We Have Lost A Generation Of Black Boys: We Have Nobody To Blame But Ourselves

The Grand Rapids Times
11-21-2010

Yes, we have lost most of our black boys and there are plenty of statistics to prove it.

There is no longer a need for dire predictions, hand-wringing, or apprehension about losing a generation of black boys. It is too late! In education, employment, economics, incarceration, health, housing, and parenting, we have lost a generation of young black men. The question that remains is will we lose the next two or three generations, or possibly every generation of black boys hereafter to the streets, negative media, gangs, drugs, poor education, unemployment, father absence, crime, violence and death?

Let’s look at the facts. Most young black men in Grand Rapids and the United States don’t graduate from high school. Only 35% of black male students graduated from high school in Chicago and only 26% in New York City, according to a report by The Schott Foundation for Public Education. Only a few black boys who finish high school actually attend college, and of those few black boys who enter college, nationally, only 22% of them finish college.

Young black male students have the worst grades, the lowest test scores, and the highest dropout rates of all students in the country. When these young black men don’t succeed in school, they are much more likely to succeed in the nation’s criminal justice and penitentiary system. And it was discovered recently that even when a young black man graduates from a U.S. college, there is a good chance that he is from Africa, the Caribbean or Europe, and not the United States.

Black men in prison in America have become as American as apple pie. There are more black men in prisons and jails in the United States (about 1.1 million) than there are black men incarcerated in the rest of the world combined. This criminalization process now starts in elementary schools with black male children as young as six and seven years old being arrested in staggering numbers according to a 20w05 report, Education on Lockdown by the Advancement Project.

We Bear Most Of The Blame

Those of us who came up in the sixties, seventies and eighties wanted our children to have all of the things we never dreamed we could have, so, we spoiled and pampered them, to death. Vacations, cars, money, football and basketball practice, $125 sneakers, designer clothes, cell phones, video games, and on and on.

We Forgot To Teach Our Children The Value Of Hard Work

Caddying 5 hours in the hot sun to make eighty cents to eat lunch the next day; setting bowling pins until midnight to have lunch money the next day; selling papers until midnight to make a dollar and a quarter or working a paper route in cold and snow is what many Black boys did during their teen years. Instead of our children having to study after school, they play video games or watch TV for the next eight hours. That is, those who aren’t out selling drugs. In 2006, my 21 year old nephew in Los Angeles asked me why should he flip burgers 40 hours a week when he can deliver one little bag and make four times that much in 20 minutes? Three months later, he got his head blown off in a drive-by shooting. What a waste, We give our children everything, without their having to earn it. How many of our children do not have cell phones?

Who pays for those cell phones?

How many are driven to school and get picked up from school everyday? Taken to football practice, given money for Mickey D’s? Get bailed out of jail frequently? Go to the mall to buy those expensive designer clothes and shoes? What happened to work/reward?

What we have today is babies raising babies. Seldom is there a father figure in the house.

Where is the tough love? How can you expect children to want to excel, when there is no motivation? So, what we have is a generation of lazy, unmotivated, often-immoral children and young adults.

We created this mess. Now we must undo it.

We Can Turn This Thing Around

Our youth need role models.

They need to see successful Black men and women, entrepreneurs, scientists, sales people, real politicians and spiritual messages that offer more than how to get to the “sweet bye and bye.” They need to learn how to live in the “sweet now and now!”

Many think the only way out is to sell drugs, be a rapper or be an NBA point guard or a great NFL wide receiver. Learning a trade, owning a business or becoming a responsible, productive member of society seldom crosses their mind. Couple this with the passivity, neglect and disengagement of the black community concerning the future of our black boys, and we have a dead society. We do little, while the future lives of black boys are being destroyed in record numbers. The schools that black boys attend prepare them with skills that will make them obsolete before – and if – they graduate. In a strange and perverse way, the black community, itself, has started to wage a kind of war against young black men and has become part of this destructive process.

We wonder why our young black women leave Grand Rapids as soon as they graduate from college. Whom are they going to marry? What do they have to pick from? 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 grow into men?

Where is the outrage of the black community at the destruction of its black boys? Where are the plans and the supportive actions to change this? Is this the beginning of the end of the black people in Grand Rapids?

The list of those who have failed young black men includes our government, our foundations, our schools, our media, our black churches, our black leaders, and even our parents.

Ironically, experts say that the solutions to the problems of young black men are simple and relatively inexpensive, but they may not be easy, practical or popular. It is not that we lack solutions as much as it is that we lack the will to implement these solutions to save black boys. It seems that government is willing to pay billions of dollars to lock up young black men, rather than the millions it would take to prepare them to become viable contributors and valued members of our society.

Please consider these simple goals that can lead to solutions for fixing the problems of young black men:

Short Term

1. Teach our youth to read at grade level by the third grade and to embrace education.

2. Provide positive role model s for our youth.

3. Create a stable home environment for black boys that includes contact with their fathers.

4. Ensure that our youth have a strong spiritual base.

5. Teach black boys to respect all girls and women.

Long Term

1. Invest as much money in educating black boys as in locking up black men.

2. Help connec t blac k boys to a positive vision of themselves in the future.

3. Build a positive peer cul ture for our youth.

4. Teach black boys self-discipline, culture and history.

5. Teach our youth and the communities in which they live to embrace education and life-long learning.

COME ON GRAND RAPIDS, LET’S GET TO WORK Come join the fight. Our website is www.overthehillgang.net. You may call us at 616- 446-2133 Email: overthehillgang@comcast.net

The Over The Hill Gang is dedicated to bringing all elements of the black community together to mentor and help our young people find their way.