Instilling Values in Youth

* The essential thoughts of Cynthia Tucker (Commentary, Oct. 5) and George Weigel (Oct. 6) need to be joined. Tucker had the courage to expose the harm that some of the so-called community leaders of ghettos (and I add barrios) plus a few misguided academics and rap artists are doing to some of the youth in our inner cities. Weigel points to the importance of morals to the survival of society and a successful life. Those who by their negative rantings about society in general tend to discourage or put down those who try to excel. Not only must the youth be urged to stay in school and nurture a self-disciplined life of hard work and study but to live with caring and moral values in all relationships. In fact there are too many in all generations that need the latter. We all need it for inner-peace and self-esteem.

For those who say morals are irrelevant to success one only has to look at the lives of those who have made it out of poverty to the ranks of the respected in society. They have essentially all had an excellent set of values which they lived by.

All persons of goodwill need to reach out to convert the bigots and hatemongers in all of society that discourage some from trying to break through the stereotypes.

AUSTIN H. GALE

Los Angeles

* I am very disappointed with the misguided article written by Cynthia Tucker concerning black youth in America. I have lived as a black person in America for all of my 38 years; I have grown up as a black youth here in Los Angeles; I have taught black youth in the inner-city schools of Los Angeles; I am parent to four black youths in Los Angeles and I have never, never ever heard young people claimed to be following black leadership down a path of “failure, pain and victimization.”

I am quite familiar with past and present black leadership and I cannot attribute any of this “upside down” value system to any one of them. Tucker is equally wrong in regard to black radicals. In my youth my hero was Malcolm X, who in no way suggested that blacks not fight against the odds to achieve full personhood and even national autonomy. To the contrary, Malcolm X’s best-known statement of philosophy was that the goals of black economic empowerment, black political independence, black human rights and black racial dignity should be pursued at all costs.

That racism is alive and well and living in America was recently documented in a study of the 1991 recession, which showed that African-Americans were the only racial group to suffer a net loss in employment.

Tucker’s slanders about black leadership and her dangerous underestimation of the intelligence of black youth are a disservice to her worthy goal of inspiring black youth to achieve against all odds.

MADISON T. SHOCKLEY II

Commission for Racial Justice

United Church of Christ, Los Angeles