The Massive Failure of Black Males in the American Education System
Hat Tip: Bridges for Kids
by Phillip Jackson, Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel, February 23, 2005
The problem of Black male failure in education and the corresponding issue of high unemployment for Black youth are huge and complex, but they are still solvable. This may not be the case in 10 to 15 years.
Anyone who only wants to talk about the massive failure of Black males in the American education system is now officially part of the problem. Empty words become an unnecessary diversion from one of the worst educational and economic catastrophes to ever confront America. Either we will get into action to solve this problem, or we will watch multiple generations of young Black males become expendable in our society, and literally perish from our communities and our nation.
Take a minute to review the graduation rates for Black males from 20 school districts with 10,000 or more Black male students. According to a 2004 study, “Public Education and Black Male Students: A State Report Card,” by The Schott Foundation for Public Education, these districts have the lowest graduation rates for Black males in the country. They are: Cincinnati and Cleveland, Ohio, 19%; Chatham County, Georgia, 21%; Rochester, New York, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Pinellas County, Florida, 24%; New York, New York, 26%; Buffalo, New York, 27%; St. Louis, Missouri, 28%; Duval County, Florida, 29%; Chicago, Illinois, Clayton County, Georgia, and Richmond County, Georgia, 30%; Oakland, California, 31%; Hillsborough, Florida, 32%; Indianapolis, Indiana, Orange County, Florida and Palm Beach County, Florida, 33%; Caddo Parish, Louisiana and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, 34%.
Young Black men who are out of school and out of work are more susceptible to illegal activities that will likely result in their incarceration. So far, the Black community has not responded sufficiently to this catastrophe involving its young Black men. In fact, this problem is not even on the radar of many Black churches, businesses, elected officials, media outlets, civil rights and social service organizations. Each day that passes without an adequate response from our Black community leads more young Black men into drugs, gangs, violence, prison and ultimately to their death.
While the massive problem of Black male failure in education and the corresponding issue of high unemployment for Black youth are huge and complex, they are still solvable. This may not be the case in 10 to 15 years. A large part of the solution is a return to the basics of family living with parents, families and communities taking the primary responsibility for educating Black male children. The successful education process starts with the family in the home and community, and continues in school and throughout life. The extent to which Black parents become actively involved in the education of Black male children is the extent to which the destruction of potentially millions of young Black men will stop.
When young Black men realize they have become expendable, are we ready for their reaction?
The United States does not tolerate young Black men being unproductive or counter-productive to the goals of mainstream society. Black males are suspended, expelled and failed in schools at rates that are two to five times higher than students of other races and go to jail at rates five to ten times higher than people of other races. The question arises, “Are young Black men expendable?” The apparent answer from our inaction seems to be, “Yes! They are expendable.”
Fixing this problem will take 35 to 50 years, if we start today. While many individuals and institutions have a powerful role to play, the Black community must supply the leadership, energy and resolve to fix this problem. The government must provide the financial resources and the legislative will. The cost to fund this initiative should be diverted from the Department of Justice and front-loaded into the Department of Education. Foundations and corporations must also participate in this effort with financial support and leadership. The issue of educating Black males must become a 24 hour a day, 365 day a year effort. The proper and successful education of young Black men must become America’s next civil rights movement!
The brunt of this effort will fall to the Black community. This includes:
Getting Black parents, Black families and the Black community properly involved in the education of Black male children
Creating and maintaining nurturing, effective, supportive, child-centered, two-parent families
Reconnecting Black fathers to their children
Instilling strong educational values in young Black men
Developing positive community structures, principles, morals and activities to help with the social development of young Black men
Finding strong, positive role models for young Black men
Any time someone encounters a Black male child or teenager, whether a friend, relative or stranger, he or she should ask, “How are you doing in school?,” “What college do you plan to attend?,” and “What are your career interests?” The importance, value and power of education must be reinforced constantly for these young men.
While this is a tough problem now, it will become insurmountable unless action is taken immediately. Young Black men want and deserve their place in America. That’s the American way! Who is going to tell these young men that because they don’t have good academic skills, because they have dropped out of high school, because they can’t find a job, because they have been to jail…they cannot participate in mainstream America? When young Black men realize they have become expendable, are we ready for their reaction?
July 31st, 2008 at 11:27 pm
The school, prisons, external agencies only see the Black male race as cash cows. It is reflected in the school system, instead of teaching the Black males, they are enrolled in ESE classess and the learning stops. Then he labeled with behavior problem, his only problem is that he was born black. The school system will not teach our Black children whether they are males or females. The district is most interested in how much money they collect off our Black children backs and doing nothing to improve their future. Parents are sitting back while the school system portal their children to prison. From our Black children to our black males. Usually, the semi-literate black child that was never taught is now the adult, and he is creating an evolving door of crime and prison, until prison decides to keep him forever. The prison system have the belief that some individuals rather stay in prison than be on the street. What about this the prison forgot the prepare the individual to be released, he is skilledless as he went in as he come out. The prison system only exploit inmates by making them work for below minimum wage and justifing that behavior by saying tax payers are paying their stay. The tax payers has no control over how the prison system is ran and legislators are devistating our communities intentionally. Black males and girls are still the 21 century slaves. Many Black politicians engage as the overseers and others are the cause of this kind of assault on our childern and men. Black people in America have little to no representation from anyone in the community or politics. Every institution is fighting over our black males to destroy and corrupt them so they can just waste away with diseases, health issues, destroy the families and communities. truly, this is genacide. The minds of the black males is most polluted because view of what the american society have forced them to become and believe, as hunted and caged animal with no future of normality because they are for sale. The institutions figured our how recycle the Black male by passing them around to each agency maximizing his value until he dies. The Black boys and males have made many people rich, however, they are homeless, mentally ill, and eventually dies. Would life been different if he was a different colour?
August 1st, 2008 at 12:46 pm
“Either we will get into action to solve this problem…”
In the ancient Hebrew culture, it was a requirement early on for males (the purported leaders and the progenitors of society to appear before God) on an annualized/semi-annualized basis. God never blamed the females for societal failures, and we cannot blame them either! God looked to the husband, a Greek term that means ‘planter’. We plant the seed that begins the process of bringing life into the world – we are responsible for not only planting, but cultivating, watering, growing and harvesting the seed!
The black community has spent centuries it would seem, pointing out the failures of the white culture as well as the failures of the American government towards its black citizens. As Adam blamed Eve for his failure, we spend too much time blaming others as opposed to looking inwardly at our own failures and lack of solutions – we have resources. I believe that it is time for black America to convene national, local, church and individual household conferences in order to discuss our own failures to rise and to solve our own problems including the failings of black male leadership.
The failure of black male leadership, and I include myself in the catchment; has contributed to the depraved social conditions, failures and displacement of our young people and our race all over the world. I raised this issue recently with a purported member of the Senator Obama inner-circle. He immediately rejected my position and instead attributed the problem to the impact and misinfluence on our boys by black females, a position that I immediately rejected.
Seventy percent of our households are headed by black females true enough, but we should thank the women for doing what the black male group has failed to do, raise these boys as best as they can do often by themselves.
It is time for us to make an assessment of what we have been doing wrong in deference, to pointing all of the egregious errors that have been made by our white counterparts (and there have been many). And having said that, we must change the course of destiny for black people from the continent of Africa, to ‘the land down under’ and throughout the Americas’.
The world is changing with the emergence of new global economies…, if we don’t act, we are going to fall further behind. And I do not mean to suggest that economics is the sole solution to the problem. We have devolved into western-centric thinking and a western-centric mindset; it’s not working for us, because we are only in part, westerners! We must develop our own workding models.
The problem of miseducation, and the failure of our youth to thrive in an educational and economic system that was never intended en masse for blacks in the first place is a problem that we must come together and address if it is ever going to be solved. Education is not the only problem area, for in getting knowledge (an education), we have not garnered an understanding! We have given up our continent (1884-85 partition of Africa during the Berlin Conference), its resources and its inhabitants for 5 centuries now; it is time for us to plant and build again that which has been lost.
The leadership of the black male-led church, I include myself, has also failed, having adapted too closely to a western-centric model that was never ours in the first place! God sent the Holy Spirit down to the African eunuch, what should that say to the rest of us?
August 1st, 2008 at 5:15 pm
@ Rev. Solomon,
A lot of what has failed our youth has been systematic. Racist conditions, hatred, denial of human rights, not to mention slavery, rape, murder…need I go on? But everything that it happening now pretty much has happened before but compare the 40’s,50’s,60’s and early 70’s to the late 70’s thru present day and one thing stands out. You cannot tell me that conditions today were worse than back then. I have so much respect for our elders and ancestors because they stood up to the system no matter what it meant..even death back then. They stood up as men.
This current generation is so spoiled, so babyfied(is that a word?) that it is sickening. Being raised by single mothers and grannies who coddle them. I am in no way shape or form blaming the women for our condition for not for them we may be borderline extinct. But in that same vein, the absence of an authoritative father figure in the lives of black males has proven tragic in our community.
Basic skills that a father can teach a boy such as discipline, self control, respect and humility is not something that the women can teach with the effectiveness as a man. A foot in the ass of a young boy by his father goes a lot further than a tongue lashing by moms or grandma. I’m a living witness to that.
The fathers who succumbed to materialism, promiscuity, drugs, and all type of temptation of the do what you like age(1970-present) have to be blamed wholeheartedly for a lot of this chaos. You are the ones who chose to abandon your family and your race.
We have to return to better values. The way that the black woman has been portayed since the 70’s has been criminal. From Pam Grier, Lola Falana, and Judy Pace up to Beyonce, Serena Williams, Buffie the Body and the many black models and black video and porn stars that are in the face of 90 percent of young black males, the image portayed of the black woman is that of a sexual beast. Insatiable. Always wanting and always ready. Not nurturing, not being the backbone of a race, not teaching values. Those images are being burned in the minds of many young men who have no man in their lives to show them how to treat a woman. No images of a father showing love and respect to their mother.
A lot of the lyrics in rap music can be directly attributed to the absence of a father in this generation lives. Rap is the music of the streets but you can’t tell me that if these cats were raised by strong men that a lot of the vulgarity and disrespect of women in the music would be as prevalent. Our young culture is so lost that they do not think that is wrong to blast the profane songs in front of mothers, young women and female elders. They honestly don’t see the fault in that. Why? No father around to place that foot strategically.