October 2007 The Block Gazette (PDF)

from Staff reports

Some members of the African American community in Asheville are crying out in concern, anger, and fear. Have we allowed our communities to disintegrate? Do we, like Native Americans, have our own “Trail of Tears?” To take the pulse of the African American community, we spoke with a sampling of citizens from retirees to teens, from community activists to a law enforcement employee.

A Community Activist Speaks Out

Community activist Glenda McDowell believes that the problems we face are all interrelated. For the most part, she sees a need to get back to the basics — that adults need to offer a welcoming, collaborative, and demanding circle to teach and train youth to be responsible citizens.

“Leadership comes from the home, then the church, especially for young African-Americans,” says McDowell. “Presently, the church likes to go into the community and do outreach that’s ‘safe.’ The outreach that needs to come from the church is not always safe. When you think historically about the African American church, how many of them (churches) had or have a twelve-step (Alcoholic Anonymous) program on their grounds? It took forever to get the pool-pit to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, and to actually speak on it. Yet, we were dying, and are still dying in large numbers.

She continues, “We as a church community have to go beyond that comfort level and say, ‘Everyone is welcomed here.’ We have to go beyond the walls of the church and BE the church! [The message] has to be disseminated in all of the communities. It just can’t be locked inside; outreach has to be part of the total ministry! However, we can’t blame it all on the churches; we have to look at the whole dynamic of what’s going on in the African-American community. Churches are just one slice of the pie,” said Ms. McDowell.
Where are the services this community needs? How is the community — not just the African American community, but the city of Asheville, as a whole, and Buncombe County, and their law enforcement organizations — dealing with the problems we face?

“There is supposed to be a ‘Gang Task Force’ and other non-profit organizations that have prevention programs in their narratives. Who are you, where are you, and what are you doing? What’s the plan?” asks McDowell. “It doesn’t take money to collaborate. If there’s a gang task force, what have you been doing for exposure, prevention, and who are you collaborating with?”

“No one has done a TRUE collaboration!” she continues. “[A task force] can’t do this by yourself. If you are servicing the same kids, then where is the true collaboration?”

She tells of a young lady in Asheville who wants to hold a youth forum, but hasn’t been able to find the support she needs. It’s clear, says McDowell, that the forum should be held; the fact that the prospective organizer is a young person who wants to participate in helping to solve the problem is important. “This forum needs to happen, and be led by, generated, and produced by this young lady, and other youth in our communities,” says McDowell. “The adult community and local businesses need to be supportive; but they’re totally in the background, to the point we can’t see them. She shouldn’t be having problems with resources and support. We need these organizations, corporations, churches, and sponsorships to step up to the plate!”

McDowell sees the missing piece of the puzzle summed up in the word “we.” “It should be ‘This is what WE are going to do.’ It must be done collectively,” she asserts. You have to involve other people, in order to make these efforts work. You have to resolve your differences, and come together.”

Asheville Native
Toba Dowell

Toba Dowell grew up in the Montford area, attended Western Carolina University, and went on to obtain her Master’s degree at the University of South Carolina-Columbia. “My education didn’t come easy; I had to work for it,” she says. “[Other] African-American youth have the ability to do the same.”

Asheville native and community activist Glenda McDowell talks about what we can do to help our communities.

In 1990 Dowell began working in law enforcement; now she works as a social worker in the jails of Mecklenburg County. She works with female inmates, 16 and 17 years old, and in many cases, she says, “their families have just thrown them away. Their lives are practically over, before they have begun.”

She describes a system in which mothers are in jail with their daughters, “and that’s their support system — in jail. I’ve had a 16-year-old in jail, along with her mother, and grandmother — all in jail at the same time!”

Now, coming home to Asheville, Dowell is seeing the same patterns that are so common in Charlotte — a city more than ten times as large. “We must find an answer to this problem,” she says. She points out that the prison statistics show that the majority of inmates are African Americans, along with some Hispanics and very few whites.

“What has happened to the pride and the values in our community?” she asks. “I’m not sure where it stands. But one thing I do know is, it starts in the home. That’s where the support system should be. Parents, and elders in the community, please come together, be an extended family system. Don’t let television and the rap songs teach your children,” said Dowell.

James Roberts,
Community Member

Asheville resident James Roberts wonders how and why the temptations of drug dealing make it into Asheville in the first place. The short answer is, of course, money — the lure of easy money for people who have none. “We don’t own what [the police] are looking for, we simply don’t,” he says. “We don’t own any jets planes, boats, or trains, or enterprises to get the drugs here. Yet, the drugs show up in our communities, around our youth. Money is waved in their faces — they’re hungry, need clothes, food, shelter, just what do you think they will do? I don’t condone it, but that is what happens.”

The saddest part for Roberts is the long-term consequences for young people who lack the judgment to make such choices. “They are arrested, charged with felonies, imprisoned, and ruined for life. The majority of these kids can’t afford a bus ticket to take a vacation, let alone to go somewhere to purchase large amounts of drugs to sell. But still drugs are distributed in and around the African-American communities,” says Roberts.
E.P., an African-American Youth

One of those youths, whom we call E.P., says that the problem is not homegrown or even truly local. “It’s not really gangs;” he says. “It’s about the turf areas of Asheville, and the youth imitating the present pop cultures of cities like Los Angeles.”

“You see it in hip-hop videos, and on the news,” he continues. Young people project what they watch on the media as “the coolest thing happening. Everybody wants to be like this or that.”

Recently, however, the level of violence has taken a turn for the worse. “[These latest incidents] have been the most extreme display of violence I’ve seen,” says E.P. “I know a lot of these youth, I grew up with them. Best friends are fighting over territory and property they or their parents don’t own. Nevertheless, they are getting these places tattooed on their bodies, and don’t want to leave them, they’re just there! So for these young people not to make any progress really hurts me deep inside, because I love them.”

From E.P.’s perspective, a great deal has been lost, and might not be recoverable, at least for those he grew up with. “We all had the same dreams — to get out of Asheville and go to college,” he says.

E.P has clear ideas about what adults can do to help young people keep straight. “I want to see the successful history of Black people from in this area; from where we had to struggle, and how we successfully got to where we are now. It seems that we’ve taken several steps back,” says E.P.

“If youth want to be [in] gangs, look at positive [role models]. An example would be Malcolm X, how he went to Mecca and saw how the people were together, then changed to be a non-violent person. E.P. also wants to see more Black males from this area as successful examples, so that area youths can have someone to pattern themselves after. Then we can say, okay he did it — so we can too. We always see people that come from other cities, but the thing is, you didn’t grow up here like we did. I want local success stories,” said E.P.

An Educator’s Thoughts

For retired educator Jim Drummond, teaching young people requires only one thing. “Take no excuses. No excuses from students, parents, or teachers,” he says.

“I’m ‘old school,’” he continues. “In the past we had higher expectations, and we challenged our children academically. If a child had a chemical imbalance, or no parental support, or was just a ‘bad kid,’ we dealt with it.”

Drummond maintains that parents and African American communities need to be advocates for children, as they were in years past. Drummond points out, “It was a known fact that if a child thought about calling the Department of Social Services on their parents, they had better be prepared to leave with them (Social Workers). I have heard too often that parents do not want their children to live like they did.” “But,” he says, “being chastised by our parents wasn’t so bad. Did it hurt us? Because we’re still living,” he says.

As an African American male, Drummond willingly opens himself up to the accusation of sexism when he asserts that “it takes a man to teach a young man to be a man.” Like many experts, Drummond believes that every young man needs to receive some guidance from positive male role models. That doesn’t mean that there necessarily has to be a man living in the house. But, he says, “When a male child is spoken to by someone with some ‘bass’ in their voice, typically the young man has a tendency to listen more. If nothing else, the fear of intimidation will take over. That is not always a bad thing. While mothers do a fantastic job, it is a great help to have a man stand in the gap and help a male child become a man,” says Drummond.

“I truly believe that if we give up our responsibilities of parenting our children, we are asking the streets, police, and judges to raise them for us. There’s no way to say this, but we are not doing what we need to do. With more African American males in jail than in college, we better get back to our old ways and quit worrying about being our children’s friends. We can’t afford to wait for someone else to come save us.”

Drummond hopes that people in the community — parents, leaders, clergy, educators — will rethink all the feel-good programs and failed recipes of the past and return to fundamentals that have been proven to work. “Hopefully, [my opinions will] make people upset enough to challenge what I am saying. Feel free to do so,” he says.

If the outcome of the challenge and criticism is a new determination in the African American community to face and fix the problems in raising its young people, it will be worth all the criticism in the world.

If you, your organization, business, club, or corporation would like to help sponsor the youth forum, please send inquiries to: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it