentators often are wont to do) for their abject failure. This is wrongheaded and unfair. Virtually all underclass parents are probably doing the best they can with what they’re equipped with. Nonetheless, judging from outcomes, many of them have nowhere near enough skills to raise progeny that one day will become productive members of society.
We won’t properly fund public schools, and then we offer programs like Head Start, which make sense on paper (and probably does some good) but, in fact still allows too many children to fall though the cracks.
However, Geoffrey Canada and his Harlem Children’s Zone has been proving for over 20 years that indeed something can and does work: Mentoring from the day a child is born (and actually even before) and being available 24-7 can and does work. His program takes mothers like McCloud by the hand and shows them, step-by-step, the proper way to raise a child… and the program’s success rate is through the roof. It works virtually in every case.
It’s not like we don’t know how; the model is already up and running… and it works. Our failure to solve the problems of kids like the McCloud brothers is shameful, and is turning us into a second-rate nation.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com.
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2 Responses to “MANSFIELD: McCloud: What’s in a Name?”
Ms.Adams
I am the young mans mom who Demerick Mccloud beat. Yes Brandon McCloud is Demmerick brother. Justice was not served at all. Now my son is out here wondering will he be attacked again. McCloud is a loser and he will strike again.
Anastasia
Well, Mansfield, I am sure you know what the stumbling block is. The Harlem Children’s Zone project was phenomenally expensive; hundreds of millions of dollars were poured into it by various foundations etc. This country doesn’t have the will or the compassion to find the money to do this, even though it would benefit our society in innumerable ways — the wealthy must have more tax breaks! We must cut spending — even if it leaves us with the shell of a civilized society.