Blacksmythe

My mother called me last week with the story of the white Morehouse valedictorian. I didn’t think the story important enough to write about, because on its face the story reminded me of the not so famous White Tiger. We’ve got all types of stories about black students overcoming tremendous adversity to become successful, at Morehouse and other places like it. It’s news…but not really.

But I just attended a graduation party. The young graduate’s older brother is a Morehouse man, and is going to transfer as soon as he can. Why? Because he isn’t comfortable with the growing number of gay men who have chosen to call Morehouse home. In 2002 Morehouse student Aaron Price beat fellow student Gregory Love with a baseball bat because Love peeked his head in the shower stall that Price was using. He received a sentence of ten years, but this sentence was recently reduced. In response to the attack on Love, Morehouse administrators have adopted at least one policy designed to re-establish “masculine norms”. Students now have to wear a maroon blazer every day. As this young brother writes, other policies have been considered. The frame of tolerance is a problem here–these men should not be simply tolerated but should be given the space needed to grow as men and as students. But to say this situation is complicated is to understate the reality.

I’ve spent some time on black campuses. And by the accepted visible presence of female same-sex couples our ideas are changing. But accepting (not tolerating, accepting) gay men represents another terrain entirely. Not just because of the current moral panic known as the “down low” phenomenon. But because of very conservative ideas about the normative role of black men in black communities, combined with ideas about the role of institutions like Morehouse–institutions that were tasked not just to serve black men, but to develop black men. And “develop” has a very specific political and social meaning here. To “develop” a black man means to prepare him to be ready to accept his role as head of the house, as father to black children, as husband to a (black) wife. 

From what I understand if a Morehouse Man marries a Spelman Woman, he can use Morehouse facilities for free. This is likely only one of the many institutional practices that embed ideas about development and gender within both Morehouse and Spelman. Other practices include recruiting tactics that emphasize (heterosexual) masculinity, and fundraising tactics among alumni that emphasize tradition–which by its very nature emphasizes heterosexual norms. 

How would you deal with this issue as a college administrator? As a heterosexual student? As a gay/bisexual student? As a parent? 

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“Why couldn’t we be a site for an alternative energy school? Why wouldn’t we be a training school to support the rail industry? Why wouldn’t we have a design school to look at mass transportation? Why couldn’t we train students in demographics?” she said. “Whatever the relevant needs are for the employment market, we are uniquely qualified to provide workers for those needs.”

More here. The Detroit Public School superintendent. She oversees a school program that has a 38% graduation rate. I talked to someone who works with the school system. The Detroit high school her husband graduates from had four students who were proficient in math out of their graduating seniors.

Four out of two hundred.

Now I have a question. High school graduates need jobs, no doubt. But is there a difference between preparing people to be workers, and preparing people to be citizens? Which should come first? Why?

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The last post was uncited because I received its contents from an email I received. But I now know who the author is, and what he’s doing. Phillip Jackson is the Executive Director of The Black Star Project. Although as I noted in a response to him I think his analysis AND prescriptions are off in some really important ways, at least on first glance his project is one worth supporting and perhaps duplicating.

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Got this from a brother on a listserv:

America has lost a generation of Black boys   

There is no longer a need for dire predictions, hand-wringing, or apprehension about losing a generation of Black boys. It is too late. In education, employment, economics, incarceration, health, housing, and parenting, we have lost a generation of young Black men. The question that remains is will we lose the next two or three generations, or possibly every generation of Black boys hereafter to the streets, negative media, gangs, drugs, poor education, unemployment, father absence, crime, violence and death.  

Most young Black men in the United States don’t graduate from high school. Only 35% of Black male students graduated from high school in Chicago and only 26% in New York City, according to a 2006 report by the Schott Foundation for Public Education. Only a few black boys who finish high school actually attend college, and those few Black boys who enter college, nationally, only 22% of them finish college.  Young Black male students have the worst grades, the lowest test scores, and the highest dropout rates of all students in the country.

When these young Black men don’t succeed in school, they are much more likely to succeed in the nation’s criminal justice and penitentiary system. And it was discovered recently that even when a young Black man graduates from a U.S. college, there is a good chance that he is from Africa, the Caribbean or Europe, and not the United States.  

Black men in prison in America have become as American as apple pie. 

There are more Black men in prisons and jails in the United States (about 1.1 million) than there are Black men incarcerated in the rest of the world combined. This criminalization process now starts in elementary schools with Black male children as young as six and seven years old being arrested in staggering numbers according to a 2005 report, Education on Lockdown by the Advancement Project.  The rest of the world is watching and following the lead of America. Other countries including England, Canada, Jamaica, Brazil and South Africa are adopting American social policies that encourage the incarceration and destruction of young Black men.

This is leading to a world-wide catastrophe.

But still, there is no adequate response from the American or global black community.  Worst of all is the passivity, neglect and disengagement of the Black community concerning the future of our Black boys. We do little while the future lives of Black boys are being destroyed in record numbers.The schools that Black boys attend prepare them with skills that will make them obsolete before, and if, they graduate. In a strange and perverse way, the Black community, itself, has started to wage a kind of war against young Black men and has become part of this destructive process.  

Who are young Black women going to marry? Who is going to build and maintain the economics of Black communities? Who is going to anchor strong families in the Black community? Who will young Black Boys emulate as they grow into men? Where is the outrage of the Black community at the destruction of its Black boys? Where are the plans and the supportive actions to change this? Is this the beginning of the end of the Black people in America?  

The list of those who have failed young Black men includes our government, our foundations, our schools, our media, our Black churches, our Black leaders, and even our parents. Ironically, experts say that the solutions to the problems of young Black men are simple and inexpensive, but they are not easy or popular. It is not that we lack solutions as much as it is that we lack the will to implement these solutions to save Black boys. It seems that government is willing to pay billions of dollars to lock up young Black men, rather than the millions it would take to prepare them to become viable contributors and valued members of our society.  

Please consider these simple goals that can lead to solutions for fixing the problems of young Black men:     Short term   1)      Teach all Black boys to read at grade level by the third grade and to embrace education.   2)      Provide positive role models for Black boys.   3)      Create a stable home environment for Black boys that includes contact with their fathers.   4)      Ensure that Black boys have a strong spiritual base.   5)      Control the negative media influences on Black boys.   6)      Teach Black boys to respect all girls and women.     Long term   1)      Invest as much money in educating Black boys as in locking up Black men.   2)      Help connect Black boys to a positive vision of themselves in the future.   3)      Create high expectations and help Black boys live into those high expectations.   4)      Build a positive peer culture for Black boys.   5)      Teach Black boys self-discipline, culture and history.   6)      Teach Black boys and the communities in which they live to embrace education and life-long learning. 

 Again, no politics. A poor conception of families (technically can’t BLACK WOMEN fill the economics gap purportedly left by black men?). And the data is a bit off too–none of the graduation rates take transfers into account. I’ve been thinking about the concept of a “poison pill” as a way of explaining the various solutions and prescriptions that people (well-meaning and other-wise) put forth for black people. This is a prime example of well meaning ideas gone awry. (Edited to add: I think Earl’s critique appeared first, but whatever the case is worth reading.) 

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