Worrying about My Black Boy’s Future in America

Worrying about My Black Boy’s Future in America

by Allison R. Brown | America’s Wire Writers Group

My husband and I fuss and fret over our black boy.

Like other parents, we worry about a lot. We want him to use his smarts for good. Do we coddle him too much? We want him to be tough and kind, but assertive and gentle, and not mean. His boundaries of independent exploration are radiating outward, concentric circles growing farther and farther from us.

We wring our hands and pretend to look away in acknowledgment that he’s ready to claim his freedom, even as we cast furtive glances his way. We’re beginners in the worry department. He’s only 9 years old.

Our angst certainly isn’t unique among parents of black boys. What’s unique for us and for other such parents is that when we peek inside the matrix, we panic. Agents out there are bearing down on our son — bloodthirsty for his dignity, his humanity — as if he were the one. We feel outnumbered, but we hunker down for battle.

This is not a paranoid conspiracy rant. Recent data from the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education reveals that black boys are the most likely group of students to be suspended or expelled from school. Black men and boys are more likely than any demographic group to be targeted — hunted, really — and arrested by police.

Meanwhile, the number of black males taking advanced courses in elementary, middle and high schools and entering college remains disproportionately low. Suicide among black boys is increasing. Media imagery and indifference have locked black boys in their sights. Prisons have become corporate behemoths with insatiable appetites for black and brown boys and men.

My husband and I rightfully agonize about our boy. We agonize alongside many who are working to help, including the federal government. I know firsthand the work that the federal government has done and is doing to improve circumstances for black boys. This includes internal memos and meetings, interagency planning sessions, public conferences, community meetings and listening sessions, and now a White House initiative.

I also know that the federal government is accountable to numerous constituencies that sometimes have conflicting needs. Federal government workers must walk a fine line among varying public interests, which occasionally has meant unintended consequences for black boys.

For instance, in 1994, the federal priority of “zero tolerance” for anyone bringing a weapon to school was signed into law as the Gun-Free Schools Act. That priority reached fever pitch after the Columbine school massacre in 1999 and subsequent copycat slayings and attempts to kill. Federal requirements were overshadowed by local authorities and school administrators who stretched the parameters of “zero tolerance” in schools beyond logical measure to include, for instance, spoons as weapons and Tylenol as an illegal drug, and to suspend and expel students as a result.

“Zero tolerance” has entered the realm of the ridiculous. Many schools have removed teacher and administrator discretion and meted out harsh punishment for school uniform violations, schoolyard fights without injury and various undefined and indefinable categories of offense such as “defiance” and “disrespect.”

Students are suspended, expelled and even arrested for such conduct without investigation or inquiry. There is no evidence to support use of exclusionary discipline practices as tools for prevention, and they have no educational benefit. The brunt of this insanity has fallen on black boys.

Recent federal priorities have targeted harassment and bullying in school to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students from peer-on-peer discrimination dismissed by, and in many cases encouraged by, school administration. Again, understandable.

The goal is praiseworthy — to protect, finally, a population of students and segment of society that has long been a whipping post for every political party, ignored in political discussions except to condemn. While my husband and I have ardently supported federal protections for LGBT students, practically speaking, we continue to lose sleep over our black boy.

Another peek inside the matrix tells me that the fever pitch around this latest federal agenda item will mean a significant cost to black boys when new categories of offense are created, new ways to characterize them as criminals unworthy of participating in mainstream education or society.

It’s one thing for educators to guide student conduct and educate students about how to care for and respect one another, which is a primary focus of the federal move against harassment and bullying. It’s quite another to change mindsets of adults who run the system, too many of whom believe and speak negatively about black boys and what they cannot accomplish or should not do.

To speak and think affirmatively, to affirm behavior and black boys as people, is to relish the silly jokes they tell within their context, to compliment them on their haircuts or groomed and styled dreadlocks and cornrows, to adopt lingo they create and add it to classroom repertoire, and to invite their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, cousins to participate in the educational experience.

To support black boys is to celebrate their physical playfulness and the unique ways in which they may support and affirm one another. As with any other children, we must teach black boys through instruction and by example how to read and write, and how to conduct themselves without erasing their identity and attempting to substitute another. We must hone their instincts, whims and knowledge base so they can be empowered to exhibit all the good in themselves. We must be willing to show them our human frailties so they know how to get up and carry on after falling down. Yes, these things can benefit all children, but many children receive them by default. Black boys do not.

To love black boys is to refuse to be an agent of forces clamoring for their souls and instead to be their Morpheus, their god of dreams, to help them believe in their power to save all of us and to train them to step into their greatness. Those agents in the matrix are real. If everyone combines forces and uses common sense, we can declare victory for black boys and eventually all of us.

But without a change in mindset, federal initiatives, no matter their good intentions or the incredible talents that give them life, will continue to leave black boys by the wayside as collateral damage.

My husband and I will continue to fret, knowing the formidable challenges our son faces. We hope that if he has a son, that boy can be just a boy.

***

Allison R. Brown is a former trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Educational Opportunities Section. She is president of Allison Brown Consulting, which works with educators, students, families and other key stakeholders to improve the quality of education, especially for black boys.

America’s Wire is an independent, nonprofit news service run by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and funded by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Our stories can be republished free of charge by newspapers, websites and other media sources. For more information, visit www.americaswire.org or contact Michael K. Frisby at mike@frisbyassociates.com.

Foundation Work Helps to Reverse Social Plights, Perception of Black Men and Boys

Foundation Work Helps to Reverse Social Plights, Perception of Black Men and Boys

by Kimberly N. Alleyne | America’s Wire

WASHINGTON—Concerned about the plight of African-American men and boys, several philanthropic organizations have launched initiatives to improve opportunities for them to succeed. Some programs address the structural bias that leaves these men more likely to be incarcerated, jobless and disproportionately affected by other social disadvantages.

One of every 15 African-American men is in a U.S. prison or jail compared with one of every 36 Hispanic men and one of every 106 white men. Moreover, scores of African-American men are affected by chronic unemployment, lack of education, poverty and poor health outcomes.

Organizations such as Open Society Foundations, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Mitchell Kapor Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and local and regional foundations are working to assist African-American males.

Shawn Dove, campaign manager for the Campaign for Black Male Achievement sponsored by Open Society Foundations, recalls that media stories about the plight of black men in 2006 spurred discussion on how the foundation could engage.

“I thought, ‘How can we, a foundation that supports open society values, and believes in a democratic society, as a foundation, not be at the forefront of these issues?’ ”he says.“When we launched, there was not an equivalent on a national level.”

The program began in June 2008 and was to be a three-year campaign. But 18 months in, Dove says, George Soros, chairman of Open Society Foundations, and its board were impressed by the work, expanded the budget and agreed to make it ongoing. Since 2008, it has spent $29.6 million funding 94 organizations working on educational equity, strengthening family structures and increasing work opportunities. Grantees are in Chicago, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Philadelphia,New Orleans and Jackson, Miss.

“We are responding to long-term systemic and structural barriers facing the African-American community, specifically black men and boys,” Dove says. “An adequate response is not a three-year or five-year commitment. An adequate response is generational commitment so that direct services and policy advocacy are bridged.”

Dove maintains that to adequately address challenges faced by African-American men,“we need an endowed social corporation that can focus on these issues for the long haul.”

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s work in this regard dates to the early 1990s when it launched a Men and Boys of Color initiative that included grants and creation of opportunities for black males. For more than 20 years, Kellogg has been in the forefront in supporting initiatives such as Community Voices, which started the nation’s first health clinic for men in Baltimore, addressed flaws in local juvenile justice systems and assisted ex-convicts in re-entering communities in numerous cities.

“Both explicit and unconscious bias affects young men and boys of color in particular, denying them equal opportunities to succeed in their communities,says Dr. Gail C. Christopher, Kellogg’s vice president for program strategy. “At the Kellogg Foundation, a critical objective for our racial healing and racial equity strategy seeks to remove structural and implicit barriers that limit their success. Achieving and sustaining racial equity requires strong systems of accountability, and as importantly, success requires uprooting a belief system of racial hierarchy.”

Last September, Kellogg sponsored “Too Important to Fail,”Tavis Smiley’s PBS report on health and education disparities among African-American boys. The foundation also funded a University of North Carolina project, the Promoting Academic Success initiative, which worked with families, schools and communities to improve academic achievement of African-American and Latino children in Lansing, Mich., and Polk County, Fla.

Under its America Healing Initiative, the foundation funds many organizations, such as the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, that engage in efforts to address the challenges faced by black males. One grantee, the Opportunity Agenda, recently released a report on perceptions of black males in the media. The report seeks to educate media makers, educators and others on how negative images of black communities perpetuate negative stereotypes.

A significant part of the challenge is improving educational opportunities for African-American men.With its College Bound Brotherhood program established five years ago, the Mitchell Kapor Foundation helps black youths and men achieve success by equipping them to pursue a college education. Based in San Francisco, the program provides grants to community-based organizations offering college preparedness programs in the Bay Area.

Justin Davis, the foundation’s program coordinator, says it has awarded more than $1 million to organizations.“We also offer an online database, which is a free directory that lists college readiness programs in the San Francisco Bay area community,” he said. “It helps students, parents and teachers.”

The program hosts an annual graduation celebration at which college-bound high school graduates are lauded for their achievements.“This year, we are celebrating 150 young black men who are enrolling in college this fall,” Davis says. “This is the only event like it in the Bay Area. Last year, it was standing room only. One of the most powerful images was seeing a stage full of young black men who are going to college. It’s a great thing to see.”

The programs are making an impact.

Jordan Johnson, 17, is heading to Morehouse College next fall largely because of his participation in the Young Scholars Program, one 15 organizations that the Kapor Foundation supports through grants from College Bound Brotherhood. Johnson says the program changed his perspective about college.

The Young Scholars Program offers college preparatory and leadership development, plus tutoring, mentoring, cultural enrichment and scholarship assistance. Over the past 10 years, its students have attended colleges and universities such as Texas Southern, Fisk, Cornell and Yale.

“I got involved in the Young Scholars Program my junior year,” Johnson says. “Before I got involved, I thought I was going to a junior college or a two-year college. I didn’t have the professional, social or academic skills to go to a four-year college.”

But the program changed his aspirations. He plans to study business management.“I didn’t think I was going to Morehouse because my GPA is 2.67,” he says, “but the Young Scholars Program gave me hope. I have been accepted to 17 colleges. I have not received any rejections.”

Another organization, Foundation for the Mid South, works to address poverty in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, a region whose 30 percent poverty rate is the nation’s highest. Based in Jackson, Miss., the organization focuses on education, health and wellness, wealth building and community development. The Kellogg Foundation is among funders of its work.

Matthew Caston, a communications fellow at Foundation for the Mid South, asserts that to be successful, more African-American men require better education. For instance, the foundation’s data show that two of three boys of color cannot read at grade level by third grade and that 19.1 percent of black males are unemployed, compared with 8 percent of white males.

“We have found that education is the biggest determinant of success in the areas of incarceration, health and earning. People who are more educated are healthier and have better jobs,” Caston says, adding that reading scores are the biggest determinant for high school graduation and employment. “Males of color in our region are at the bottom in reading scores.”

The foundation is working to improve education and economic outcomes for youths of color by assisting parents and civic, community and government leaders in improving the educational system and launching a public awareness campaign about its shortfalls.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Black Male Engagement (BME) Challenge takes a different approach.

Pronounced “be me,”BME piloted programs in Detroit and Philadelphia last year,and its primary mission is to highlight actively engaged black men in those cities. BME is also funded in part by the Open Society Foundation’s Campaign for Black Male Achievement.

“There are many initiatives that show that black men are disengaged, absent or a threat to their communities, but our working assumption is there is nothing to fix about black males,” says Trabian Shorters, vice president/communities program at the Knight Foundation and BME’s spearhead. “BME is not about fixing black males. Black men are assets to their communities, and we are working to respond to the many of them who are engaged and how to get more black males engaged.”

Under the program, African-American men in Detroit and Philadelphia were asked to submit video testimony showing how they strengthen their communities. The 2,083 videos received told many stories about personal journeys that included men helping veterans returning to their community and introducing children to dance instead of street life .The storytellers were invited to apply for grants ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 to further their community work.

“So many regular guys go unsung,” Shorters says. “They don’t do this work for a pat on the back, but it is nice to affirm what they do.”BME has awarded $443,000 in grants “to 443 regular, everyday guys,” he adds.

Shorters says everyone knows “good guys” who are not part of the dreadful statistics. “I hope that BME creates a network of these kinds of guys, regular guys,” he says. “We want to make it so that if your cousin Joe is a good guy, doing something great for his community, that he can plug into the network and meet other guys like him and find resources to support his work.”

Though many foundations focus their attention on systemic and structural barriers affecting African-American males, the whole “village” carries the burden of success.

“This is our unfinished business,” Dove says. “This is not black America’s unfinished business. It is America’s unfinished business.”

***

 

America’s Wire is an independent, nonprofit news service run by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and funded by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Our stories can be republished free of charge by newspapers, websites and other media sources. For more information, visit www.americaswire.org or contact Michael K. Frisby at mike@frisbyassociates.com.

Work-in-Progress | Close Ties: Tying On A New Tradition (film)

Close Ties: Tying On A New Tradition

A Documentary project in New Orleans, LA by Park Triangle Productions

Close Ties: Tying on a New Tradition provides an intimate look at a rites of passage ceremony that connects teenage boys with male role models. The "Tie Tying ceremony" held at New Orleans barbershop, "Mr. Chill's First Class Cuts", was created by Dr. Andre Perry and Wilbert “Chill” Wilson as a way to strengthen communities struggling with crime, poverty and alarming high school drop out rates. Cultural traditions have been the cornerstone of African American communities for centuries. Close Ties examines the impact of this new tradition and shows us how tying a necktie --- an act associated with men who embody professionalism and prestige --- can inspire high school boys to commit to a life of achievement and success.

During the event, the boys participate in a tie-tying demonstration, where role models from around the city instruct the youngsters on how to create distinguishing knots with their neckwear. Each of the boys also receives the opportunity to get professional grooming with a haircut and a shoe-shine. The final component of the event is one-on-one mentorship that each student receives from a male role model from the community. The youth participating in this tie-tying ceremony are boys selected from several schools in New Orleans.

Close Ties documents the mentors and the youth during and after the ceremony, where we see the men encourage and support the boys’ academic and career endeavors. The development of these mentoring relationships creates a lasting impact, one felt by students, parents, teachers and the community as a whole.

Find Out More @ Kickstarter

Black Male Multiple Choice: Unemployed, High School Dropout or Incarcerated

from the Huffington Post

Black Male Multiple Choice:
Unemployed, High School Dropout or Incarcerated
by Russell Simmons and Andre Harrell

If a black boy is born in the US today, he will have a 33 percent chance of going to prison in his lifetime. Stated another way -- one in three black boys born today will face prison time. It has become a sad normality, almost a backwards rite of passage, for black young men to enter the penal system and never return to our communities. And if we are "lucky" enough for them to return, they usually are much hardened criminals than they ever were before. Black men represent 8 percent of the population of the United States but comprise 3 percent of all college undergrads, 48 percent of inmates in prison and are five times more likely to die from HIV/AIDS than white men. 50 percent of black boys do not finish high school, 72 percent of black male dropouts in their 20s are unemployed and 60 percent of black male dropouts are eventually incarcerated.

To respond to this deepening crisis, the Open Society Foundation founded by George Soros developed a grant-making fund to improve black males' life outcomes. This fund is called the Campaign for Black Male Achievement (CBMA). While CBMA has had great success in building initiatives around fatherhood and family, education, living wage, and other areas, the campaign recognizes it needs to invest more in strategic communications to promote positive messages and frames about black men and boys.

CMBA and the Knight Foundation are partnering with the American Values Institute (AVI), founded by Alexis McGill Johnson, to create a conversation on December 7 and 8 called "Black Male: Re-Imagined," to explore opportunities to invest in art, culture, and communications to change the negative perceptions of black men. The questions guiding this conversation are: If we could create a campaign or set of campaigns that would change the way we look at black males over time, what would that look like?

What is "Black Male: Re-Imagined"?

"Black Male: Re-Imagined" is a two-day, invitation-only, closed-door, summit of 60 of the most thoughtful and creative media influencers, foundation executives, and the organizations they fund. We are gathering together to consider what kind of real financial investment can be made to influence media and culture to change perceptions about black males. We are honored to take part in this.

Our goals will be to: 1) discuss campaign strategies to "rebrand and re-imagine" black men. 2) explain the business models of various communications methods so that foundations can invest wisely. 3) Develop a working group to continue the conversation.

We have built brands our whole lives, that is what we do. It is time we reinvent the brand of the black male and stop the cradle-to-prison pipeline and replace it with a world that is much more hopeful and optimistic for young black men. For no child should ever think that they have a one in three chance of going to prison. There has to be another choice on the test.

Co-authored with Andre Harrell. Andre Harrell is founder of the record label, Uptown Records, who signed Mary J. Blige, Heavy D amongst many others. Harrell also served as president/CEO of Motown Records.

'Left of Black': Episode #12 featuring Marc Lamont Hill and Salamishah Tillet

Left of Black Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal discusses the crisis of Black Males and schooling, the de-skilling of the American Work-force and Social Media with Columbia University Professor Marc Lamont Hill. Neal is also joined by University of Pennsylvania Professor Salamishah Tillet as they discuss the career of Kanye West, the impact of Nicki Minaj and definitions of musical genius.

→Marc Lamont Hill is Associate Professor of Education at Columbia University. A regular contributor to Fox News and CNN, Hill is the author of Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity.

→Salamishah Tillet is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the forthcoming Peculiar Memories: Slavery and the Post-Civil Rights Imagination (Duke University Press). Tillet is also Founder of A Long Walk Home, a non-profit organization and a regular contributor to The Root.com.