(00:00:00) It's 12 noon. And we go now to the Minnesota meeting where our speaker William raspberry will be introduced by Deborah Howell, managing editor of the st. Paul Pioneer Press and dispatch program of our fifth Minnesota meeting season. It is also a pleasure to welcome our radio audience throughout the Upper Midwest to the very first Minnesota meeting broadcast live by Minnesota Public Radio. This was made possible by funding from the Oppenheimer wolf Donnelly Law Firm. The community's response to Minnesota meeting has been phenomenal. Our goal was 500 members and we now have 1800 who represent our communities outstanding leaders and Minnesota meeting continues to grow and to continue to bring this community nationally and internationally renowned speakers to discuss critical issues of concern to us. All our next Minnesota meeting speaker is Doc is mr. Gerald Jonas who until recently was the chief scientist. For the SDI, the Department of Defense. He will deliver a speech entitled SDI prospects and challenges on Friday November the 21st. That speech is 1/2 of a two-part program on the Strategic Defense Initiative the second speech by dr. Richard Garwin a physicist and a very vocal SDI critic will be on Tuesday December 2nd. We hope you can attend. And now I am pleased to introduce our speaker William J raspberry will talk on the crisis in the black family. Bill raspberry is an award-winning and nationally acclaimed Urban Affairs columnist for the Washington Post. His twice weekly column is nationally syndicated by The Washington Post writers group, and I love to read them in my newspaper. little plug there Born in Okolona, Mississippi bill was graduated from Indiana Central College where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. He got into journalism by he says passing himself off as a sports writer. And later as a reporter photographer and editor for the Indianapolis, Indiana recorder a black newspaper. He then served two years in the US Army. And then he was in Washington and he wanted to be a reporter for the Washington Post but they didn't think his experience on a black newspaper was good enough and so he went to Define what job he could get there and find found there was an opening for a teletype operator. And even though he wasn't one. He said he became one but the time they hired him. He then worked his way into doing small stories and finally got his Big Break by being an obituary writer and I'm going to say that to reporters on my staff who don't like to do a ritual Aries. in 1965 raspberry one the capital press clubs journalist of the Year award for his coverage of the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. He has also received awards from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri and the Baltimore-Washington newspaper guilt. I am a fan of his and I think he wrote one of the better columns. I have seen recently on newspapering and I want to read you one sentence on it that I and at that I want to put up on my bulletin board what readers want as I read their complaints is not that the local newspaper should ignore their faults, but that it should not neglect to record their view their virtues Bill raspberry is somebody who records people's virtues. He doesn't ignore fault. He is beholden to no one he has been The Godfather too many young bright black journalist, and he has been an inspiration to the people who work with him Bill raspberry. (00:04:14) Thank you very much. Anytime anybody who spent any serious time wrestling with the crisis of the black family in America today has his or her own idea as to what is the central element of the problem? They're all probably correct. as with most vicious Cycles There is no inappropriate place to break in everywhere is the right place. But since I can't cover all the possibilities in a short time and since I understand that we are to have a question and answer session following my brief remarks. I've carved out a tiny piece of the problem for your consideration today. And even that tiny piece is something you've heard about and thought about some of you for many years. At first glance. It doesn't even look like a family problem at all. But a problem of youthful unemployment. As Perry Mason might say I intend to connect it up, you know, the statistics on adolescent child bearing the poverty of female-headed households and the other pathologist subsumed Under The Heading of family breakdown. But you also know that many of these statistics reflect not family breakdown, but families never formed. And the question is why? The answers surely must include. slippage in our in our ethical and moral values They must include unwise welfare policy and the new morality that makes irresponsible sex a commonplace. But the key reason for these never formed families I am convinced is the Staggering joblessness of young black men. This is something that has been lurking unformed in the back of my mind until William Julius Wilson of the University of Chicago crystallized it for me. Bill Wilson showed me some charts the result of his research that illustrates why the proportion of single-parent households is getting bigger among blacks. in 1954 the ratio of marriageable 18 and 19 year old men to women of the same age was roughly the same for blacks as it was for whites and by marriage or woman the way he means a person of appropriate age and sex who's working. If a young man is not working by bills definition, he's not marriageable that makes sense to me. That rough equality black-and-white continued through continued into the 1960s about which time Wilson's chart showed 50. Marriageable black men for every 100 black women of the same age range while the ratio for whites was 48 / 150 verse 50 / 104 white for blacks 48 per hundred four four white. They're very close, but then after 1960, the two curves started to separate. And by the late 1970s, there were 63. Marriageable white men per hundred white women for blacks. It was 4400 gone off in opposite directions Wilson's conclusion. Was that the shrinking of the pool of marriageable black men? Is as good an explanation as any for the increase in out-of-wedlock births and single parent households among blacks. In other words our young people are not necessarily less moral than they used to be when the practice was for pregnant girls to marry the father of their babies to give them a name as we used to say what has changed is that the boys aren't there to marry being dead incarcerated or unemployed? If I can summarize my speech in one sentence, it would be we're not going to solve the problem of female-headed households and family breakdown until we solve the problem of joblessness among young black males. Black men in America's ghettos have increasingly become since the 1960s unnecessary. unnecessary to the general economy one result is that they are increasingly useless and frequently far worse than useless to their own communities and even to the mothers of their hapless children. The inner-city black male who ought to be a valued asset to his community has to a frightening degree become an active threat. It begins with joblessness. Young men who are unemployed and who come to take unemployment as the normal State of Affairs. soon become unemployable The disconnection of young men from the world of honest labor since his devastating shock waves through the entire community. Jobless and hopeless men are worthless as husband's no matter how many babies they sire. And the result is a staggering growth in the number of fatherless households, and I'm like to say fatherless households rather than single parent households or female-headed households. It seems to me that the other Expressions put the emphasis in the wrong place to speak of a female-headed households says to me that as a problem says to me that there's something problematic about being female or being in charge. The problem is not that females head the household. The problem is that the households are fatherless. The absence of the male is the problem. And I think we ought to say it. We ought to see it that way. Boys who grow up in these fatherless households May reach adulthood without ever seeing face-to-face a functioning family headed by husband and wife. Except on Thursday night when they watch The Bill Cosby Show. And the result is that neither they nor the girls. They subsequently impregnate have any real idea. Of what it is to function as a father as a role model two sons as a help meet or as a disciplinarian. Neither the young men nor their young women expect anything from these boys, except the role of a drone. jobless and undisciplined boys spawn fatherless communities And I mean almost entire communities. I've seen somewhere. There's hardly a father in a household. in the whole neighborhood and then because moral and economic responsibility irresponsibility tempts them into crime these same boys come to pray on their own communities. Finally. They become a threat to the entire Society. And it all begins with joblessness. So what is to be done? John Jacob of the National Urban League has called for the establishment of a National Youth Employment Program that would include education training and work components Universal employment and training system to guarantee skills development and work for the unemployed and the Full Employment policy that would include economic expansion and job targeted tax incentives. That sounds like a wonderful idea to me. Indeed. It strikes me as very odd that we used to spend more time pushing a full employment policy back in the 60s when there were lots of low-skilled entry-level jobs in the cities, then we do now when the combination of factory closings Automation and the exportation of our jobs has in effect cut off the bottom rungs of the economic ladder I come from a generation. That's all its ambitious youngsters head north to the factory towns to the Detroit's and the Chicago's and the Cleveland's to get the steady work and the good income that provided the basis for raising the families Ambitions and and successes a step higher the people who told in those factories sent their children off to to become technicians of one kind or another and their children sent their children off to the universities to become professionals and it worked for us. It really did work for us. It stopped working for us. The the high-tech industries that have come to replace the factories don't have those entry level jobs that allow you to leave the farm or the inner city and hook on with a decent paying job that will allow you to raise your family those notches higher. It's one of the reasons. I look at this crisis in the black family. Although it is fundamentally an underclass problem as a threat to blacks. Generally. Here's the thing. I mean. For almost the entirety of our existence in America. each generation of us has managed to and has been expected to take it situation One Step higher than it found it. It has worked. No, sometimes the progress was so small as to be almost unnoticeable, but there was always progress from one generation to the next each generation found us a little better off no matter how much we complained then the generation before had been but now with something like 57 percent of black babies in America being born out of wedlock most of them to to adolescent mothers teenage mothers and all the problems involved in that you ask yourself. How can this next Generation over half of whose members will come from these awful circumstances take it one step higher we will be uncommonly lucky if we are able to hold our own for the Next Generation. I doubt that we will. And so much of it goes to young male joblessness. We need a full employment policy to put these youngsters to work. And somehow we've lost the political interest in it. But if a full employment policy is the medicine that will cure what ails our community there is something else that needs to be doing while we're waiting for the medicine to arrive. We need to launch a rescue effort to save our young people one at a time if necessary. And we need to start that at home. It is an effort in which you as corporate Executives Foundation officers and concerned citizens can take an active and very helpful role. Because it will require your Goodwill your cooperation and your support. But the primary impetus I believe must come from Black America itself. And particularly from those of us who have achieved some success. Let me in the next few minutes be as specific as I can. We've come to be spoiled by the civil rights movement of the 1960s. That period who Salient feature was a successful mass movement has led some of us to become too impatient. With the purely personal approach to problem solving. And yet it strikes me as the beginning of wisdom to recognize that. There are some things that mass movements can do and some things they cannot do. They can for instance bring National Focus to such problems as racial discrimination and denial of opportunity. And as a matter of fact the movement of the 1960s did that in Splendid fashion and the lasting Monument to its success recently resides in the in the legislation that is now on the books anti-discrimination legislation voting rights legislation and so on. But mass movements while they can do those things cannot reach the individuals who fallen through the cracks and Inspire them to take advantage of the opportunity that does exist normally its parents who do that job. Just as our own parents inspired and pressured and cajoled us into making the most of our to limited opportunities just as we do with our own flesh and blood children, but who is to do it for the children of the so-called underclass? As we've noted the parents of these children are too often mere children themselves in mature and sophisticated and inexperienced in the ways of the achieving world. These young mothers cannot give their children good advice because they don't have it to give. And the fathers aren't there to provide the discipline to set the example of getting up every morning going to work to teach their children by daily example what it is to be a man and a father. So who is to do it? We are. We blacks who understand and have achieved and have enjoyed some success. We'll have to do it. how there will be as many variations on that theme as there are members of this audience, but the theme I have in mind is this middle-class blacks have been accused of indifference to the plight of the black underclass. I think it's a bum rap. We don't do as much as we might because we don't know what to do some few of us have the ability and The credibility to go into the ghettos and deal with the youngsters. They are quite directly. But many of us lack the necessary entree. Some of us, let's face it our afraid. Black teenage youngsters boys, especially can be a very can be very very intimidating. I think there's a lot of middle-class blacks who would participate in a salvage operation. If someone would give us the means of doing so. Here's one possible model. No model is the wrong word because it implies that there has been a successful use of this thing and there is no success to report yet. Let's say here's one possible idea some friends and I have been trying to organize a program to get black Achievers and the children of the black underclass together. We thought about calling ourselves uncle's because that's the sort of relationship we had in mind. But while our Focus would be on boys and men for some of the reasons I've outlined there surely is no reason not to include girls and women. We the members of the achieving class would play the role of Uncle to our self-selected nephews. What would he do whatever we thought we could do successfully for some it would mean guidance of the sort that athletic coaches are frequently able to provide young athletes. For others it might mean tutorial helped some might be comfortable working with teenagers others more at ease working with younger children. But in every case the goal would be to help these youngsters to see the world as we help our own children to see it to learn how to take advantage of opportunity to focus on achievement to avoid the things that threaten to mess up their lives to help them. Learn the art and the necessity of making good decisions. The adult participants would be recruited. Through newspapers radios television stories to personal contact through black churches and fraternal organizations. And matched perhaps by computer. Everybody's got a PC these days to youngsters who would in effect be self-selected why self-selected? For the pragmatic reason that few of us are good enough to help young people who have not yet seen the necessity of the sort of help. We might be able to provide. What I have in mind would be to announce the existence of the program through schools and counselors and churches in the targeted parts of town and then encourage the young people to write letters of application saying they wanted to join such a program. I frankly wouldn't care what reasons they gave for wanting to hook up with us. The important thing would be that they took the initiative because they wanted something that they thought we might be able to help them obtain. see, I think there are some children out there who at least early in their lives have a sense that they are missing something about to have something passed them by and there's nobody out there to reinforce and them that that notion that they may be about to drop off the track if these kids had somebody they could have a relationship with Uncle Bill Uncle Joe Uncle Jim just to talk every now and then and take a ride out of the neighborhood and to watch a family sit around and talk and be a family And to watch some success at close hand, I think some of these kids might be saved and saved permanently. What about the others though? Those who won't apply because they don't know they need help. These are often the ones who most need help. I understand that. But I'm a enough of a realist to appreciate limits. There's simply not much most of us can do with youngsters who don't know they need help. There's little any of us can do with a kid who's making several hundred dollars a week selling PCP or crack or some other deadly thing, but there is a lot we can do for youngsters who want to achieve the sort of success we have achieved. people get a little uncomfortable. Sometimes when I talk about this idea of helping those who surface on their own I call it skimming. I'm not afraid to say it quite directly. It seems to me we make the mistake of assuming that we ought to give the most help to those who are in the worst trouble. It seems fair. When his first say it, but then you think about it. If you if you give the most help to those who are in the worst trouble the chances are that you'll help won't be effective and you will have nothing left for those who with a little effort could have been saved permanently. I say, let's Kim Let's Take These under class neighborhoods and as youngsters rise to the top Of that limited pool either by showing some success in school by showing some interest in doing something worthwhile by doing something in the neighborhood. By whatever means they present themselves for help. Let's give them as much help as we can quickly bring together and make a permanent difference in their lives. I promise you others will rise to the surface after they've been skimmed off and that's seems to me you call it triage or whatever you want to that seems the most appropriate way to go about it. What kind of help we can help them with their studies help them to locate scholarships and other opportunities help them to find jobs, even if the job is working around. Our own homes can take them to sporting events or outings with our own families. Can give them the opportunity crucial in my view to see a functioning family headed by husband-and-wife Mom and Dad in operation and even more important sustained regular contact can provide us the opportunity to inculcate the attitudes and the habits and the values that helped us to break out of our own limiting environments. I watched this happen in my own household with a foster son who's now 25, but it was 13 when he came to us. I watch the transformation in his Outlook in his sense of values in his use of language and in all the things that we know to be important. Reggie will be the first member of his family to graduate from college. He is not sure he may be the first to graduate from high school. He wants to go to law school. I don't know whether he'll be a successful lawyer or not. I do know and firmly believe that Reggie's life has been permanently changed for the better because he spent several years with us. I know our lives have There's much that the entire Society can do and I don't mean everybody has to go out and take a foster son. I look at the problem as it creeps up out of the underclass where it's now focused I spend significant periods of time on college campuses around the country and one of the things I see is the disproportion of young men to young women young black men and young women in college. It's just that one of the historically black colleges about 10 days ago, and there was on that campus a ratio of about. Three or four girls to every boy enrolled in that College. I'm told that's fairly typical. What happens of course is that? The young the young girls young girls because they have mothers around as models learned responsibility fairly early. And they start looking for ways. They can find employment and it may mean learning to type. It may be made mean cleaning up their language a little bit and dressing a little different and doing some things that will work in the personnel office the boys don't get that. In fact, they get the opposite they get reinforced by their peers in virtually every single characteristic that is counterproductive to their academic and economic advancement. Do you speak? Well, you may have to fight your way home. If you do do you insist on studying and doing homework? If you don't sneak to the library, you may find yourself the object of ridicule. Do you participate in classroom discussions? Come on boy. Stop trying to be white everything that that is associated with academic and economic success except illegality except crime gets put down as somehow unmei land on black. It's a tragedy we need to work on that and work hard on it. We also need to find ways to deliver our people from the never-never land where actions do not have the natural consequences. I'm talking about the way we do welfare among other things and public housing and all of those things. We require as admission to Some fairly expensive programs public housing and Welfare. Only one thing that you be a failure. As soon as you pay that price you're in and the only way you're ever put out is if you stop being a failure. Any Street Corner psychologist will tell you that you get more of what you reward and less of what you punished. If we reward failure, we're going to get more failure. It seems to me that we have to devise ways where even people without money. Without resources can earn their way into public housing for instance. I mean perhaps by their family contributing to the general upkeep of the plays by you know, accumulating merits and demerits for keeping the common areas clean on their assigned weeks, whatever we have to find some way to do it other than by simply rewarding failure because all it gives us is more failure. We have to work all of us for Full Employment. Because one of the crucial difficulties is that our children don't see a place for themselves as things are now they don't see a reason for doing the things that we keep telling them. They must do which is to study and work hard and stay out of trouble with the law. They don't see a payoff because they don't see anybody going to work. They see too many people who do make an effort not getting anywhere as a result of that effort. We need to work at full employment. but when it comes to the underclass, they are opportunities more opportunities there than they are able to see Someone has to lift their vision. That someone is us. I guess I don't really need to go on much longer since we're going to have some some questions and answers after this. But you see what I'm talking about. Some groups are already doing something very much. Like what I'm talking about. I mean Big Brothers Big Sisters, I know a group called concerned black men, but too many others view such an approach. Such a one-on-one approach as hopelessly Limited. They prefer to dream of some massive approach. to solving the problem Well, I'd like to see the problem addressed a massively to if I thought that were possible. I don't think it is possible or even necessary. I'm reminded of the Martin Luther King forest in Israel with some of you may have seen. Lovely Lush thing, but what strikes me about it is that this huge Forest of 10,000 trees was planted one tree at a time. Thank you very (00:34:21) much. Just about to tell him that's the best hand. I've just about ever heard. We'll have questions and answers now, please go to the microphones that are on either side of the room. And in the middle, would (00:35:01) you elaborate on the K-12 program the positives and negatives as its presently constructed on what program the K-12 kindergarten through 12th grade as far as the black children. I mean when they're in the school system, I don't understand the question. I'm sorry. I mean other words there in the school system. Yes, what are the positive and negatives of the program's is now set up. That that is not only another speech. That's a that's a major research undertaking because the K through 12 programs obviously work differently in different states and within States and different towns and within Townsend different districts. I can't speak constructively. I think to question that big give me a smaller bite and I'll try to chew it. Excuse me. I had the opportunity to have a part in this time. And then one of the things that I've found out as being a farmer found out it was wonderful work to to have but finding out that there can be some real problems that a person has then I decided that I was going to be to look for work way out in Los Angeles, California. I couldn't find work but it so happened when I was only about 20 years of age. There was another black men with me and he was real nice towards me and it had quite an effect on me on me then later on in life. I decided to go to Seminary and I've been a pastor for a number of years and I've found out the problems that are in this now for the past five years. I'm retired and one thing I've learned is to be able to talk to others who have their problems and I thought that's I would just share this with you. Thank you very much. Mr. Raspberry, I'd be interested in knowing some specific ideas you have about reforming the welfare system. I work in public welfare. And as you know, there are a lot of studies about welfare reform at this time, and I'd like to hear some of your ideas. Thank you. Yeah, I don't have a blueprint for the reform of the system. I think I have some ideas as to what as to what a revamp system ought to do. And one of the crucial things it ought to do in my view is to restore some sense of actions having consequences. We we hear all the time about welfare enticing young women into having babies out of wedlock so they can get a check and all of that. I don't believe that happens. I don't I don't know what anybody who would have a baby in order to get a welfare check or have a second baby to get a bigger check. What I do see is welfare the well the the growing size of the welfare check removing some of the consequences of the second and third babies if my wife and I decided to have another child. We have to take a lot of things into account because our budget won't grow automatically to accommodate it. We need to we need to look very carefully at how and how we disconnect people from the world of reality. There are some ideas that we could explore at some length and I'm not sure that this time to go into them now and tell you flat out. I don't have a blueprint. I don't think anybody does but I think we need to be talking about it and seeing what a non-punitive kind of way we can do to keep people from being sucked into a system that I think is in many ways not doing this very much good (00:39:34) It's raspberry. (00:39:36) I want to hear the presentation by mr. Shrapp. Sure I think is a vice president with Miller's Brewer and he had indicated that the income generated by black Americans. I think it was something like a hundred fifty billion dollars a year which was equivalent to that of Saudi Arabia. And then if we were a separate nation who would rank about 15th in the world But the problem is that we're basically consumers. We don't own anything. We've made a lot of other ethnic group Rich. What are some of your ideas about the fact that we need to create more businesses so we can employ more people and what we shot with each other. There's this problem of perception that the white man is as much colder that the doctors are much better and I recently I just say this time I want to need a lawyer and I had at least ten black people said man. You've been not get a black lawyer get you a white lawyer and I got a white lawyer and it was a disaster for (00:40:37) me. (00:40:47) I had that same lawyer once look It's interesting. I hadn't expected it in this forum. But it is it strikes me as an absolute fact that one of the things we have we have neglected. We blacks I mean is to instill in our children are bright children the entrepreneurial attitude that produces the business that you're talking about. We used to have it. We had it in the days when it was absolutely necessary that we had it because we were not wanted as as as consumers even by some of the white businesses, but we As a part of that the result of that movement, I talked about earlier straightway abandoned some old established businesses that used to service reasonably. Well, we don't we don't talk to our children about going into business and even Wide Awake middle-class blacks. Don't do it. Either about the closest we come as to send their kids off to the best universities have been get them in and try to get them into somebody's good MBA program, but you come out of graduate school with a Masters in Business Administration not to administer your business but to go to work for somebody you go and and we really don't push kids in the business what we get as a result is a lot of complaints about who is exploiting us this year last year one group own little mom-and-pop store on the corner and we screamed about exploitation and this year somebody else owns it and we'll still screaming It goes from from Jewish to to German to Vietnamese to Korean depending on what town you're in and what part of the country and the one thing we do consistently is shop there and complain we never seem to want to own the store. And I think it's a failure to talk about these things at home and in school. We rarely have entrepreneurs and I'm talking about successful black entrepreneurs come to public schools to talk about how they got in the business what they thought about when they were kids. What were the things that they remember that inspired them to go into business get a lot of doctors lawyers journalists coming by people who work for somebody but we don't get the merchants coming by and there may be some kids who could take some of that and take off until the only young entrepreneurs we got now are the ones selling things that kill us. Bad news. Yes. (00:43:40) I really agree with all I've heard you say today and I'm struck by a couple of things one. You said that you felt whittling away at the problem in terms of the uncle's program or any other variation of that was the medicine while we wait for the Cure and I'm wondering if you could comment on an approach that might address the Cure you said again, for example that it would be good to have big movements for certain things and then small movements for some things. I'm wondering if it might be possible to consider an approach to a cure on a grand scale for unemployment in the reason that I'm asking you to talk about that from that perspective is that it appeared to me from some research that I did and tracking the unemployment situation that even during the time when this country had full employment by what our Economist view full employment, which is no more than a Percent unemployment level our rate the rate of disparity between black and white was growing gradually, but steadily year after year while the whites was not and so it seemed as if there was something really structural happening and when that was happening we weren't aware of it and by the time it became very visible, we were very hurt and it seems that something that hard for people to see and that structural is going to take some Grand move and I'm wondering if you could address some possibility for dressing a cure on a grand scale. (00:45:20) I don't see I don't see a grand scale picked your ad and do wish desperately that we had some political leadership capable of seeing what strikes me as as obvious. One of the things that the that the the demographers and The Economist tell us is that in rather short order we are going to A labor shortage that we are going to have to few people to do what needs doing. Now the jobs won't be ditch-digging. They won't be no skilled jobs, but it occurs to me that if we were to prepare ourselves as a nation forget just the race thing if we were to prepare ourselves as a nation for a laborer short Market a few years down the road. We'd better get some people in the habit of going to work every day doing something. Now. Those are very hard habits to build in after they have disappeared people who go to work regularly can be retrained and can learn to do what's necessary even in high-tech operations. You don't need to be a genius to work at a computer firm the other things to do than program the computers. And and designed the computers. There are a lot of other things to do, but we need to get people in the habit as a matter of routine expecting that they will get up of a morning and go to work you break that connection you break that habit and you do long-term serious damage to a generation of people. Yeah. (00:47:00) Mr. Raspberry, my name is Margaret Jones. And I work with two adolescent single mothers groups from 12 to 19. And as you were talking and I looked around the room, I'm sorry to say that we have middle and upper-middle class. It was fifteen or twenty dollars that we had to pay to get in to hear you speak. I'm sorry to say that the people about whom you're speaking some of those people are not even represented here today. And I think that's a sad commentary because as we speak about the single mothers and the single fathers and I work with them. My perspective is that they don't have always the opportunity to express their Viewpoint. I'm hopeful that at another time when this kind of topic comes up that perhaps you will have a table or to reserved for those people who were discussing, but they have no part in the rhetoric. One I would like to also state that when we talk about an education and most of our girls are in the process now of getting either their GED or getting their diploma. Where can you go with just a high school education at this time when we sometimes find master's degrees swamp and floors. So one if they can make more money or make it on a welfare check. What are they going to do? We've tried to put some of them into the workforce and at the most they can get is two dollars and something an hour three or four dollars. That means that they will stay on welfare. So what is the option to that and I think there's more than the somewhat simplistic answer that was mentioned. (00:48:54) I think you asked questions that that are at once profoundly important and yet very difficult to devise good answers to I think if you look at the thing basic solely on an economic basis. You can't you cannot you cannot arrive at good answers one of the things that seems to me vitally important for us to do to our for our young people. Is to give them some strong and early assistance on answering the question. Who am I? What kind of person Am I who am I going to be if you if you can deal with the question of what kind of person you are? And answered in some positive ways. It may put some kinds of things that look economically attractive off-limits to you. If there is nothing off limits to you except those things that are not lucrative you're going to make a number of mistakes. What we need to do more of is to teach our children judgment to teach them to make choices that are in their long-term benefit too long a period of making bad choices immoral to us is unethical choices will tend to get kids in a situation where they can't turn around. The one thing. I try to I try to talk about other people's children the way I talk about my own because that forces me to be honest the one thing I try to get my children to do Is to answer for themselves and to keep searching out and rounding out the answer what kind of person am I what am I? What am I going to be? Who am I going to be and if they can keep that question in focus it helps them through a lot of fiendishly seductive problems from their peers and others. And all I can say is that so far it's worked for me. Thank you. (00:51:16) You would comment on your article published a few weeks ago about ways to reduce teenage teenage pregnancy aside from teaching sex education in the schools. I thought it was very Innovative and and may have more of an impact than our current sex education programs. (00:51:42) What I was trying to say in that piece is that we make a mistake. It seems to me if we view adolescent pregnancy. as primarily a result of contraceptive ignorance I don't think that is all there is to it. I don't think there is that that is very much of the problem to be frank about it. I think probably 90% of the youngsters who get pregnant know enough about contraception not to get pregnant if that had been the choice they made we're talking again about a question of choices. Now a lot of things go into Choice making one of the things that goes in is having some sense that your choices will make a difference. We've neglected say that to our children what we do very often. Is paint our children as passive victims? Of a society that doesn't care about them that is racist that is all of these things. It's probably true but it doesn't matter. I mean because we can't we are not going to change that quickly for from from the point of view of the children. They need to be reminded and told and taught and have it drilled into them that in spite of the bad weather of racism that's out there their choices made and and stuck with can change their lives for the better for all time many of the young women who get pregnant do so because they don't see a good reason for postponing sexual activity the some that Sons and Daughters the daughters of middle-class people always see a good reason for doing it. They may they may make the mistake and get pregnant anyhow, but they tend to have In hand a reason for delaying sexual activity. They've got this wonderful my kids all know they've got these wonderful wonderful careers ahead of them. They have no idea what they're going to be doing with their lives and they change every other week, but it's going to be wonderful and and it's going to be great and they know that if they mess up now they will they will do real something terribly important their youngsters the age of my kids who see nothing down the road for them. And and if you don't if you are young girl of fifteen and you don't see anything down the road as a result of your abstinence and you're getting tremendous pressure from your boyfriend who might lose if you keep on trying to cling to some virtue that the kids are laughing at you about anyway, This delayed gratification sounds kind of silly. We need to part of the Full Employment thing. I'm talking about. We need to provide reasons for young people to make the kinds of decisions. We say we want them to make and once there is a logical reason for making that kind of decision. Then we have to let work as hard as we can to make the kids understand that there are these reasons and to keep talking to them and keep them keep reinforcing them in the good decisions. That's that's as much as I can say I'd like to say that I enjoyed your (00:55:17) presentation this morning and I'm enjoying your presentation again this afternoon there. I also wanted to mention to the audience and also for your information that there is a program in placed in the Twin Cities that is testing that notion that you mentioned about matching and Mentor mentoring and matching adults with with younger disadvantaged Youth and it's called Career Beginnings. There are a hundred students in the program and their career are interest in areas range from those that want to be doctors to those that want to be Engineers to those that want to be psychologists to those that want to be teachers to those that want to be planners to those that want to be Mayors and governmental officials and they're all from inner-city schools in Minneapolis and st. Paul. (00:56:12) They're represented representative of (00:56:14) low-income yet tenacious youth. The problem is finding adults who are willing to work one-on-one with those tenacious Youth and we need adults from all occupational areas. We need doctors. We need lawyers. We need artists. We need planners. We need government officials. So I would like to extend an invitation to everyone in this room to please. Give me a call. My name is Pamela coax. Mmm. My number is 3 7009172. If you know of people if you yourself are interested in being a mentor, I would be glad to have you we think that notion works also. Thank you. Thank you Pamela. I'm sorry. Our question-and-answer period has to end. On behalf of Minnesota meeting. I would like to give you a present. It's the Minnesota meeting peace pipe by Indian artist Robert Rose bear. It is symbolizes for the Native Americans the sacred bond between the everyday world and the world of the spirit for us. It is a reminder of the fragility of human bonds and the importance of maintaining them in order to maintain. Peace. Peace. Thank you very much. You have been listening to William raspberry a Washington Post columnist is speaking before the Minnesota meeting in Minneapolis live broadcasts of the Minnesota meeting are sponsored by the Twin Cities based law firm of Oppenheimer wolf and Donnelly in recognition of its 100th year anniversary. If you would like a tape cassette copy of William raspberry speech and the question and answer period following this afternoon. You can write to the Minnesota meeting. The cost of the cassette tapes are $7.50 make your check out to Minnesota meeting and send it to 411 Union Place 333 North Washington Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401. Again, that address 411 Union Place 333, North Washington Avenue, Minneapolis 55401 (00:58:48) Good afternoon, Gary eichten here inviting you to stay tuned for news updates throughout the afternoon and for our regional news summary MPR Journal today. We'll talk with Minnesota teachers to get their ideas on education reform and also hear from the Surgeon General on teenage smoking and our children's health. I hope you'll join us MPR Journal is broadcast at 5 o'clock on FM 5:30 on 1330 AM (00:59:11) like to thank some people who helped out with our broadcast from Minnesota meeting this afternoon. Dan Olson was our reporter on the scene and giving cues and such Scott Bridgewater was the technical director in the Studio's here technical Direction by Clifford Bentley and Petty re Rudolph looking for some very nice weather across our region for the next couple of days. Mostly sunny skies and warmer temperatures highs from the 50s to 60s. I'm Paula Schroeder. This is the news and information service of Minnesota Public Radio. Ksjn Minneapolis. St. Paul in the Twin Cities. Today. We're looking for mostly sunny skies and a high near 60 degrees. The low tonight should be 35 under clear skies than tomorrow sunny, the hi Ron 58. It's one o'clock.