Problem Child or Problem Context: An Ecological Approach to Young Black Males

Adolescence can be the most crucial part of a person’s development. It is the time of transition into adulthood. The experiences gathered this time of a person’s life have lasting effects that linger long into adulthood. Proper guidance and support during this time is a person’s life is essential to ensuring that the person is able to become a successful adult in society. However, many African-American youth are lacking this type of support and guidance during this critical stage in life. Disproportionately some African American male adolescents aren’t provided proper mechanisms for their transition to manhood. Some sociologists believe that the lack of a rites of

Even at their youngest stages of life, African American males are being told that they’re just following a path to jail from birth. Even figures that as a child you’d look up to are telling young black males that they can’t succeed in this world. The vice-principal of the Rosa Parks School when talking about a young African American male said “That one has a jail-cell with his name on it”. Education institutions are the ones who hold the power to decide and construct who has access to opportunities and resources needed to advance in our capitalist society. The system is setting up African Americans for failure from the start. “The racial bias in the punishing systems of the school reflects the practices of the criminal justice system. Black youth are caught up in the net of juvenile justice system at a rate of two to four times that of white youth”. The profiling starts at a young age as well, planning their future for them. In conclusion, Education Institutions are the ones who hold power in this world. They are the building blocks of the future, as they shape young lives. With institutional racism putting some races ahead of others, however, a majority of students are stunted in their path to adulthood, leading to racial issues and divides that would otherwise not

Less than 4% of the total student population enrolled in America’s colleges and universities (one of the smallest subgroups based on race/ethnicity and gender.) According to the Schott Foundation, the graduation rate of Black males in CT is between 51%, whereas White males in CT have an 83% graduation rate—a 32% gap. Moreover, the achievement gap between Black women and Black men is the lowest male-to female ratio among all racial/ethnic subgroups. (Strayhorn 1). The disproportionate and devastating failure of Black males in the educational system has further ramifications in our social system as black males are over-represented in the criminal justice system: “African-American males represent approximately 8.6 percent of the nation’s K-12 public school enrollment but make up about 60 percent of all incarcerated youth” (Smith 2005). In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the academic crisis of adolescent black males, one must examine the research findings surrounding the Black-White achievement gap, black male standardized test scores, black male literacy achievement, and the socio-cultural achievement barriers that obscure black males’ self-perception of themselves as readers. “According to many standardized assessments, educators in the U.S.

The research topic I plan to focus on involves studying the experiences of African American males who have formed mentoring relationships as undergraduates, particularly when the mentor is a Black male and the relationship takes place at Clemson or other PWIs in the south. In my opinion, these relationships can have a profound impact on a student’s ability to persist towards graduating from college. Though my research, I want to hear the experiences of Black males who have benefited from successful mentoring relationships with other Black men. As a mentor, I believe that establishing a strong mentoring relationship with Black males at a young age can greatly improve their chance of academic success. Furthermore, I believe that mentoring is a strong early intervention mechanism to prevent Black males from dropping out of high school and deterring them from pursuing degrees in higher education. At the same time, I would like my research interest to focus on African American males in the south, but I would like my scope to focus on mentoring relationships between black men; both structured and unstructured.

In the article Black Males and Adult Education: A Call to Action written by Brendaly Drayton, Dionne Rosser-Mims, Joni Schwartz, and Talmadge C. Guy want to expose the challenges that black males face in education. They make it clear their purpose is to incite a great change in the way black males are treated in the education system, give black men a voice, and endorse an analytical evaluation of institutional procedures and practices. More importantly the article states that the authors’ point is not to encourage the stereotypes and behaviors attributed to black men that society has put upon them, rather their point is to show the world that their destructive view on black males is stopping them from reaching their full potential.

The trend of African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 has seen a dramatic increase of incarceration. Attention has been focusing on areas of housing, education, and healthcare but the most prominent problem for African American males is the increase in the incarceration rate. African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 incarceration rate has been thought, by many, to be caused by economic factors such as under employment or unemployment, poor housing, lack of education, and lack of healthcare. Yet, others believe it is due to the imbalance of minorities within the criminal justice system, such as judges, lawyers, and lawmakers.

On the local news shows, young black men are disproportionately presented as criminals and white young men as victims despite the egalitarian norms we purport to hold Dixton (2008). They are many historical and contemporary examples of media portraying young black men in the way

Today's education is often viewed as failing in its goal of educating students, especially those students characterized as minorities, including African American, Hispanic, and Appalachian students (Quiroz, 1999). Among the minority groups mentioned, African American males are affected most adversely. Research has shown that when Black male students are compared to other students by gender and race they consistently rank lowest in academic achievement (Ogbu, 2003), have the worst attendance record (Voelkle, 1999), are suspended and expelled the most often (Raffaele Mendez, 2003; Staples, 1982), are most likely to drop out of school, and most often fail to graduate from high school or to earn a GED (Pinkney, 2000; Roderick, 2003).

They squirmed, pencils tapping their desks anxiously; none of their papers contained more than five names. Eventually, all thirteen pairs of eyes made their way from the papers, to the faces of their friends, and eventually, they restlessly shifted over to me and stopped. “This is hard,” whined one seventh grade voice. Another chimed in, “It’s all the same, I can’t think of any more.” The question I had asked was simple: “Please list as many young African American males that you see on TV as possible.”

African American boys are doubly displaced among society. Ann Arnett Ferguson says, “they are not seen as childlike but adultified; as black males they are denied the masculine dispensation constituting white males as being “naturally naughty” and are discerned as willfully bad”(page 80). These African American boys are thought of being two things, either a criminal or an endangered species. They are not allowed to be naughty by nature according to society, but rather there naughtiness is a sign of vicious, inherent, insubordinate behavior. African americans are seen as endangered victims, which makes them criminals. Ferguson states, “It is their own maladaptive and inappropriate behavior that causes African americans to self-destruct”(page 82). There are two versions of childhood that are contradictory to each other. A real child would be seen as a “little plants” ready to grow up accordingly which is what white men were like to educators. On the other hand the African American boys were seen as children who are powerful, self centered, and have an agenda of their own. These black boys are seen as adults from such a young age, they don’t have time to be young and grow up because others make it seem like they are already fully grown. This drives them in the path to do bad things and make bad decisions.

Marc Mauer begins his lecture by introducing the topic of racial disparities in the 21st century and discusses where they originated from. In addition, to how we can address these situations, and bring some form of clarity to this subject matter. Mauer shares the first story of his friend and his wife's teenage son and how “their teenage son started being a teenage son” (Mauer, 2011). His friend's son started staying out late at night, his grades in school were declining, and he was possibly drinking and using drugs. Shortly after that, he was arrested for stealing from a convenience store.

This paper will provide a closer look on two of these specific issues, poverty and the changing family structure (i.e. the absence of fathers) of black families in households. These topics are two of the major influences on African American families today and usually go hand in hand. Children and adults living in single parent households are significantly more likely to live in poverty than those living in two-parent households (Hattery and Smith, 2007). One person doesn’t suffer from poverty or crime alone. Brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, victims and friends all become involved one way or the other. A chain reaction starts to occur and the families get pulled into the situation whether they want to or not and end up paying the price as well.

As our nation heads towards a united stand to build better relationships with other countries and build a united front with people of different backgrounds, religions and races, we are shocked to by the fact that there are still extreme prejudices and injustices within our own communities. We are shocked that a large portion of our black youth from disadvantaged families are not reaping the benefits of our society. Or they are simply unable to because they are unaware of the opportunities and they are not available to them. Unfortunately, there are a lack of programs in our communities that pushes the advancement of our youth. The programs that are available are either for profit or riddled with other agendas. Today we see more black youth unable to compete at national levels through education, involved in crimes and forgotten than any other minority. Our community has collectively forgotten about them only believing that if they themselves can succeed than that is all that matters. Our plan is to stop this and create a program that will enable our youth to have a better future.

The author conveys the importance of understanding that parenting classes is not enough to help young African American adolescent boys to become fathers; that if they are to succeed they will need support through social workers, vocational placement, health care, job readiness, and counseling as well as family and friends.

To highlight this point further, I will discuss a few statistics that highlight the low representation of the African American males at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). As stated in an article, if you add up all of the African American male students at UCLA in 2012, there were only 660 “black” students out of 19,838 other males enrolled at UCLA (only 3.3%), but out of those 660 students, 65% of them were at UCLA for their athletics program (Jaschik 2013). This means only 231 black male students were at UCLA for academic reasons. These numbers clearly show the low diversity of African American males at UCLA, but why are these numbers so low? Various types of media state that this is because “black” youths are just not into academics, they are more prone to drop out of high school, do drugs and much more. Yes, it is true that African American youths do get involved in the wrong things at a young age (so do other groups within the society), but not every “black” male is like this. I would even go to the extent to say that it is the way our society has been developed that allows African American youths to follow the wrong path. One of the main reasons a huge amount of African American males go on the wrong path is because of the media; they are always showing the negative side of African American communities. This