When the media talks about black males, there’s usually a patina of despair that blankets the discussion. This is understandable: Journalists and policy experts prefer to the converse in the language of statistics. Numbers describing black males are grim.
Another one jumped out Tuesday, with the “Race for Results” report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It found that African-American young people lag behind every other group in various indicators. We’ve read similar reports for decades.
But when you fly at a lower altitude, the story changes. There are families, schools, neighborhoods painting a different narrative about black boys. They know black boys can succeed and know how to make it happen.
We are at a rare moment in our nation’s evolution. The killings of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis questioned the value of black male life. President Barack Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative has proffered the challenge: What can we do as a nation to improve life for black males?
There’s much we can do. I have spent the past two decades thinking and writing about black males in addition to raising one of my own. There’s an astounding bounty of research on the lives and development of them. Researchers and educators have identified key elements of success. Those findings have not been widely shared with people who need the information most — parents, teachers and community leaders.
The most important thing “My Brother’s Keeper” can do is formulate a massive public education campaign to tell the nation how to change outcomes for black boys. Something on the order of the anti-smoking and anti-bullying campaigns.
We could inform parents of the enormous difference it makes to speak to your child from day one. Researchers have shown that middle-class children hear as many as 30 million more words than poor kids by the time they are three. This gap has a huge impact on brain growth and language skills.
Parents might also be instructed on how much of a difference they can make in the development of their child with their parenting style. Northwestern University professor Jelani Mandara hosts workshops with Chicago single mothers to teach them how to use an authoritative style - loving but demanding - which Mandara has found effective with black boys.
For schools, something as simple as smiling more at black boys can make a difference. This has been proven out in Oakland by Christopher Chatmon, executive director of the Oakland school district’s Office for African-American Male Achievement. Wonderful things also happen when schools offer boys a menu of extracurricular activities.
If community leaders want to help these boys, they can do so by pushing two initiatives: jobs and neighborhood recreation centers. Geoffrey Canada, president of the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York, proves on a daily basis the link between academic performance and offering students extracurricular activities.
This stuff is not complicated, nor enormously expensive. If parents, schools and communities can get these things right, the narrative for black males will have a happier ending.
