Community Essay : ‘Mentoring: a Two-Way Street’

I’m a large-nosed, curly haired, white Jewish middle-class kind of guy. Somewhat of a cross between an artist and a businessman. A “culture vulture,” some people would say. I am also a mentor to a 17-year-old Latino boy named Alejandro Chavez from the Pico-Union area of Downtown.

What do I, this self-defined, formerly dominant but slowly receding species of man, have to offer my young inner-city friend, who lives with his single mom, Yolanda, and 6-year-old brother, Irving, in a rent-controlled, two-bedroom apartment?

I offer Alex a more mainstream role model than he would have otherwise, greater access to the society outside his neighborhood. He offers me a different kind of stability, a sense of ongoing responsibility and commitment. Of watching someone grow and change and discover himself. As corny as it may sound, I receive more from my giving to him than from just about any other endeavor in my life.

Yes, of course, I’m older than Alex. I’ve had more experience. I can educate him about taxes and the IRS, running a business, applying for loans. He’s a curious kid, he wants to become a businessman, he wants to know everything. But I also learn from him. He seems wise beyond his years. He’s goal-oriented. He sees more of a plan to his life than I ever have.

This is not just because he’s Latino and I’m Jewish, or because I grew up with privilege and he with economic hardship. It’s because we, like any two humans, are different people. Inherently. Genetically. Culturally. “Diversity” is not just a nomenclature to sort adversarial groups by skin color, race or gender. It’s a term expressing the basic differences between people: their hearts and minds and souls.

It’s been more than three years since the Fulfillment Fund, a 20-year-old, Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that assists promising disadvantaged or disabled students pursue higher education, got Alex and me into this mentoring relationship. But still, after driving around the burned and looted city in May of 1992, I felt vulnerable. As an educated white male, I realized I have both a history and a responsibility. I also realized that ultimately, we, Alex and I, are just two human beings, a 17 year old and a 45 year old, who, as Rodney King would say, “just have to get along.”

Basically our relationship, as Alex has said many times, consists of friendship and trust. I’m not his teacher. Nor his surrogate father. We tried that for a while, but it didn’t work. Alex felt our confidence had been betrayed. And perhaps he was right.

I’ve taken him to cultural events such as concerts and poetry readings. He’s taken me to the local park, where there’s an amazing mix of drug dealing and soccer, and to Tijuana. I had Alex and his family over for Thanksgiving last year. Alex has had me over many times to eat at his home.

I’ve served as a teacher and role model for hundreds of students for more than 20 years. Teaching, for me, has always been somewhat authoritative. But this mentoring thing is more of a two-way street. Mutual learning. Mutual respect. I have a little more economic freedom, but he has youth, curiosity and a future. I take him to the Museum of Tolerance, and he tells me, in all modesty, he already knows all about it. Prejudice, racism, anti-Semitism--even the Holocaust. He knows firsthand.

Then he asks me why I’m not married at my age, why I don’t have children. He tells me it’s time to settle down, that family and partnership are the most natural things in the human experience. I smile as I listen to my 17-year-old friend and I continue to learn.