Parents must act like parents
In Memphis and across much of the nation, 2017 should be designated the year of parental responsibility. A year when parents and anyone else tasked with supervising young people at least up to age 18 must lead them — by the ear, if necessary — away from mayhem.
Police Director Michael Rallings so much as made the declaration last week after discussing with City Council members children running amok at local malls. In talking with reporters outside the City Council chambers, Rallings delivered what should be the quote of the year to parents of juveniles.
“It’s not our job to raise your children. That’s your job.” Amen, brother. Yes, I know, Memphis is a village. And the proverb that it takes a village to raise a child still holds. But before the village gets involved, some spade work has to be done by parents, grandparents and others in the immediate family.
That is the message I took from Rallings’ comment and earlier remarks from Deputy Chief Terry Landrum in the wake of melees Dec. 26 at Wolfchase Galleria and Oak Court malls. Too many parents are using malls, movie theaters and other public venues as a baby sitter, Landrum said. “. . . The problem is the unsupervised juveniles. They just drop them there, and they get into all sorts of trouble.”
The mall brawls that occurred the day after Christmas became a national conundrum. They inexplicably broke out mostly around food courts at malls in more than a dozen places from the East Coast to the West Coast. Stranger still were the false 911 reports during several of the incidents that gunshots had been fired inside the malls — which created stampedes that could have caused severe injuries.
The New York Times reported some police officials believe the chaos had the hallmarks of social media-generated flash mobs, in which large groups can quickly gather at a specified location.
USA Today was even more emphatic. “There is a definite connection with social media,” said Chris McGoey, who runs a security consulting firm in Los Angeles.
“Added to that, it happened the day after Christmas, most of these individuals were school-age children and they have nothing to do. And this is the YouTube generation, they record everything, and they want to stimulate things through their social media.”
Unfortunately, teenage addiction to social media — and the viral celebrity status that potentially comes with it — is at this point irreversible. Besides, mainstream media have come to rely on viral videos for much of their daily news coverage.
But we cannot accept the explanation that these mall fights were the result of young miscreants with too much idle time on their hands and do nothing.
It’s also not enough just to expect shopping malls in Memphis; Aurora, Ill.; Manchester, Conn.; Elizabeth, N.J.; and Tempe, Ariz., to institute adult supervision policies and increase security, and think that will solve the problem.
And we certainly cannot expect the understaffed Memphis Police Department to constantly be everywhere that young people congregate.
If we’re going to insist that children start behaving themselves in public, we must also insist that parents start behaving like parents. That means knowing what their children have in their possession. Child privacy rights end where parental rights begin. It also means watching them more closely and, yes, adding more strict discipline when necessary.
Believe me, I am all for mentoring programs and recruiting more adults, particularly African-American men, to intervene in the lives of juveniles. But let’s resolve to make 2017 the year of the parent.
The village can only do so much. And it’s far better for parents to be hauling their kids out of the mall than bailing them out of jail.
Otis Sanford holds the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Memphis. Contact him at o.sanford@memphis.edu or at 901678-3669. Follow him on Twitter @OtisSanford. Otis Sanford holds the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Journalism at the University of Memphis. Contact him at 901-678-3669 or at o.sanford@memphis.edu.