COLUMN ONE : Solving the Ills of Black Men : African-American males have been called an ‘endangered species.’ The issue now is what to do--and the approaches range from scolding to mentoring.

When Delores Williams sees a black man strolling down the street arm in arm with a black woman, she calls out to him in glee. If the couple are pushing a stroller, or if children are trailing along, all the better.

Mindful of a host of social problems facing black men, Williams praises the black husbands and fathers she encounters. Each gets a certificate of appreciation and an invitation to an annual awards banquet held by the Black Women’s Alliance, the organization she founded 1 1/2 years ago from her Los Angeles apartment.

Her approach may be unique, but Williams is not alone in her focus on the black male. Black community organizations with diverse agendas and widely conflicting philosophies come together on one issue--that for all the successful black families, there are a significant number of African-American men, hard hit by a host of social ills, who are in need of focused attention.

“If you look at the death statistics, if you look at special education classes, if you look at prisons, black males are disproportionately represented,” said Sandra Cox, founder of the Southern California Assn. of Black Psychologists. “That’s the way it is.”

The approaches to getting at the problem, however, are as diverse as the political spectrum allows.

Williams favors positive reinforcement. Other efforts, such as the mentoring programs sponsored by 100 Black Men of Los Angeles, try to inspire those most in need. Then there are the scoldings dished out by an Inglewood-based organization, Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny.

What all the groups are addressing are grim statistics such as these: One in four black men in their 20s is in jail or otherwise involved in the criminal justice system. Black men in poor neighborhoods are less likely to live to age 65 than men in Bangladesh. Black men are the only U.S. demographic group that can expect to live shorter lives in 1990 than they did in 1980.

The studies also say that the majority of black babies are born in single-parent households. Being raised without a father means these children are more likely to become single parents. A disproportionate share of black males also drop out of school, land in unemployment lines and grow up in poverty.

Such gloom is what led Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan to declare the plight of the minority male a major public health problem. Stumping inner cities across the country, he has decried a generation of young men that measure their manhood by the caliber of their guns and the number of children they have fathered. The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People has called the African-American male “an endangered species.”

What is not universally agreed upon is what to do.

Some in the black community are trying to help by looking beyond all the negatives.

“I don’t look at the world through rose-colored eyes,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a local author who writes about black issues. “I recognize that we do have crime, we do have drugs, we do have domestic abuse, too many men who aren’t in the home. There are some elements of truth in all stereotypes. . . . But you can pick up any newspaper, pick up any research study and see those problems. I want to look at the other side of the picture.”

Hutchinson, who has a doctorate in social studies, said he decided to publish “Black Fatherhood,” a tribute to black fathers, precisely because of the many statistics documenting the expanding corps of single black mothers. The book contains interviews with a group of fathers--including his own--describing the unique challenges of being a black dad.

“I keep a constant lookout for changes in my son’s behavior,” one father, a 35-year-old high school music teacher in Compton, says in the book. “I watch how he dresses. Has he started wearing his pants low? Does he wear caps, jackets?”

Another--a 26-year-old father who has joint custody with his ex-wife of a 3-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter--describes how he struggles to protect his children from racism.

“One day my daughter came home from preschool in tears,” he told Hutchinson. “She said that some white kids had called her ugly because she was black. I told her that she was a very pretty little girl. . . . We went over the physical features of her black Barbie doll--nose, eyes, lips, hair and ears.”

The more depressing the statistics appear, Hutchinson said, the more important it becomes to not lose sight of the big picture. The majority of black fathers are good and caring--men who do not fit the negative profile but nonetheless must grapple with the negative stereotypes, he says. If one out of four black men is involved in the criminal justice system, as one study found, why not investigate what the other three are doing right, Hutchinson says.

“If the general public believes that most black males are criminals, then society has absolved itself of any responsibility,” he said. “We have to realize that some African-Americans are like that, some Asians are like that, some Latinos and whites are like that. We’re not all like that.”

Jesse Peterson, who runs BOND out of a Manchester Boulevard storefront next to a nail salon, said he has the most realistic approach--a head-on assault on the problem that he calls “Rebuilding the Black Community by Rebuilding the Black Male.”

In the process, he has been called racist, sexist, insensitive and overly confrontational. He has been fired from his radio show, has received threatening telephone calls and recently was asked to leave an Inglewood continuation school because his comments were judged to be too inflammatory.

Peterson’s doctrine is hard-edged. “Our young black males have no sense of values on life,” he said. “They don’t know what principles or values mean. There’s no sense of self-reliance at all. The hearts of black boys are hardened. They have no sense of what it’s like to be a man.”

Peterson, who owns a commercial cleaning business, makes regular visits to schools, halfway houses, homeless shelters and wherever else struggling black men are willing to hear his message. Encouraging young men to postpone sex, he tells them that they are really just looking for love and attention that they could find inside themselves. Forgive your parents, he says. Stop being so angry. Get control of your life.

One day last month at the Inglewood school for at-risk youth, Peterson’s talk exploded into a shouting match when he bluntly recited his theory that the problems black men face are not the result of white racism or any other external factors. One of the black male’s lingering problems, he told the students, is that he has become emasculated by the highly emotional black women who raised him.

“You’re dogging women!” one teen-age girl yelled from the front of the room, which was filled with teen-agers who had been in trouble with the law. “You put women down. I think it’s equal, equal.”

“Women don’t make good decisions--see how out of control you are,” retorted Peterson, who supports Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas but considers most black leaders off-track.

“I don’t like that,” the girl said. “Just because your focus is on men, you’re always putting us down. That’s not right. If you’re going to judge the girls, you have to judge the boys, too. Everything you say goes in one ear and out the other. I feel you’re a male chauvinist.”

The boys shouted her down. The girls lent her support. In the back, staff members of the county-run school groaned.

A male teacher stood up and explained that he disagreed with Peterson--that the teacher knew many strong black women.

“That’s because you’re weak,” Peterson shot back at the teacher, a remark that so infuriated school officials they cut the presentation short and sent the role model packing.

Peterson is not the only lightning rod for controversy.

Some complain that focusing so much attention on the plight of black males makes the situation worse, further separating this group in peoples’ minds from the rest of society. They say that society as a whole is suffering a breakdown, that it is unfair to single out blacks.

There was contentious debate in 1990 when two schools rooted in an Afro-centric curriculum were set up in Milwaukee specifically for black boys, a plan that critics charged would isolate the boys and reverse the long struggle to desegregate the nation’s public schools.

About the same time, the Los Angeles County Office of Education formed a Black Male Student Task Force to address the declining academic performance of black youths. Some staff members objected because blacks were singled out, so the special classes set up by the task force--with individualized instruction, smaller class sizes and male teachers--have been opened to other needy students.

Yet there are cries of help from black men.

One 23-year-old who has fathered two children but does not keep in regular touch with either says the negative statistics are something he lives with every day.

“Man, it’s tough to be a black man these days,” he said, leaning against the front window of a Vermont Avenue liquor store with the brim of his baseball cap pulled down over his face. “You’re dodging bullets. You’re fathering babies. I know things are messed up. I know it, and I don’t mind at all getting some help.”

One agreed-upon way to help struggling youths is mentoring, which demonstrates that success is attainable.

The 100 Black Men group puts black professionals together with 2,000 youths in eighth grade through high school, providing tutoring, career advice and college scholarships. Made up of attorneys, physicians, businessmen and other professionals, the organization’s membership provides a dramatic counterpoint to the negative statistics on black men.

Dr. William Hayling, a division chief in obstetrics and gynecology at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, said he founded the group in the early 1980s because he became frustrated by the isolation of middle-class blacks from those most in need. The group hopes to focus on younger children--particularly those in public housing projects.

Other organizations are also bringing role models to the inner city to counter the negative influences that youngsters find on the street.

Bill Luster, a 30-year-old salesman who is attending graduate school, said he was a “Sunday afternoon couch potato” before he signed up for the Catholic Big Brothers program six years ago. He is mentoring a 12-year-old named Damian and heads a task force that is trying to recruit more black volunteers for the organization, which is sponsored by the Catholic Church but is nondenominational.

Program organizers cite Luster as a model volunteer. But that does not mean that his relationship with Damian is idyllic.

Their meetings, Luster says, have been contentious at times because the boy’s mother was killed four years ago in a car accident; since then, he has gotten his own way with little discipline from his grandmother. One of Luster’s previous “little brothers” lived in a drug house that later was seized by police. The mother was looking more for financial support than mentoring, he said.

Despite the sometimes rocky relationships, Luster remains convinced that he can make an impact on young men--and that being black adds to what he is able to pass along.

“The little brother emulates the personality, the characteristics, the lifestyle of the big brother,” Luster said. “By having a racial match, you can instill some of the characteristics of the black race and pass along knowledge with a black perspective.”

After the riots, Luster spent time explaining to Damian that it was more than the verdict in the Rodney G. King beating case that sparked the unrest. “It was anger building up over a long period of time,” he said. “I was able to explain that because I’ve experienced it.”

Not all role models are wearing suits and ties. At a string of halfway houses that she visits throughout the city, the Rev. Mary Franklin brings in people who have learned life’s lessons the hard way.

“My role models are just those who are surviving, not doctors or lawyers,” said Franklin, a street-smart evangelist who founded Universal Women of Color Ministries a year ago to reach out to minorities in need.

“To me, a mentor can be someone with a high school degree who is a responsible human being,” she said. “If he’s been to jail, that’s even better. If I bring in someone too naive, the first thing the guys would say is: ‘You don’t know what it’s like not to eat. While you were in school, I was out stealing.’ ”

The 41-year-old Franklin--who has spent time behind bars for prostitution and forgery--uses black literature and African dancers to instill ethnic pride in her clients, most of them black men. She envelops them with hugs and welcomes a stream of controversial speakers. At one session, Peterson of BOND stirred up the men by telling them they were not really men at all. Another time, a woman with AIDS left them trembling with rage when she revealed that she does not let her sexual partners know about her disease.

“I believe in provoking to knowledge,” Franklin said. “I want the men to understand that their thoughts are very valuable and they can say ‘no’ to anything. I sit people in front of them and let them talk. I want them to understand that they have to think critically when they get out of jail.”

From the safe confines of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, young boys who have never been exposed to the criminal justice system learn about it through an innovative mock trial program. Judges and lawyers are brought in to adjudicate infractions by young members of the church. The juries are made up of other young people; the sentences are community service.

“If fish can teach fish to swim and birds can teach birds to fly, I don’t see why African-American men can’t teach boys to be responsible, productive people,” said Mark Whitlock, a church volunteer.

Still, some say that solutions ought to be focused on policies, not people. Jobs must be brought to the inner cities, they say, and welfare policies must be altered so that benefits are not cut off when a woman marries the father of her child.

“I’m tired of people putting us down, calling us this and that,” said Ron Caraway, 35, who lives at the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts. “The average man will take care of his family if he has the means. There is not a guy I know that will not clothe his wife and children. But if he has no job and the only way for him to help is to not be in the home, he’ll leave.”

The way the welfare system is structured, it is best for the family if a man who is unemployed moves out, said Alice Harris, founder of the Parents of Watts Social Service Center. When members of the National Commission on America’s Urban Families visited her center last month, Harris told the presidential appointees that a better welfare system would provide an incentive for working fathers to stay with their families.

That, in a small way, is what Delores Williams is trying to do. And she acknowledges that her campaign to promote male accountability is rooted in self-interest.

Her organization, Williams said, also speaks out against advertisements, news reports and rap songs that degrade black women. It holds an annual beauty contest for black women that, unlike most such contests, encourages single mothers to apply.

“I’m a black woman and I’m trying to help out other black women,” Williams said. “But one thing I realized is that one of the biggest ways to help the women is to help the men.”