Standing Up To My Father’s Rage
I was barely a teenager when I first learned about reducing fractions to their lowest common denominator. It’s not that 
I hated math. I was gifted with the ability to do many math equations in my head without the need of a writing pad.
But, our family moved so frequently, from one run-down neighborhood to the next, attending schools in some of the worst schools in the area. Throughout my childhood I had limited access to a quality education as did all all eight of us children. It was rare for us to finish a school year in which we hadn’t transferred schools at least two or three times.
During those early years of my childhood, most of my education came from the streets. I learned that hanging out in the streets meant my language skills and behavior reduced to the lowest common denominator.
Lowest commong denominator is a great term for describing how, in human interaction, we “sink” to the most basic, least sophisticated level when we feel threatened, or the lives of our loved ones are threatened.
If you’ve ever lived in government subsidized housing projects, you know what I mean. Before you realize it, your behavior mirrors the very people you least want to emulate.
Troubled teens and problem children in our neighborhood, who were old enough to think about it, had little regard for higher education. Crime, violence, addiction and no hope were accepted as a way of life. As a teenager I knew many of the perpetrators and most of the victims.
Some street tough teens are prone to a meltdown at any moment and become violent for no apparent reason. Education is the last thing on your mind when you have to worry whether you will have to fight a drunk or a restive teen with a volcanic temper, as you are walking home from school.
When things go wrong in poverty neighborhoods, and they always do, the results aren’t pretty. The last place you want to be is in the wrong place at the wrong time. You start feeling like you are in living in hell.
In the video above I discuss my father’s abuse. For years he had abused my mother, my sisters and us boys. My frustration with my father’s constant abuse had reached a boiling point. At the age of eighteen I decided to stand up to my father and put an end to his raging violence.
It is my experience that poverty victims are just like everyone else when it comes to the desire to live a better life. Yet, without help from role models, how can we expect a troubled teen hanging out with street toughs to know how to escape their desperate circumstances?
Smart role models look beyond the behavior of the troubled teen or problem child, and respond to the underlying causes–languge barriers and lack of knowledge about the hidden rules of behavior of mainstream America.
By giving troubled teens and problem children, usually the poorest in the neighborhood, the support resources that other children in the middle class take for granted, society can help impoverished teens avoid “reducing to the lowest common denominator.”
Role models offer a better way out for poverty victims because the lessons they learn go straight to the heart. It appeals to their sense of dignity and self-worth. It brings structure and security to the child’s daily life, instead of living with epsodic choas and threats of violence.
Most importantly, it gives troubled kis an alternative to the deprivations of poverty—a chance to mingle with and someday join the mainstream society.
