The Secrets for Motivating, Educating, and Lifting the Spirit of African American Males

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Preface.........................................................................................................................................................................................................xiEditor's Introduction: Answering the Call for Help..............................................................................................................................................................xviiChapter 1: Why Focus on Black Males? Mychal Wynn...............................................................................................................................................................1Chapter 2: Closing The Widest and Whitest Gaps: White Female Teachers and Black Males Ernest H. Johnson, Stephon Hall, and Stephen Hall........................................................................22Chapter 3: Transformational Teaching: Practices for Ensuring That No Black Boys are Left Behind Tavares Stephens and William Green.............................................................................46Chapter 4: Using Character and Culture to Close the Achievement Gap: A Special Message for Beginning Teachers Chike Akua.......................................................................................69Chapter 5: Honoring the Culture of African American Males Through Storytelling Obakunle Akinlana and Madafo Lyold Williams.....................................................................................98Chapter 6: Addicted to Success: The Secrets for Turning Academic Excellence Into a Habit Ernest H. Johnson.....................................................................................................126Chapter 7: Early Exposure to Reading and Positive Male Role Models Pryce Baldwin, Jr...........................................................................................................................164Chapter 8: Using Poetry and Spoken-word to Motivate Black Males Jerold M. Bryant and Phillip "Professor Pitt" Colas............................................................................................193Chapter 9: Why Is It Important to Cultivate an Interest in Creativity In Black Males? Anthony Goldston and Vandorn Hinnant.....................................................................................225Chapter 10: The Impact of Mentoring and Critical Thinking Skills on Achievement Tavares Stephens...............................................................................................................250Chapter 11: Why We Must Encourage African American Males to Become Financially Literate Entrepreneurs Winston Sharpe and The Champions for Peace Mastermind Institute..........................................273Chapter 12: Holla If You Hear Me: Giving Voice to Black Male Youth Through Hip hop Danya Perry, Mervin "Spectac" Jenkins, Patrick "9th Wonder" Douthit, and Chris "Dasan Ahanu" Massenburg.....................302Chapter 13: Breaking Through the Barriers to Excellence Kenston Griffin and Christopher Land...................................................................................................................326Chapter 14: What Society Gains by Ignoring the Sexual Development Of Black Boys Morris Gary III................................................................................................................357Chapter 15: The Role of Resiliency in Achieving Against the Odds Winston Sharpe................................................................................................................................381Epilogue: The Covenant For Motivating and Educating African American Males The Champions for Peace Mastermind Institute........................................................................................407The Contributors................................................................................................................................................................................................421Notes...........................................................................................................................................................................................................431

Chapter One

Every 5 seconds during the school day, a Black public school student is suspended. Every 46 seconds during the school day, a Black high school student drops out. Every minute, a Black child is arrested and a Black baby is born to an unmarried mother. Every 3 minutes, a Black child is born into poverty. Every hour, a Black baby dies. Every 4 hours, a Black child or youth under 20 dies from an accident, and every 5 hours, a Black youth is a homicide victim. Every day, a Black young person under 25 dies from HIV infection and a Black child or youth under 20 commits suicide. Marian Wright Edelman, The Children's Defense Fund

African-American Males—Black Males While the title of this book reflects the culturally appropriate term, "African-American" referring to Americans of African descent, the terminology, `Black' will also be used throughout the text. Whether Black American, Black Caribbean, Black Bermudian, Black Canadian, or Black African, the issues confronting Black males, and their parents, wherever they live, are very similar across cultural and socioeconomic lines. These boys, young men, and men who share a cultural frame of reference, are adversely influenced by peer pressures, frequently struggle in classrooms, are the students most likely to be disciplined, and are likely to matriculate through an educational system which fails to affirm their cultural contributions or connect them to their historical past.

My mother, bless her soul, when told of my plans to visit Africa, asked, "Son, why are you going to Africa?" When I told her, "Mama, Nina and I are going on a tour of Egypt and Ghana to trace our roots," she responded, "Boy, you ain't from Africa; you were born in Alabama!" However, when I saw firsthand the statues and artifacts in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt; when I went into the pyramids, temples, and tombs in Giza and Luxor; when I journeyed along the Nile to a Nubian village; when I witnessed the monuments and statues in Abu Simbel; and when I flew by airplane across the Sahara, landing in Accra, Ghana and witnessed at the airport the thousands of Black people who looked like the Black people pictured on the walls and chiseled in stone throughout Egypt, I knew, despite thousands of miles and hundreds of years of physical and cultural separation, the Ghanaians, the Nubians, and those portrayed in the temples and tombs of Egypt were "Black like me" and I was in fact home.

African Black males, Bermudian Black males, Canadian Black males, Caribbean Black males, and Black males from Alabama face similar challenges in education, maturation, college matriculation, and, in gaining full access through the glass ceilings into the ivory towers of business in their respective countries, states, islands, and communities. Subsequently, the strategies set forth in this book, are pertinent to the raising, teaching, nurturing, and empowering of `Black' males whether they live in the United States, Canada, Bermuda, Africa, or on one of the many islands in the Caribbean.

Addressing the Black male crisis requires first, raising the question, "What's the problem?" If there is in fact a problem, we must then raise the question, "What do we want to do about it?" In the original version of my book, Empowering African-American Males to Succeed: A Ten-Step Approach for Parents and Teachers, I cited the 1990 U.S. Census Bureau statistics that showed:

African-American males have higher unemployment rates, lower labor force participation rates, lower high school graduation and college enrollment rates, while ranking first in incarceration and homicide. The leading cause of death for African-American men between the ages of 15 and 24 is homicide, and while representing only 6 percent of the population, African-American men represent 49 percent of prison inmates. Only 4 percent of African-American males attend college, while 23 percent of those of college age are either incarcerated or on probation. While African-American children nationwide comprise approximately 17 percent of all children in public schools, they represent 41 percent of all children in special education. Of the African-American children in special education, 85 percent are African-American males. African-American males, while comprising only 8 percent of public school students, represent the largest percentage, nationally, in suspensions (37 percent).

The tragic reality concerning the plight of Black males in the decade between the 1990 and 2010 census shows that little has changed. In many categories, the 2010 census shows a worsening of the Black male condition. Despite the many task forces, state accountability standards, high school exit exams, increased NCAA student-athlete eligibility requirements, and the No Child Left Behind legislation, Black males continue to be among the students most likely to be referred to the office, suspended from school, sent to an alternative school, placed into special education, drop out of school, incarcerated in a state or federal prison, or be the victim of a homicide. Moreover, Black males are punished more severely for the same infractions as their white peers. On average, more than twice as many white male students are given the extra resources of gifted and talented programs by their schools as Black male students. Advanced Placement classes enroll only token numbers of Black male students, despite The College Board urging that schools open these classes to all who may benefit. In schools districts with selective academic classes and programs, whether they be elementary school gifted and talented programs, middle school advanced mathandscienceclasses,orhighschoolswithcollege-preparatoryprograms or honors and AP classes, Black male are noticeably and disproportionately absent from such programs and classes.

Black males suffer from a cultural disconnect in schools and classrooms. As evidenced by data contained in the National Center for Education Statistics' report, Educational Achievement and Black-White Inequality, there is no doubt there is a problem and something needs to be done about it.

Discipline, Special Education, and Jail

• Black students, while representing only 17 percent of public school students, account for 32 percent of suspensions and 30 percent of expulsions. In 1999, 35 percent of all Black students in grades 7-12 had been suspended or expelled from school. The rate was 20 percent for Hispanics and 15 percent for Whites. • Black children are labeled "mentally retarded" nearly 300 percent more than White children and only 8.4 percent of Black males are identified and enrolled in gifted and talented classes. • Black males in their early 30s are twice as likely to have prison records (22 percent) than bachelor's degrees (12 percent) and 700 percent more likely than a White male to be sentenced to a local, state, or federal prison. • A Black male born in today has a 29 percent chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life. The figure for Hispanic males is 16 percent, and for White males is 4 percent. • Black males are imprisoned at a rate of 3,405 per 100,000 (3.4 percent); Hispanics at a rate of 1,231 per 100,000 (1.2 percent); and Whites at a rate of 465 per 100,000 (.465 percent).

Freeman Hrabowski, in Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males, notes:

"By junior high school, many are working below grade level or barely passing; consequently, they see school as a place where they fail. The environment becomes even more frustrating because of problems between these students, their peers, and teachers and administrators—problems often related to behavior ... We see that Black students are more often tracked into lower-ability groups involving general education and vocational education and, in contrast, very few Black students are placed in gifted classes. In fact, White children are twice as likely to be placed in these classes as Black children. We also know that males, in general, are more likely than females to be overrepresented in the educable mentally retarded and learning-disabled children and underrepresented in gifted and talented programs. Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are underrepresented in as many as 70 percent of the gifted programs in the nation, and overrepresented in almost half of all special education programs."

High School Performance, Enrollment, and Graduation

• 13 percent of Blacks ages 16-24 have not earned a high school credential. The rate for Whites is 7 percent. • 17.5 percent of Black students, 13.2 percent of Hispanic students, and 9.3 percent of White students in grades K-12 have been retained at least one grade. • 70 percent of Black students will not take advanced math. • 73 percent of Black students will not take advanced English. • 88 percent of Black students will not take science classes as high as chemistry and physics. • 95 percent of Black students will not take a fourth year of a foreign language. • 98 percent of Black students will not take an AP foreign language course. • 97 percent of Black students taking the ACT will not be considered "College Ready." • Black students take AP exams at a rate of 53 per 1,000 students. The rate for Hispanic students is 115 per 1,000 and for Whites it is 185 per 1,000. • The average SAT scores for Black students is 433V and 426M; for Whites it is over 22 percent higher at 529V and 531M. • The average ACT score for Black students is 16.9; for Whites it is nearly 30 percent higher at 21.8.

Unemployment

• The unemployment rate for Blacks ages 16-19 is 25 percent. • The unemployment rate for Blacks without a high school credential is 30 percent, 19 percent with high school but no college, 10 percent with some college but no degree, and 6 percent with a bachelor's degree.

Black men, on average, are two and one-times as likely to be unemployed as whites and Black men earn substantially lower incomes even if they have reached the middle class. If the primary means for male identity in our society is, the "job" you have and the "work" that you do, then the inability of Black males to gain meaningful employment, a decent education, and a good income means that they are nothing; "invisible" men as the Black writer Ralph Ellison put it. Ultimately, the lack of meaningful employment results in a "downward spiral" ending with a loss of self-respect, intense and often overwhelming feelings of hopefulness, anger and fear, and further interpersonal and economic problems for Black men and their families. While these statistics may be alarming for the general population, they have left barely any Black family untouched and place all Black males at risk.

Societal perceptions, law enforcement interactions, and peer pressures of friends, relatives, and friends of friends who are either undereducated, unemployed, in gangs, involved in criminal activity, or on parole have an immediate and far-reaching impact on the lives of current and future generations of Black males. The issue for the Black community—indeed, for America—is much more than merely closing an achievement gap; it is ensuring that future generations of Black men have jobs, function as fathers, and contribute to the health and economic well-being of their local and national community.

Opening the Kindergarten to College Pathway for Black Males

The examination of various data sources suggests that for every 100 Black males only 3 are projected to graduate from college. More generous data sources may increase this number to 5, yet even combining the most optimistic data sources (i.e., high school graduation rate, college enrollment rates, and college graduation rates) cannot project this number to be higher than 7. Due to the enormity of the social-cultural factors contributing to such a tragically abysmal college graduation rate (i.e., gangs, drugs, urban crime, lack of school readiness, lack of at-home support, lack of highly-qualified teachers in urban schools, high unemployment rates, and the likelihood of being raised in a single-parent female-headed household) most community, institutional, and even family discussions are held within a philosophical context rather than a strategic one. Such discussions, which typically begin with statements such as, "I believe...." "If there were more ...," "The only thing that we have to do ..." and "Until we have more ... we cannot change things." Since such discussions are unlikely to lead to systemic or sustainable strategies, the resulting outcome is invariably to purchase a "Researched-based Student Achievement Program." However, despite all of the programs that have been developed, researched, and sold to parents, schools, and school districts to increase Black male achievement, none can lay claim to have done so.

In an article that focused on cultural proficiency by Patricia Guerra and Sarah Nelson, the authors indicate that one of the most troubling aspects of preparing students for college is that educators may not be aware of how their personal beliefs are depriving students and their families of their right to decide whether to pursue going to college. They go on to make the case that educators often have little knowledge of students' abilities, aspirations, or interests and that what often happens is that educators will assume that since a child is Black and not from a wealthy family, then college is not for them. This following advice is based on the questions Gurra and Nelson present in their article and the answers should help you as a parent (or teacher or school counselor) to determine whether the decision about going to college is being made for Black males and their families rather than by them.

Consider the answers to the following questions to determine whether the schools Black males are attending is helping them make college a possibility or an unsupported fantasy:

• Which students are placed in honors and advanced placement classes that offer a rigorous and challenging curriculum, and which are steered into remedial courses? • Which students are advised to take higher-level science and math courses, and which are tracked into vocational education? • Who are the students advised to take at least two years of a foreign language, and which are assumed to not need these courses? • Which students are advised to join band, cheerleading, student council, and other extracurricular activities to demonstrate well-roundedness, and which are not? • Which parents are invited to attend college night and made to feel welcome, and which do not receive the information or feel marginalized at the event? • Which students are urged to make college visits, and which are not? • Which students take college admissions exams such as the ACT or SAT, and which do not? • Which students are advised to apply to a four-year university, and which to the local community college? • Which students are encouraged to apply at prestigious institutions, and which are discouraged from doing so? • Which students are given applications for academic scholarships, and which are informed only of student loans? • Which students are supported in their pursuit of college admissions with encouragement, advice, and information? Which students are told, "You're not college material," "You don't have what it takes to make it in a four year college, so consider the community college," or "With your family's lack of financial resources, perhaps you should go to work and think about college at a later time"?

If the answer to the first question in each set does not include Black males, then it is highly likely that the decision about higher education is being made for Black males (and their families) rather than by Black males. While obtaining a college education might not be the best option for every Black male, a college degree can have a significant impact on the quality of life of a Black male, and all Black males (and their parents) should have the right to make this decision rather than to have it made for them.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Secrets for Motivating, Educating, and Lifting the Spirit of African American Malesby Ernest H. Johnson Copyright © 2012 by Ernest H. Johnson, Ph.D. and the Champions for Peace Mastermind Institute. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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