211.Unstack the Odds--Black Males: A Crisis, Pt 2

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!
by
Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

6. Black Males: A Crisis, Pt 2

“Albert Taylor remembers seeing a Youngstown man blow marijuana smoke in the face of his child to make the child hungry because the boy was sick and did not want to eat. That the father felt it OK to blow marijuana in the direction of his child, who has sickle-cell anemia, demonstrates a difficulty young black people have in raising the next generation.” (John W. Goodwin Jr., “Youth and Violence,” The Vindicator, March 13, 2011, p. A1.)

In his article “Proficiency of Black Males Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected” on the release of the report A Call for Change, reporter Trip Gabriel of The New York Times cited this striking fact:
“Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys. Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.” (Trip Gabriel, “Proficiency of Black Males Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected,” The New York Times, November 9, 2010.) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html?_r=2&hpw

Further, Gabriel quoted Ronald Ferguson, who directed the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, as follows:
“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.”

Those include “conversations about early childhood parenting practices,” Dr. Ferguson said. “The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think and develop a sense of autonomy.” (Trip Gabriel, “Proficiency of Black Males Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected,” The New York Times, November 9, 2010.) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html?_r=2&hpw