A few months back Geneisha Grey, a 23-year-old East St. Louis woman, went into the Hurley and Company Jewelry store in Granite City, IL along with two children, ages 6 and 8.
Video cameras caught the woman distracting employees while the two children systematically stole over $100,000 worth of jewelry, apparently something which Grey had trained the children to do.
I’m equally disgusted when I routinely observe parents within East Boogie (and elsewhere) loudly and publicly curse at their children at the neighborhood McDonald’s, grocery store or other public places.
So, unfortunately, I wasn’t at all surprised when I saw the viral video of a diaper-wearing African-American toddler in Omaha who was caught cursing, flipping a middle finger and shouting out gang affiliations as so-called adults filmed the episode while cursing at and coaxing the baby to perform even more lewdly.
The video was posted by the Omaha Police Officers Association (POA), they say, to highlight what they describe as “the cycle of violence and thuggery” prevalent in the Omaha area.
However, since the video was posted the Omaha POA has been under fire from media, activists, the ACLU and Omaha’s police chief, saying that the video needlessly antagonizes minority communities.
When interviewed by CNN affiliate KETV, the 16-year-old mother of the 2-year-old toddler attempted to deflect criticism by saying, “He had a clean diaper, the house was clean and kids curse. Every kid does it.”
The juvenile mom then went on to place blame on the friend of her brother who filmed the video while she was in another room, saying, “He was wrong for doing that, posting the video up and getting us into this situation.”
Sadly, the young mother missed the point entirely.
In her immature, irresponsible world, all children curse and her brother’s friend is the reason she is in this “situation.”
In fact, poor choices (teen pregnancy, allowing ignorant adults to have access to your child while you aren’t in the room) open the door to the type of negative influences which have affected her child.
The same thing goes for the East St. Louis woman who, instead of performing her babysitting duties, decided to contribute to the delinquency of small children by apparently teaching them to be jewelry thieves.
Folks, there’s nothing magical about what’s going on here. Good parents, generally, produce good children and poor parents, generally, produce poor children. There’s always the exception. But if you follow a bad kid home, more often than not, a trifling parent will open the door.
The African-American community has got to get back to making that trifling parent a rare exception. When we do that, then we will improve academically because we will work with our children and our schools toward better educating our youth.
When we do that, then our children will become successful and become gainfully employed or self-employed and create a better future for our families.
When we do that, jail and thuggery will become lesser options and education and success will become our preoccupation.
Email: jtingram_1960@yahoo.com; Twitter@JamesTIngram.