Category: Society

Why the crisis within the Boy Scouts of America could lead to a scouting revival

2010 photo by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Previously published at GBH News.

Could the Boy Scouts of America be heading into its final days? It sure looks that way. After decades of horrendous and widespread sexual abuse, documented in secret reports known as the “perversion files,” it appears that the moment of reckoning has arrived.

Among those of us for whom scouting was a formative and positive part of our lives, it’s a sad development. Yet there’s just no defending what took place. Earlier this year, the BSA declared bankruptcy in order to protect itself from mounting civil suits. A bankruptcy judge set a deadline of this past Monday for victims to file claims. More than 92,000 people responded.

How large is that number? According to The New York Times, that’s 10 times as many as the number of people who claim to have been sexually assaulted within the Catholic Church. The church scandal has done enormous damage and continues to reverberate, with questions now being raised about Pope John Paul II’s involvement in covering up for a renegade cardinal. Yet the rot within the BSA appears to be much more pervasive.

This is personal for me. My son is an Eagle scout. I’m an Eagle scout. I know what a difference scouting can make in the lives of boys and young men. (The BSA was almost exclusively male for most of its history but began admitting girls in 2018.) Scouting introduced me to hiking and backpacking, which became lifelong passions. Our adult leaders were honorable, decent men.

The sexual abuse wasn’t a secret, of course, but it always seemed to involve some other troop in some other town. According to the BSA, 130 million Americans have taken part in scouting over the years, and no doubt the vast majority of them emerged better for the experience. But that doesn’t excuse the reality that some boys were raped, and that the organization covered it up rather than exposing the evil-doers.

“The Boy Scout policy for decades was not to report to law enforcement,” Paul Mones, a Los Angeles lawyer who represents many of the victims, told Wade Goodwin of NPR. “In fact, they allowed many of these men to go quietly into that good night and leave. The Boy Scouts have never given a straight answer as to why they never reported to law enforcement.”

In some respects, it’s a surprise that the crisis was so widespread. As an adult leader, I had to go through the BSA’s youth-protection training program several times, and it struck me as high-quality and thorough. The organization also insisted on what it referred to as “two deep” leadership — no scouting trip was to have any fewer than two adult leaders on hand at any time. In fact, we used to talk about the need for four leaders — two to accompany a scout if he got hurt and had to go home and two to continue the activity with the other boys. Obviously, though, those rules were not universally followed, and terrible crimes were the result.

Now, we’re all aware that sexual abuse hasn’t been the only problem with the BSA, although it’s by far the most serious. Until recently, the organization banned gay scouts and adult leaders, a blight on its record that it did not erase until 2015. And the Boy Scouts continue to prohibit atheists from joining — a rule that is not only cruel and discriminatory but that is also unenforceable unless a scout decides to speak up. Atheist scouts are rewarded for keeping silent and punished for being honest, which is not exactly in keeping with the ideals of scouting.

There is something deeply anachronistic about scouting. A lot of us weren’t especially thrilled about the quasi-military uniforms even back in the 1960s and ’70s. At its best, though, scouting instills teamwork, discipline and a love for the outdoors. It’s also a refuge for kids who don’t fit in with youth sports or other activities.

Fortunately, scouting is not dependent on the BSA for its continued existence. The Girl Scouts are very much with us; my wife and daughter were both active, and it strikes me as a much better run program than the Boy Scouts.

There are also programs that are similar to the Boy Scouts, some of which were set up as a breakaway groups. For instance, the Baden-Powell Service Association, named after the founder of scouting, “welcomes everyone, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion (or no-religion)” in order “provide a positive learning environment within the context of democratic participation and social justice.”

Now, that sounds like scouting as it was originally intended. Perhaps what we really need is for the BSA to disappear so that the true spirit of scouting can reassert itself. Because, ultimately, what we’re talking about isn’t an organization but an idea.

Comments are open. Please include your full name, first and last, and speak with a civil tongue.

Reading the Declaration of Independence with Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass

One of my favorite Fourth of July traditions is reading the Declaration of Independence in The Boston Globe. Last year I added to that Frederick Douglass’ great 1852 speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Having just read it again, I was struck by the extent to which the speech summarizes some of the most important themes of Douglass’ public mission, as laid out in David W. Blight’s 2018 biography: his belief that the Constitution was, at root, an anti-slavery document, a view that was far from universal among his fellow Abolitionists; his hatred for the hypocrisy of the American church’s embrace of slavery; and his fundamental optimism, on display in the opening section, in which he talks about believing the country could change because it was still so young.

Then there is this great passage, which comes about halfway through:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Read it. Slavery may be part of the past. But at this moment of heightened attention to racism and how it continues to affect the lives of Black Americans, Douglass’ speech takes on new relevance.

And don’t miss this video of Douglass’ descendants reading parts of his speech.

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A flawed argument for reopening colleges this fall

Christina Paxson, the president of Brown University, is getting roasted on Twitter for writing an op-ed in The New York Times arguing that colleges and universities should reopen this fall.

I have to say that I find her ideas less than compelling. For instance: She invokes the standard warning that “of course we still won’t be able to have large classes in large lecture halls.” But small classes are usually held in small rooms — and, at least in my experience, those rooms have inadequate or non-existent ventilation. How is that any better?

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A prescient book on the future of urban life in a changing world

The New York Times has a front-page story today on why big cities are looking less attractive in the age of pandemic.

They should have interviewed my friend Catherine Tumber, who wrote a prescient book about this a few years ago called “Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World.” I hope you’ll give it a read.

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Some thoughts about the Boy Scouts’ move to admit girls

Photo (cc) 2013 by Phoebe Baker

I’m no longer involved with the Boy Scouts (not boycotting; just at a different stage of my life), but I continue to take an interest in what they’re up to. Admitting girls and giving them a chance to become Eagle Scouts strikes me as odd, given that both the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts were set up with the idea that there is value in having single-gender youth programs. The Girl Scouts aren’t admitting boys, so this comes across as an effort by the Boy Scouts to encroach on the Girl Scouts’ turf in order to bolster their own shrinking programs.

When our kids were younger, I was a Boy Scout leader and my wife was a Girl Scout leader. It was my impression that the Girl Scouts was a better-run program with none of the issues that bedeviled the Boy Scouts such as its longtime ban on gay scouts and leaders (since lifted) and atheists (still in effect).

I’m not sure how the Girl Scouts can respond to this latest move. The Boy Scouts may well have some success in recruiting girls who would rather be in a program integrated by gender. In our Facebook discussion, a few people have suggested that the Boy Scouts have a more robust outdoors program than the Girl Scouts, and that girls interested in that should be welcomed. Still, I’m skeptical as to whether this is a good move.

Over at The Boston Globe, Derrick Jackson offers a different perspective.

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Remembering Muhammad Ali

Malcolm X photographs Muhammad Ali after his first defeat of Sonny Liston. Photo via Wikipedia.

There was a time when those of us in our 50s and 60s cared about boxing. The one and only reason for that was Muhammad Ali, who died Friday at the age of 74. Ali was a great boxer, but it was his persona that made him so appealing: smart, funny, antiwar, an outspoken voice against racism.

I was not a huge boxing fan. Besides, in those days boxing was a big business, and you couldn’t see major bouts without paying money to watch it on closed-circuit TV in a movie theater. I never did that. But I remember organizing a betting pool among my fellow ninth-graders in Middleborough for the first fight between Ali and Joe Frazier in 1971.

My most vivid Ali memory also did not involve seeing him actually fight. His epic battle with George Foreman in what is now Congo took place on the night that I attended my first Bruce Springsteen concert—October 30, 1974. Everyone was convinced that Foreman would crush the aging, smaller Ali. After three and a half thrilling, exhausting hours of the 25-year-old Bruce, the promoter came out at 12:30 a.m. to announce that Ali had won. Pandemonium ensued.

No one cares about boxing anymore, and I think Ali had a lot to do with that, too. When he was young, it seemed as though he never even got hit. In the latter stages of his career, unfortunately, his strategy—as in the Foreman fight—was to absorb a terrible beating, and then to come out swinging once his opponent was exhausted. It almost certainly led to his Parkinson’s, and it’s a big reason why boxing has moved off center stage and into the shadows.

You have to wonder if football will be next.

Firing the manager: An idea that never made much sense

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Grounds crew before the Red Sox’ 8-7 soggy win over the Yankees. Photo (cc) by Dan Kennedy.

At the end of the Red Sox’ disastrous 2011 season, Terry Francona—the greatest manager in team history—was fired (and kicked hard on his way out). The excuse: Well, you can’t fire the players. In fact, that’s exactly what they needed to do, and they did it the following year.

So now we come to John Farrell. As Nick Cafardo points out in the Boston Globe, calls that Farrell has to go are being stilled for the moment, but you can be sure they’ll be back as soon as the Sox start losing games again.

I don’t get it. I’ve never gotten it. If you have a manager who has the trust of the front office, why wouldn’t you keep him for as long as he wants to manage—five or 10 years, maybe more? Yes, there are some genuinely bad managers who have to go (Grady Little, Bobby Valentine). Same with general managers (Ben Cherington). For the most part, though, if you’ve got a good manager or GM, keep him.

Some of Farrell’s in-game moves are mystifying, but the team plays hard for him and he handles the pitching staff well—as you would expect, given that he was a very good pitching coach. The Red Sox were wrong to get rid of Francona, who may have needed a season off the field but should have stayed with the team; they’d be wrong to get rid of Farrell.

Why #blacklivesmatter matters

A powerful conclusion to this New York Times editorial:

The “Black Lives Matter” movement focuses on the fact that black citizens have long been far more likely than whites to die at the hands of the police, and is of a piece with this history. Demonstrators who chant the phrase are making the same declaration that voting rights and civil rights activists made a half-century ago. They are not asserting that black lives are more precious than white lives. They are underlining an indisputable fact — that the lives of black citizens in this country historically have not mattered, and have been discounted and devalued. People who are unacquainted with this history are understandably uncomfortable with the language of the movement. But politicians who know better and seek to strip this issue of its racial content and context are acting in bad faith. They are trying to cover up an unpleasant truth and asking the country to collude with them.

Remembering the nine victims of the Charleston shootings

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Look at this image of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church‘s home page. Nothing has changed since the horrifying murders of nine people Wednesday evening. The site also includes this quote from Sister Jean German Ortiz, who, I assume, is or was a member of the church: “Jesus died a passionate death for us,  so our love for Him should be as passionate.”

They died passionately for our sins — we, the inheritors and conservators of a Confederate-flag-waving, gun-drenched culture that has only partly come to terms with our legacy of slavery and racism. The Washington Post has sketches of each of the nine: Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, DePayne Middleton Doctor, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Clementa C. Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons and Myra Thompson. Sadly, with the possible exception of Rev. Pinckney, we’ll have an easier time remembering the name of the shooter, Dylann Storm Roof. There’s only one of him, and in any case evil holds our attention more easily than good.

I’m not sure why this terrible crime would spark any disagreements other than the inevitable disagreement over guns. But for some reason people are debating whether this is a “hate crime” or an act of “terrorism.” It strikes me that it’s obviously both — a home-grown act of terror committed by someone filled with hate.

But enough bloviating. Here is a short list of articles I’ve read that I hope will broaden our understanding.

I begin with our finest essayist, Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic, who has written an eloquent demand that South Carolina remove the Confederate flag immediately. He writes:

This moral truth [a reference to a speech by a Confederate politician] — “that the negro is not equal to the white man” — is exactly what animated Dylann Roof. More than any individual actor, in recent history, Roof honored his flag in exactly the manner it always demanded — with human sacrifice.

Too bad Gov. Charlie Baker’s initial reaction to a question about the Stars and Bars was so clueless. Dan Wasserman of The Boston Globe does a whole lot better.

The New York Times publishes a piece by Douglas R. Egerton, the biographer of Emanuel AME founder Denmark Vesey, on the history of the church — a history marred by numerous racist attacks, the most recent coming in 1963. Here’s Egerton:

For 198 years, angry whites have attacked Emanuel A.M.E. and its congregation, and when its leaders have fused faith with political activism, white vigilantes have used terror to silence its ministers and mute its message of progress and hope.

Egerton also links to a 2014 Times article on the unveiling of a statue of Vesey, who, along with 34 others, was executed following a failed slave rebellion. Incredibly, there were those who opposed the statue on the grounds that Vesey was a “terrorist.” Think about that if you hear anyone deny that Roof carried out an act of terrorism.

I’ll close with my friend Charlie Pierce, who posted a commentary at Esquire on Thursday that demonstrated tough, clear-eyed thinking at a moment when the rest of us were still trying to figure out what had just happened. Pierce writes:

What happened in a Charleston church on Wednesday night is a lot of things, but one thing it’s not is “unspeakable.” We should speak of it often. We should speak of it loudly. We should speak of it as terrorism, which is what it was. We should speak of it as racial violence, which is what it was.

Please keep the nine victims and their families in your thoughts today.