Has America lost another generation of black boys?

Has America lost another generation of black boys?

The Truth Clinic

By James W. Breedlove

"Those who control the education of the children control the future of that
race."

"If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot
think well, others will do their thinking for them."

These George Orwell type aphorisms highlight the potential chasm that Black
America is falling into and, if not constructively dealt with, portends a
dire black destiny both for the nation and its individuals.

Phillip Jackson, executive director of the Black Star Project in Chicago,
believes we have lost another generation of our black boys via poor
education, unemployment, economic inequity, incarceration, father absence,
lax parenting, gangs, crime, violence and death. His greater concern is we
will also lose the next generation or possibly every future generation of
black boys to these same societal factors.

In response to this growing crisis Mr. Jackson founded the Black Star
Project, a dynamic educational reform organization, whose primary objective
is eliminating the racial academic achievement gap by involving parents and
communities in the education of children. Founded in Chicago's Southside in
1996, the Black Star model is taking root and even being duplicated in other
cities.

Mr. Jackson defines the need for Black Star by referencing statistics
comparing blacks to other groups in areas such as standardized test scores
and high school/college graduation rates. Only 35 percent of black male
students graduated from high school in Chicago and only 26 percent in New
York City, according to a 2006 report by The Schott Foundation. Of the few
black boys who finish high school and enter college only 22 percent of them
finish. Increasingly the statistics show that even when a young black male
graduates from a U.S. college, there is a good chance that he is from
Africa, the Caribbean or Europe, and not the U.S.

When young black males don't succeed in school, they are more likely to
succeed as primary members of the nation's criminal justice system. There
are more than 1.1 million black males in prisons and jails in the U.S.; more
than all the black men incarcerated in the rest of the world combined. This
criminal indoctrination now starts in elementary schools with black male
children as young as six and seven entrapped in the net of over zealous zero
tolerance criminal focused policies.

Jackson has convinced some well known corporations, foundations and
community organizations to become participating partners in the Black Star
project. Some of the prominent names are: Toyota Motor Sales USA, ComEd,
Schott Foundation for Public Education, OfficeMax, Ariel Capital Management,
Quaker/PepsiCo Beverages & Food, and many others listed on the Black Star
website.

Toyota contributed $240,000 to help finance and launch the Toyota Black Star
Parent University, a new three-year program that will help Chicago parents
obtain skills and resources needed to build stronger families.

Classes financed by the Toyota Black Star Program will be held in
neighborhoods throughout the city. Local parenting experts serve as
"professors" and teach courses that range from educating children about
resolving conflict to developing financial literacy. This initiative, if
successful in Chicago, will be offered to other cities.

Jackson says the path for Black Star has not been easy. Worst of all is the
passivity, neglect and disengagement of the black community. We do little
while the future lives of black boys are being destroyed in record numbers.
In a strange and perverse way, the black community has started to wage a
kind of war against young black men and has become part of this destructive
process.

Recently Jackson responded to a statement attributed to Oprah Winfrey: "I
became so frustrated with inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The
sense that you need to learn is just not there."

Jackson's response was, "If that sense of wanting to learn is not in the
schools, it is not because of the children. Rather, it is because of the
adults in their lives or, to be more precise, the adults who are not in
their lives.

"I absolutely agree with Ms. Winfrey that this work can be frustrating. That
is why the Black Star Project sends hundreds of mentors and role models into
the same schools that Oprah shuns to undertake the difficult and sometimes
thankless work of inspiring, motivating and encouraging our children to
overcome their circumstances. Unlike Oprah, our mentors do not have the
luxury of abandoning our inner-city students to poverty, violence, and
despair.

"When someone of Oprah's stature publicly makes these kinds of statements
that discourage people from volunteering in schools, it makes the job of
those working to improve the lives of poor, black, inner-city youth a lot
harder, said Jackson."

If this destructive trend continues Jackson wonders, "Who are young black
women going to marry? Who is going to build and maintain the economies of
black communities? Who is going to anchor strong families in the black
community? Who will young black boys emulate as they become men? Where is
the outrage of the black community at the functional decimation of its black
boys? Where are the action plans and support systems to change this?"

It is Jackson's contention that, "It is not a lack of viable solutions as
much as it is we lack the will to implement these solutions to save our
black boys."

James W. Breedlove is a former president of the Fort Wayne NAACP. Comments
or opinions can be sent to him at www.truthclinic.com.