Self-Defense and Self-Esteem

Growing up in Detroit, Frederick Dean Little was, by his own description, “top dog” in the Junior Panthers gang. “I used to be rough and tough. I did what gang members do: wasted time and hurt people.”

Today, he is Farid Zarif, and he is using his skills as a martial-arts black belt, as well as the self-knowledge he has acquired at 32, to teach street-survival skills to black city kids.

Lured to Hollywood by dreams of being another Bruce Lee, Zarif landed a job as bodyguard to singer Stevie Wonder. But in 1983 a personal tragedy, the murder of his sister Iris in Detroit during an attempted rape, changed the direction of his life. “She was 20 years old,” he said. “She felt that she could take care of herself, that no one would ever attack her, that she’d say the right things and they’d go away. She was stabbed 24 times.”

Today, “Dr. Zarif”--he has a doctorate in nutrition--teaches self-protection, as well as self-esteem, to youngsters 3 to 16 at the Zarif Health Center on Crenshaw Boulevard. Some already have been exposed to fighting as a way of survival but, Zarif says, “we show them that fighting is the lowest form of communication, the last resort.”

He teaches them, along with the basics of karate, wu shu and tae kwon do, the importance of learning and the necessity of discipline. Many of his pupils come from fatherless homes, as did Zarif, but he won’t let them use that “as an excuse,” as he once did. He tells them over and over, “You are great. You can do anything.”

And he teaches them “the things they should know in case of abduction, rape, whatever.” He advocates a Hansel-and-Gretel approach--drop a shoe, a necklace, a lunch pail, leave a trail of clues for police or family. “Anything they own,” he keeps telling them, “isn’t as great as their lives.”