Bad Parenting, Crime, And Bakersfield High - By N.L. Belardes

When Jackie Parks asked me to write a blog about the current Bakersfield High School crime controversy, I at first hesitated. Parks was clearly ruffled about the BHS Blue & White article that stated kids were getting iPods and cell phones ripped off. I was more concerned with the idea of criminals out of control.

Maybe I hadn’t written enough in the article, “BHS Crime Unnerves Students, Local Business.” I don’t know if anyone in the media other than ABC23 read the article. But it was meant as a further wake up call to school officials who deny problems on campus with youth crime.

Yet Parks had a different angle. Where does a kid get a $600 cell phone? And I get her drift. But I’ll get back to that. I mean, I have an opinion about the school, its problems and my kids. Both of my kids have attended BHS. One is still there. My kid isn’t a valedictorian, though I don’t hesitate to call him a creative genius. And I’m not the PTA type of parent. I don’t participate like I used to when my kids were little, though I did attend a Kindergarten pumpkin patch outing recently. I do encourage from the homefront that my kids, no matter what their age, are to be stand-up people, compassionate, listeners and doers.

My philosophy is different than most parents. I don’t believe it’s what you become in high school, but what you become in college. So I allowed my kids to explore and focus on self identity.

My youngest: he’s deep in self exploration. He’s in a pop punk band and recently wrote an anti-racism song. I really like the lyrics. They’re meaningful. He’s maturing.

We as the people must stand for what is right.
We don’t want any judgment in race and color.

I can see that an incident that took place on BHS campus a few years ago possibly helped mature his thought process.

We’re a multicultural family, part Latino, though we don’t look it to most people. Sometimes skin color is stereotyped not just among people in general, but among youth. If certain types of kids think you’re white, they’ll call you derogatory names. In the case of my kids, it was after a BHS football game, I believe in 2005, and was more than just name-calling. They, along with two friends, also of Latino origin, were jumped by a pack of 20-30 roving kids, for no reason other than Hispanic kids likely thought all the kids who were walking were white. Can I prove such? No. Other than what may have been said as fists swung and kids ran. Yet it doesn’t take a brain surgeon, especially since I grew up facing dual ethnic issues.

You can read about part of the incident in an unedited version of a piece I wrote for MAS Magazine titled, “The Crisis of Ethnic Dualism in Latino California.”

The bad part of the experience? Getting blamed by police and school officials for allowing kids to walk to a football game. Yet that incident started on campus with the roaming group beating one boy for no reason. It spilled from there onto H Street. Walking the streets had nothing to do with it.

The real problems? There weren’t enough police at the game, and no notices ever went to homes in the area that could have said what the police and officials were intimating: BHS after dark is a danger zone. Lock your kids up in their homes. Danger! Danger!

Why do I even bring this up? Whether stereotyping because of skin color or pickpocketing from kids with expensive cell phones and iPods, there are problems on our high school campuses. And there are many problems with parenting on the homefront that are, I believe, part of the cause.

My kids don’t carry $600 cell phones. My kids wouldn’t steal them or threaten anybody for one. I guess if I could afford cell phones that expensive, one of my kids wouldn’t even be in a public school. He’d be riding high and mighty at a fancy private school dressed in a pinstriped suit.

I agree with Parks who said, “School is a warzone,” that students need to protect their items, that kids need to be diligent so they don't get ripped off.

Yet, there’s the problem with having such expensive items. It reeks of a lack of ethics at home among parents and their children.

Our world needs leaders. And parents are immediate leaders to kids. As I worked on my history degrees, it was easy to see that ethics were just stronger in the past among government leaders. It’s not just about how we view the past. It’s about the idea that the past has changed. Today’s politicians strain when they speak and talk about ethics in a world where capitalism has become the new American religion. No separation of church and state there. And don’t get me going on the “In God We Trust” waste of time issue. That campaign is a slap in the face of history and social science teachers everywhere.

But I digress.

So I face reality. I let my kid have his identity in exchange for decent grades and the promise that he isn’t going to do anything idiotic to other people, especially over a cell phone. He’s a good kid, really, and so is his brother who is enrolled in his first year in college. I appreciate how they’re both maturing.

With that said, I wonder if any of the troubled parents out there even read blogs.