Black Male Multiple Choice: Unemployed, High School Dropout or Incarcerated

from the Huffington Post

Black Male Multiple Choice:
Unemployed, High School Dropout or Incarcerated
by Russell Simmons and Andre Harrell

If a black boy is born in the US today, he will have a 33 percent chance of going to prison in his lifetime. Stated another way -- one in three black boys born today will face prison time. It has become a sad normality, almost a backwards rite of passage, for black young men to enter the penal system and never return to our communities. And if we are "lucky" enough for them to return, they usually are much hardened criminals than they ever were before. Black men represent 8 percent of the population of the United States but comprise 3 percent of all college undergrads, 48 percent of inmates in prison and are five times more likely to die from HIV/AIDS than white men. 50 percent of black boys do not finish high school, 72 percent of black male dropouts in their 20s are unemployed and 60 percent of black male dropouts are eventually incarcerated.

To respond to this deepening crisis, the Open Society Foundation founded by George Soros developed a grant-making fund to improve black males' life outcomes. This fund is called the Campaign for Black Male Achievement (CBMA). While CBMA has had great success in building initiatives around fatherhood and family, education, living wage, and other areas, the campaign recognizes it needs to invest more in strategic communications to promote positive messages and frames about black men and boys.

CMBA and the Knight Foundation are partnering with the American Values Institute (AVI), founded by Alexis McGill Johnson, to create a conversation on December 7 and 8 called "Black Male: Re-Imagined," to explore opportunities to invest in art, culture, and communications to change the negative perceptions of black men. The questions guiding this conversation are: If we could create a campaign or set of campaigns that would change the way we look at black males over time, what would that look like?

What is "Black Male: Re-Imagined"?

"Black Male: Re-Imagined" is a two-day, invitation-only, closed-door, summit of 60 of the most thoughtful and creative media influencers, foundation executives, and the organizations they fund. We are gathering together to consider what kind of real financial investment can be made to influence media and culture to change perceptions about black males. We are honored to take part in this.

Our goals will be to: 1) discuss campaign strategies to "rebrand and re-imagine" black men. 2) explain the business models of various communications methods so that foundations can invest wisely. 3) Develop a working group to continue the conversation.

We have built brands our whole lives, that is what we do. It is time we reinvent the brand of the black male and stop the cradle-to-prison pipeline and replace it with a world that is much more hopeful and optimistic for young black men. For no child should ever think that they have a one in three chance of going to prison. There has to be another choice on the test.

Co-authored with Andre Harrell. Andre Harrell is founder of the record label, Uptown Records, who signed Mary J. Blige, Heavy D amongst many others. Harrell also served as president/CEO of Motown Records.

'Left of Black': Episode #12 featuring Marc Lamont Hill and Salamishah Tillet

Left of Black Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal discusses the crisis of Black Males and schooling, the de-skilling of the American Work-force and Social Media with Columbia University Professor Marc Lamont Hill. Neal is also joined by University of Pennsylvania Professor Salamishah Tillet as they discuss the career of Kanye West, the impact of Nicki Minaj and definitions of musical genius.

→Marc Lamont Hill is Associate Professor of Education at Columbia University. A regular contributor to Fox News and CNN, Hill is the author of Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity.

→Salamishah Tillet is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the forthcoming Peculiar Memories: Slavery and the Post-Civil Rights Imagination (Duke University Press). Tillet is also Founder of A Long Walk Home, a non-profit organization and a regular contributor to The Root.com.

The Disappearing Black Male Student

A new report says the graduation rate for Black males is less than 50 percent

Black Men Have Something of Value to Offer in America’s Classrooms
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

“Yes We Can: the 2010 Schott Foundation 50 State Report on Black Males in Public Education” recently highlighted that the overall graduation rate for Black males in the United States is less than 50 percent.

According to the report—the fourth such report sponsored by the Schott Foundation—the “American educational system is systematically failing Black males,” with school districts in New York City, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Dade County, Florida singled out for graduation rates below 30 percent. The report should not be a surprise for any one even vaguely familiar with the educational struggles of black men and boys—struggles that contribute to drop out rates, incarceration rates and even tensions between educated and professional Black women and Black men.

Many of the narratives about the failure of Black boys in school are focused on the perceived deficiencies of the boys, their families and by extension, certain forms of Black culture. Thus regardless of their social class, educational background and cerebral capabilities, many Black boys enter public school as “at risk” students. As Ann Arnett Ferguson observes in her book, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity, the description of “at risk,” is “invested with enormous power to identify, explain, and”—and this is critical—“predict futures.”

Though there are of course Black male students who have legitimate learning disabilities and are struggling in family situations that are not conducive to their success in the classroom, Ferguson argues that it is the schools themselves that very early shape the expectations and possibilities of Black boys in the classroom. Ironically, the scripts that public schools construct about Black boys have little to do with their capacity to learn, but every thing to do with perceptions of their behavior as so-called at-risk students. According to Ferguson, it is the schools themselves that are responsible for the creation of “bad boys.”

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com

Baseball: Where Are All the Black Men and Boys?

Running Away from Baseball
by Mark Anthony Neal
July 14, 2009

When the rosters for Major League Baseball's All-Star Game were announced, only 10 black players, including the Orioles' Adam Jones, were among the 64 picked for the American League and National League rosters. Among the 16 players chosen as starters by fan vote, only Derek Jeter of the Yankees is African-American.

The 1979 All-Star Game, by contrast, featured 16 African-American players, including seven starters and seven future Hall-of-Famers.

In 2009, a little more that 10 percent of all Major League Baseball players are black - the first increase in more than a decade but still a far cry from the close to 30 percent mark achieved in the mid-1970s. The diminishing presence of African-American players has reached such a point that many historically black colleges and universities explicitly recruit white and Latino players to field full-fledged teams.

There are many theories about the decline. Some cite the inability of Major League Baseball to successfully market the game to black youth like the National Basketball Association and National Football League do. And although it generally costs less to attend a baseball game than an NBA or NFL game, some do cite the expense as a deterrent, a charge that golfer Tiger Woods recently reiterated when talking about ticket prices at the new Yankee Stadium.

Then there's the increase of international players, particularly from Asia and Latin America. The latter dynamic led Gary Sheffield, a black 20-year veteran, to suggest to GQ magazine in 2007 that the increased presence of Latino players was due to the fact they were "easier to control."

One explanation is that many poor youth are simply challenged by the lack of available space and equipment to play baseball. Longtime music executive and baseball fan Bill Stephney suggests another reason for the diminishing presence of black baseball players. According to Mr. Stephney, baseball lost legitimacy in black communities when black fathers became marginalized in those same communities.

There is merit in Mr. Stephney's observation. Unlike basketball, which youngsters can learn by watching older youth play the game, the game of baseball requires a certain level of organization and instruction that, very often, only adults can provide. Indeed, my own father sparked my interest in baseball as a youth; I can't imagine I would have become interested in the sport without his involvement.

My father belonged to a post- World War II generation of American men who were youths themselves when Jackie Robinson broke the sport's color barrier, an act loudly cheered by those struggling against legal segregation.

It bears noting that among the current black ballplayers in the majors a significant number are sons of former majors leaguers, including John Mayberry Jr. of the Phillies, Gary Matthews Jr. of the Angels and Prince Fielder of the Brewers. All three fathers - John Mayberry Sr., Gary Matthews Sr. and Cecil Fielder - were All-Stars during their careers.

More telling are the examples of brothers Dmitri and Delmon Young and B.J. and Justin Upton. The Young brothers were the first siblings to be drafted among the first five picks of baseball's amateur draft in 1991 and 2003, respectively, and the Uptons were among the top two picks in the 2002 and 2005 drafts. Both sets of brothers talk about how their fathers were instrumental in their careers, with baseball serving as the common language that bridged the generation gap.

The late Buck O'Neil, a veteran of the Negro Leagues and later one of baseball's great ambassadors, once suggested that kids never recall going to their first basketball game with their fathers - but that is often the case with baseball.

Last month, President Barack Obama promoted the importance of being a good dad, saying he wanted to start a "national conversation" on the subject. Maybe part of that conversation could take place on a baseball diamond, with fathers and sons and a bag filled with balls, bats and gloves.

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Mark Anthony Neal, a lifelong New York Mets fan, teaches African-American Studies at Duke University. He is the author of several books, including the recent "New Black Man."

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