May 30, 2010: Oregonlive.com

The limits of language

I recently asked a Latino mother whom I had never met if she would allow me to interview her. Her son, a child who is not yet  a teenager, has been associated with drug use and gang activities. What I sought from her was a mother's narrative perspective on exactly how this  came to be -- a perspective, I explained, that my colleagues in the educational community would find immensely valuable. She agreed over the phone without any hesitation.

As we sat next to each other sharing photos of our families, our conversation proceeded  as I had envisioned it would. She spoke of her personal journey that brought her from Mexico to Oregon, where she met her husband. She described how together they had attained a certain level of affluence, which was evident in the photos of her four smiling children dressed in Adidas and Old Navy gear.

I also anticipated the stories of turmoil. How her family lost everything when the economy collapsed. How savings were squandered. How marital strife ensued. How her son became brooding and angry following her separation from her husband late last year.

But when we had finally reached the focal point of her account, where I was ready to probe  the details of her son's entrance into gang activity, our interview veered  into a ditch. The mother was painfully aware of the resentment  swelling within her son. She was aware of the unhealthy friendships he was forming at school. But when I began to phrase questions in the context of "gangs," her response was firm: No. She knew her son. He was not in a gang.

It's difficult to get a mother's narrative perspective on how her son became a gang member if she doesn't believe he's in a gang. She sees a son that never strays from within shouting distance of home. A son that not only eats dinner at home every night, but also enjoys helping to cook it. Her child hugs her every day and tells her how someday he hopes to buy a home for her. And he still loves to play for hours on end with his little car toys.

In the days following the interview, I thought I had nothing. The situation was too ambiguous. There were lines I could not cross as a teacher. And I had absolutely no interest in exploring a "Who's right -- the school or the parent?" theme. But eventually, I came to recognize some important insights that emanated from the ambiguity itself.

As a society, we have come to use the term "gang" with regularity and certainty. But in truth, it's not a concept that is easily defined, and there is much room for subjectivity. That is how it became possible for all parties involved to agree on almost everything about the troubled boy's situation -- the truancy, the defiance, the poor choice of friends, the frightening trajectory -- and still not agree on whether he was part of a gang or not.

We understand that labels are meaningful. To describe teen activity as "delinquent" (as often happens with Caucasian teens) merely evokes contempt, but to describe it as "gang related" (a term more likely to be used to describe minority youth) evokes fear. And we react with greater predictability and intensity to fear.

Limitations in our vocabulary are also a factor. In the language we share, we have a word like "gang," but we don't have terminology for the various gradations that lead up to and through gang-hood -- and how could we? Nor do we immediately think in terms of the variety of gangs that exist. The lack of nuance in our human vocabulary, therefore, demands that we work that much harder in order to speak with the kind of nuanced understanding that is required to design effective interventions in the lives of troubled teens.

Ultimately, there is more to learn here than just about gangs and schools. Fundamentally, this is a story about the effort it takes to see other people's perspectives. If you only heard one side of this story, depending on which side you heard, you would be very likely to either describe the school as "culturally insensitive" or the mother as "in denial." But neither characterization is accurate.

Unfortunately, in public schools, as in all elements of society, resources are limited. We don't have the time or wherewithal to sit for an hour with every parent of a troubled student, any more than you have the time to do the same with your co-workers, your neighbors, or anyone else with whom you disagree. And even if we did, there's no guarantee that our opposites would be as forthcoming as the mother I interviewed.

But we could collectively go a long way in uplifting our society if we would do one simple thing -- seek dialogue. It takes no courage to seek out only those perspectives that are in rigid alignment with our own, or to type past each other on message boards. Take a step away from clarity once in a while, and see where ambiguity might take you.