It was a downright rotten thing last week to hear there was another life lost in the Lehigh Valley to the gang “culture.” Paul “Bam Bam” Serrano III, 18 was charged in Bethlehem by police for the shooting of 15-year-old Kevin Muzila, and police say it was a case of mistaken identity, that Muzila wasn’t even the intended target. Likely, Serrano was “auditioning” for a gang.
Though the murder took place in Bethlehem, it could have just as easily been Easton. When these tragedies happen, everyone at first grieves and asks, “Why?” It’s a valid question. Then they quickly stop asking, “Why?” and assigning blame. If you don’t believe me, go to the comments section on the daily newspapers’ Web sites and see the vitriolic diatribes. Blame the parents, blame the schools, blame Youth Services, blame Serrano—just blame someone, it’s got to be someone’s fault.
And it is. If Serrano did indeed murder young Kevin Muzila, then, as an 18-year-old citizen of this country, he is responsible, regardless of what his parents, the schools or Youth Services did or did not do.
But this is not any sort of isolated incident. This is certainly not the first time in the Lehigh Valley, unfortunately, that some dumb young punk has gotten it into his head that murder will somehow make him “more of a man” or a “better” person. In fact, it’s happened recently in just about every state in the nation.
Sure, you can blame violence on television, or bad parenting, and I don’t deny these are contributing factors.
But if you look back on it, a lot of the increased violence seemed to start a few years after there was a public push to build kids’ self-esteem.
Don’t get me wrong. I do think kids should be encouraged to feel good about themselves—at least, when they’ve done something good and deserve to feel good about themselves. It’s a bad message to send, that one should still feel good about oneself, even if one knowingly does bad things. Sorry, if you go around hurting people, you do not deserve to feel good about yourself, and a person who habitually goes around hurting people is not a good person.
But instead, the message has been, “Well, you did something very bad, but it’s okay. You’re still a good person.”
It’s not okay. That’s entirely the wrong message to send.
And there’s a subtle, but important difference between self-esteem and self-respect.
The message of self-respect would go something like this: “Well, you’ve done something very bad, and it’s definitely NOT okay. I know you can be better person than that. Now live up to it.”
The kid with self-respect would not lower himself to become a murderer or a criminal, but unfortunately, the kid with self-esteem but no self-respect might not stop himself, if he thinks there’s a chance of gain. After all, you might murder someone (or rape them, or steal their stuff), but underneath it all, you’re still a good person, right?
Obviously, that’s wrong. But there’s a good chance Serrano was thinking something along those lines.
So, whose fault was it? If proven guilty, Serrano’s. But every one of those folks who told him it was okay, that he was still a good person anyway, who didn’t set him straight along the way, whether they be parents, teachers, coaches or even strangers, might just share a bit of the blame.
The gangs, who promote this “culture” of violence in our neighborhoods, near our homes, poisoning our children, need to be deglamourized. And, underneath it all, because they do what they do, they are not good people.
A tale from the West Ward
Last Friday, I was at a stop sign approaching Ferry Street, when I noticed two young boys on the corner, one of who was repeatedly making a gang gesture reminiscent of the censored Beardsley Lysistrata illustrations at me. I didn’t immediately notice, if you can believe that, and then did a double take to see if I was really seeing what I was seeing. These boys were no more than 9 or 10.
I decided to stop for a moment and stare. The boy, egged on by his friend, continued to make the dramatic, vulgar gesture.
I pondered this for a moment. Obviously, they were trying to get me to react. It’s not like young boys haven’t been known to make rude gestures at women for centuries. But seriously, you had to be there; this was way over the top. I really couldn’t just let a little kid stand ignorantly on a busy street corner gesturing like that at his crotch, especially when I was pretty certain he didn’t have a clue what he was really doing.
I rolled my window down and asked him pleasantly if he knew what that gesture meant. I was right; clearly he didn’t. But his friend, the one who’d egged him on did—sort of.
“Suck it, baby!” he told me exuberantly, as though he would get some sort of prize for the right answer.
So I decided to push it a bit, to teach them a lesson.
“Suck what?” I asked.
“Uh...”
“Suck what? That is an action involving opening one’s mouth and wrapping one’s lips around something. Suck what?” I said. “I assume by ‘baby,’ you mean me, even though I’m 37, and you appear to be considerably younger.”
The egged-on perpetrator got a burst of courage at this point, and tried one more time. He made the gesture again, and said, with a shrug, “Suck it.”
“Rest assured it will not happen, but are you actually telling me you want to pull down your pants, underpants included, and somehow make me wrap my lips around your privates, here in public, on this street corner? Because that is what you are proclaiming, for all the world to see,” I said to him.
He stopped cold, eyes wide.
“I’m in fourth grade,” he said.
“I thought you might be about that old,” I told him. “And I pretty much thought you might not really know what you were doing when you made those gestures. I don’t know who showed you that, but they are not a good person to listen to, whoever they are. They are definitely not cool. What do you suppose could happen if you made that gesture at someone who took you seriously? Or who’s crazy, and got offended and tried to hurt you? Are you sure you’re really ready to deal with that?”
Things were pretty somber after that. I told them to have fun but be careful, and they waved goodbye as I drove off.
The whole conversation took less than two minutes, but they were the best-invested two minutes of my day, if not my week.
(Originally published in The Easton News, March 29, 2007)
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