Acting White: Life In The Crosswalk - Part III

Today I met with the Oakland HS teacher of the class in which I volunteered, this past spring. I wanted to re-enlist for the fall, if she is game (and she is). Discussing current events, blog topics, and teenager stuff with these kids was very enlightening to me. She said she thought they looked forward to the discussions and got a lot out of them.

We talked about the black young man who was the subject of Part II (here) of this serial posting saga. As she feared, he failed the year and will now attend (hopefully) a continuation school with a GED curriculum. When I mentioned that I recently saw him walking downtown she interrupted me (politely) by saying “I bet he was walking slow”. I shot back, ‘how did you know?’ wherein she replied that the behavior goes hand-in-hand with under performance and the fifty-five percent black male HS dropout rate.

We are both concerned that this kid is headed for a life of depression, self-medication, un/under-employment, continuing lost of self-esteem, and a bad ending. He has admitted to his teacher that he lacks motivation for doing the things he needs to get ahead. There is really very little to be done, within the current education framework. In earlier days, I would have suggested that a stint in the military might buck him up, but that option is not available, as the intellectual and social requirements of the military have risen greatly with the use of technology and the demands of the urban battle theaters, in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The teacher went on to describe another HS-age black young man she is trying to mentor, who recently revealed that his girlfriend is now pregnant with their second child, even as he just barely graduated, through extraordinary intervention. As she described the problems facing this young unmarried couple, all I could do is shake my head with her in wonderment, while thinking that this is what dedicated teachers across the country deal with every teaching day. One thing is sure; we can’t just keep building more prisons.

We need to place a bounty on reaching these youngsters before they enter the revolving door of the vocational prison complex. And whatever this desperately needed approach to the young black male may be, the 'forgotten-fifty-five%', it is guaranteed to look very different than our current affirming programs for boosting the ranks of WEB Dubois’ talented-tenth.

James C. Collier

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